The Lutheran Hour
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"Everybody Is Somebody"
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Text: Romans 1:7
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The woman had been standing out there for days. She came and stayed through a storm, with a photograph tucked close to her heart. She came to see Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, to deliver a message, to get the word through.
It’s a scene from a recent movie, an historical drama set in World War II, titled The Six Triple Eight. Six Triple Eight was the unit designation for the U.S. Army Central Postal Battalion, a special battalion created late in the war, and given the mission to get the word through, to make sure soldiers on the front got their mail.i As one soldier put it, “For the morale of soldiers in war time, only one thing counts more than somewhere to sleep or something to eat. And that one thing is mail from home.”ii
On the surface, the movie is about mail, letters from home. More deeply, it’s about the strength that comes from knowing, knowing that someone thought you were somebody worth writing. And it’s the reason why that woman was out there in front of the White House, waiting in the rain with a photograph tucked close to her heart.
In the movie, we listen as Mrs. Roosevelt calls on a White House assistant to fetch the umbrellas. Together they venture to the gate on Pennsylvania Avenue to greet their visitor. Her threadbare clothing is soaked through from rain. Her thinning red hair is matted against her neck. Her face is weary, yet determined. She looks up from her low station to make eye contact with the First Lady.
She shows her the photograph and explains that it’s of her two sons, Vernon and Elmer. They’re over there, fighting in the war, but she hasn’t heard from them in more than a year. “You should write to them,” Mrs. Roosevelt says.
“I write, all the time,” the woman answers, “but the letters aren’t getting through. Other families are saying the same thing. We can’t get word to them.”
She apologizes for being there. She is the wife of a West Virginia coal miner, after all. Who is she to bother the First Lady? “I know we’re nobodies in this world,” she says. Mrs. Roosevelt smiles and says otherwise, “Oh, everybody is somebody.”
The scene is invented for the sake of the movie, but it does capture the kind of person Mrs. Roosevelt was,iii and reflects a real problem with the mail that occurred. The problem was that, even though the war’s victory, in essence, had already been achieved, it had still to be delivered. The Allies had fought and won on D-Day, the critical battle that won the war. But over the next year, they had to finish the job. And if they hadn’t finished it, the victory secured would have been as ineffective as undelivered mail. To deliver the victory, they had to keep tired, homesick troops motivated, which included the mundane task of making sure they got their mail, the millions of letters that had become backlogged since D-Day, and undeliverable due to frequent troop movements and unclear addresses. For example, a letter might be addressed to “Robert Smith, U.S. Army,” but there were 7,500 Robert Smiths in the European Theater of Operations. And any one of those letters to these Roberts might be addressed to Bob, Rob, Bobby, Robby, or Bert.iv
The Army didn’t have enough postal workers to address the problem. They had to keep sending more men to fight at the front. Back home, Eleanor Roosevelt and others had been advocating that soldiers from the newly formed, all-volunteer, Women’s Army Corps be permitted to help, specifically, a group considered by some to be “nobodies.”
Shortly after Christmas of 1944, a solution came together with the formation of the Six Triple Eight Postal Battalion, an all-female, predominantly black, multi-ethnic unit with at least one Puerto Rican and one Mexican woman. In January of 1945, they would become the only World-War II unit of their kind to be deployed overseas.v There were 855 women assigned. Their mission was to sort through the mountains of backlogged mail, six airplane hangars full of packages, parcels, and post cards waiting to be delivered to rally the troops to deliver the victory that had already been secured.
But the women of the Six Triple Eight would be fighting a battle on two fronts. On one front, they would be helping fight the war against Hitler. On the other front, they were fighting to change a cultural mindset—the attitude that deemed some people to be inferior, sub-human, even. They were fighting the good fight to help create a society in which people would be treated with dignity and respect, and given opportunities to contribute. So, when they got their opportunity, they got right to work. They organized into three shifts to work ’round the clock, seven days a week. They were given six months to deliver a solution. They did it in three.
A central character in the drama, both in the movie and in real life, was Major Charity Adams, the first Black woman to serve as a U.S. Army officer and later as the commander of the Six Triple Eight. In the movie, Major Adams identifies herself as a Christian, a preacher’s daughter, a woman of faith. I wanted to know more about her, so I read her memoir titled, One Woman’s Army. And this fact about her, her faith in Christ, came across consistently and clearly on every page.vi
Reading her story, I don’t get the sense that she served in the Army to prove to others that she was somebody. No, she went in, trusting that God had already made it so. He had already won the war for her, in the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Major Adams had nothing to prove. But she did have a job to do. She was only 26 years old, and called to lead 854 fellow soldiers.
