Trinity 5, persecution
Ex 19.2-8a; Rom 5.1-8; Matt 9.35-10.8
" suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…" (Romans 5.3ff)
A lawyer is sitting quietly in his chambers when Satan turns up.
“I’ll make sure you win every case, that you become vastly wealthy, that you are the youngest QC ever, and eventually that you become the greatest reforming Chancellor in history.
All I require in return is the souls of your wife and children.”
The Lawyer thinks for a while and then says, “so where’s the catch?”
Lawyers, like politicians, are one of those groups of people who are always persecuted by public mockery and jokes.
I want this morning to spend a few minutes thinking about the persecution of Christians – or, perhaps more worryingly, the lack of it.
The longer version of today’s Gospel includes at least two puzzling statements of Jesus, which is presumably why the verses are left out. (Although at St Paul’s we only shorten readings to make printing the service sheet easier and to allow more time for wine at the end of the service…)
One of the so-called ‘hard sayings of Jesus’ is in the passage we did read: “go nowhere among the Gentiles”. This would seem to re-enforce the teaching of that Exodus reading where God says of Israel: “you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples.” (Ex 19.5)
I don’t want to dwell on this theme, because it is obvious from the way the early church developed and from some of the other teachings of Jesus, that the Gospel was to be preached to us, the Gentiles, as well. Although that still leaves us with the problem, not insurmountable, of the actually words of Jesus
The two other problems are found at the end of the extended reading:
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.’” (10.21-23)
The last statement of Jesus as Matthew records it is part of a bigger issue concerning the second coming of Jesus. He and the early church seemed to expect his return as the triumphant Son of Man to be imminent – within their lifetime – only months away. That’s a subject for another sermon on another day.
Although it is worth noting, in passing, that it was this very verse that the 19 year old Albert Schweitzer read in his Greek testament while undertaking his military service in 1894. At a time when many intellectuals were supposing that the early church had simply ‘made up’ many of the sayings of Jesus, he realised that they had an authentic ring about them. For why would the church invent such puzzling and problematic sayings and put them in the mouth of our Lord?
But back to the lawyers and persecution. (What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start!)
Jesus promises his disciples that in the world, they will have persecution. It is a theme taken up by the Apostle Paul and is the context of the ‘suffering’ he refers to in today’s epistle: “we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us…” (Romans 5.3ff)
The problem for many of us in the western church is that society does not hate us and we are neither vilified nor persecuted.
Does this mean there is something wrong with our practice of the faith? Does it suggest that by centuries of establishment compromises, that began with Christianity becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire in the early 4th century and continue today with Bishops in the House of Lords, we have become little more than a spiritual conscience for a secular society?
Well certainly some would have us believe that.
Groups within all religions often claim as ‘proof’ of the rightness of their position that they are mercilessly persecuted. The Albigensians claimed this in mediaeval Europe; the Anabaptists in reformation Europe; even evangelicals and liberal Catholics in the present day Diocese of London. Although, whereas the first two groups were burned and drowned respectively, the latter two groups only exchange snide remarks at Diocesan Synods.
In the early church, there were Christians who thought that martyrdom was such a privilege and a guarantee of a place with the saints in heaven, that they offered themselves to the mob; voluntary martyrdom, which soon came to be condemned by the Bishops. Hardly surprisingly, the Montanists, as they were called, soon died out!
However, there is a much milder form of this still around. You remember CS Lewis’s observation of the way some Christians practise their faith, encapsulated in his comment: “She lived for others. You could tell them by their haunted looks.”
Some Christians live in such a self-righteous and priggish way that they are shunned by normal society.
And some Christians believe such ridiculous things that they are assigned by polite society to the corner where the flat earth society live. They are regarded (to their horror) as away with the fairies. All this has nothing to do with the persecutions of which our Lord speaks.
However, we must not forget that, sadly, throughout the world, there is still much persecution of Christianity, and indeed of other faiths.
It is sobering to remember that there have been more Christian martyrs in the past century than in all the previous centuries put together. The religious freedom we enjoy in Britain is still denied to millions of our fellow believers around the globe, and we should continue to work and pray for their emancipation.
But where does all this leave us personally, as we struggle with the call to be true to our Christian vocation, and yet to be full participants in civil society?
I think passages like today’s Gospel should leave us with a healthy niggle. It should cause us to stop and think about how easily we sometimes fall in with the liberal consensus of secular society.
Sometimes, standing up for our faith and suffering a little verbal persecution, will mean taking an unpopular ethical stance at work or in our attitude towards money, sex and power. Sometimes it will simply be in trying to see the good in someone who has become the butt of everyone’s humour. Sometimes it will be in living below our means.
Jesus reminds us in another passage “Woe to you when all men speak well of you…” (Lk 6.26)
As we reflect and pray about our life before God, day by day, we should be prepared for that gentle niggle, that prompting of the Spirit, that sometimes leads us into patterns of living, which carry with them the mildest of persecutions.
Friends may say behind our backs that we are taking our religion a little too seriously. And they may feel gently rebuked by our life-style. Our popularity may ebb a point or two.
But compared with the persecution many of our brothers and sisters have endured, and still do, and in the light of our Lord’s own sufferings, as Paul reminds us, it is very little to put up with.
And in God’s providence, it is good for us, and for those whom we seek