One of her first duties was to dissuade theft, as her soldiers were to deal with thousands of packages and parcels, many of which were undelivered gifts from Christmas. She briefed her battalion, “I caution you about … stealing from the mail we handle. The penalties are severe and not distinguished by the amount stolen. The penalty is the same for stealing $10 as for stealing $10,000. If you must steal, make it a large amount so that you can pay your legal fees, serve your time in a federal prison, and still have enough to make it worthwhile.”vii
Later in the deployment, two soldiers were overheard discussing battalion discipline. The women affectionately referred to Major Adams as “Big Ma” (when she wasn’t in the room, of course). The one soldier said to the other, “Well, I’ll say this for Big Ma. She doesn’t play favorites. I think she would arrest her mother if she broke the law.”viii
Major Adams had high expectations for her soldiers because she loved them. And she believed that they were “important for the success of the war; that morale could not be maintained without mail from home.”ix
The Christian faith animated the conduct of Major Charity Adams, not only for the four years she served in the Army, but for the duration of her life, until she died at 83. It was the faith that delivered her as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, teacher, leader, and a woman of God, faith in Jesus delivered to her, faith once captured in a letter, recorded in the Bible. This great letter of the faith was written 2,000 years ago by a man named Paul, to followers of Jesus in Rome. At the end of this letter, in Romans 16, Paul lists some of the people included as intended recipients of this letter: 26 names, including both men and women. Represented in those 26 names, there seem to be at least five categories or classes of people.
There were conservative Jews as well as more cosmopolitan, culturally Greek Jews. There were culturally Greek Gentiles, Roman Gentiles, and slaves. These five groups of people had many reasons not to eat together, not to worship together, not to work together. Each group had ample reasons to view the others as “nobodies.” So how is it that Paul can write a letter to all of them, addressing them as brothers and sisters whom he longs to see? It is because they trusted that God, their Creator, had raised from the dead an ethnically Jewish man named Jesus, declaring Him to be the only hope for every nation, tribe, and people;— for the Jews, then for the Gentiles. Because of Jesus, they were all somebody.
Listen to how Paul opens the letter to them: Paul, slave of Christ, called to be an apostle— sent out [deployed], set apart for the sake of the Gospel, the Good News of God, the Good News He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, the Good News concerning His Son, who was descended from David [the king] according to the flesh, and who, according to the Spirit of holiness, was declared in power to be the Son of God, by His resurrection from the dead— the Christ, the anointed King, our Lord.
Through Him, we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the believing obedience (faithful hearing) among all the nations for the sake of His Name. That includes you also, you who are called to belong to Jesus, the anointed King.
This letter comes to all those in Rome loved by God and called to be His holy people: grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus, the King. First, I thank my God for all of you through Jesus Christ, because of your faith, your trust in Him is being reported around the world.
God, whom I worship in my spirit through the good news of His Son, God is my witness how constantly I remember you in all my prayers at all times. I ask God, again and again that somehow, at last, in His will, that the way would be opened for me to come to you.
I long to see you so that I may share some spiritual gift with you to make you strong. I want to encourage you and be encouraged by you in this faith that we share. I don’t want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, how often I have planned to come to you; it’s just that until now something has always gotten in the way.
I want to reap a harvest among you, as well as among the rest of the nations. See, I am under obligation both to the Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the Good News to you who are in Rome, because I am not ashamed of this Good News, because it is God’s power, power for delivering salvation to everyone, everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
Because in this Good News, the Gospel, God’s righteousness, God’s character is revealed from faith, for faith. As it is written, those who are right [with God] will live by faith.
Paul wrote this letter because the decisive battle had been won. Jesus, the crucified and risen King, had won the victory. With His birth, His life, His ministry, the Son of God had invaded the realm of sin, and death, and the devil. On the cross, Jesus took on Himself the storm of consequences from all human sin, all the ways we regard others as our inferiors, all the ways we deny our common Creator.
Jesus sacrificed Himself in the battle against sin, and He rose from the dead to destroy its power. The war has been won, but it is not over. The Gospel, the good news of victory must be delivered; otherwise, how would anyone know? How would you ever know that God Almighty thinks you’re someone worth writing.
How much of the hatred, strife, and resentment that you see and experience on a day-to-day basis comes from people trying to prove that they’re somebody? Trying to prove it by putting others down, and propping themselves up a notch higher? How much of the anxiety, worry, and despair that you see and experience on a day-to-day basis comes from the fear of being a nobody, of being left out, overlooked, forgotten?
Major Charity Adams devoted her life to breaking down the barriers of racial segregation, and opening doors for the generation that followed her. Toward the end of her life, as a 71-year-old, she looked back and observed: “The problems that were my concern during my service, and to which I have devoted my energies, are still with us.”x
And they’re with us in different forms, still today, 35 years after she wrote her memoir. They are problems that cannot be fixed by policies or programs, because they come from the insecurities inside us, which can only be addressed by the Good News of Jesus, the King, delivered again and again, the word of promise addressed to you: God thinks you’re worth writing. Despite what anybody else says, God says you’re somebody to Him.
Our biggest issues haven’t gone away: group think, cultural hostility, human insecurity—”These problems … are still with us— I keep trying,” wrote 71-year-old Charity at the end of her memoir. In Christ, we can keep trying. We know that the war with our fears and insecurities has been won in Jesus, but the every-day battles go on. And it will not be over until His message is fully delivered to all peoples, tribes, and nations. When the backlog will be cleared and the mission completed, God only knows. But we will know the day when it comes. Jesus will return in glory to raise the dead and renew all things. Those who trust Him will finally know the security that can be found only in Him. Those who turn away from Him will face the consequences of rejecting their only hope. God doesn’t want anyone to suffer this fate, so He keeps re-sending. He sends us, who know Him, His people, the church, to be His letters to the world.
And to be God’s letter to a waiting and watching world, we might take a cue from the women of the Six Triple Eight Central Postal Battalion. Despite what anybody was saying about them, questioning their abilities, and in some cases, questioning their humanity, they answered the mail with their conduct. They showed up and got to work.
The Six Triple Eight was sent to Birmingham, England, to perform their mission. And for some of the local residents of Birmingham, these were the first African-American women they had ever seen. Now, it so happened that some agitators had been claiming that black women were inferior, subhuman, even. They even spread the rumor that they had tails, 3-or 4-foot-long tails that came out, but only after midnight. Of course, the normal curfew for the Six Triple Eight’s soldiers was 11 p.m., so who knew what really happened after midnight?
When word of this “tale” came to Major Adams, rather than fighting it directly, she extended the curfew to 12:30 a.m. Rather than stooping to argue with childish slander, she simply arranged for a few groups of the women to be seen in public after the supposed “witching hour,” wearing skirts, so the locals could see the truth for themselves.
Once the rumors died out, the people of Birmingham were eager to get to know their guests and frequently invited them over to visit in their homes for tea. Major Adams encouraged the women to see themselves as representatives of their country, and to accept as many of these invitations as possible, something she herself did, even though cultural differences could sometimes make for awkward moments.
Once, when Major Adams was invited over for tea, the hostess had acquired some ground coffee for her guest, because she’d heard Americans were coffee drinkers. The brew, said Major Adams, was impossible to describe and equally impossible to drink. She inquired of her hostess how she had made the coffee. The woman explained that she’d got it started early that morning so that it would be ready by four-ish. She’d brought the water to boil, mixed the coffee in, and let it simmer. The problem was that in an hour or so, the water was almost gone, so she added more. “I had to do that several times,” she said, “but I am sure that it is all cooked by now.”xi The woman had some fresh grounds left over. So, Charity taught her how we Americans brew it back home.
Even innocent misunderstandings can make cross-cultural dealings uncomfortable. Yet Christians worship the God who bridged the widest social chasm imaginable by being born human. And we follow His lead. We fight the good fight like Jesus did, by bearing indignities with integrity and grace. Whether that means standing tall under persecution, or enduring a little bad coffee, being deployed out of what’s comfortable is what we do. We’re not going to solve all the world’s problems, but we can keep trying, until God delivers the mail. And we know He will, because Jesus stayed through the storm to get word to us. And He keeps us tucked close to His heart.
i The Six Triple Eight, directed by Tyler Perry, distributed by Netflix (2024).
ii Colonel David Griffith, quoted by “In World War II, Black Women’s Army Unit Delivered,” American Postal Workers Union (2011). Accessed on Oct 29, 2025 at https://apwu.org/news/world-war-ii-black-womens-army-unit-delivered/
iii “Eleanor Roosevelt and World War II: Redefining the Role of First Lady,” Wright Museum or World War II. Accessed on October 29, 2025 at https://wrightmuseum.org/eleanor-roosevelt-and-world-war-ii-redefining-the-role-of-first-lady/
iv Charity Adams Earley, One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC. College Station: Texas A&M Press (1989), 149.
v See https://www.womenofthe6888th.org/
vi Major Adams noted that her favorite hymn was, and is, “Be Still, My Soul, the Lord Is on Thy Side,” see Charity Adams Earley, One Woman’s Army, 159. Also, her soldiers recalled how she attended chapel every Sunday and was “a role model to the women in her unit, a powerful yet benevolent leader. She looked after their needs and was considerate of their well-being” (Brenda Moore, To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs stationed Overseas during World War II, New York, NYU Press [1996],169).
vii Charity Adams Earley, One Woman’s Army, 153.
viii Ibid., 204.
ix Ibid., 150.
x Ibid., 214.
xi Ibid., 157.
Reflections for December 21, 2025
Title: Everybody Is SomebodyNo reflection segment this week.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Where Shepherds Lately Knelt” by Jaroslav Vajda & Carl Schalk. From The Marvel of This Night by the American Kantorei. (© 1996 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
“Infant Holy, Infant Lowly” arr. Mark Shepperd. From Hymns for All Saints: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany. (© 2005 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.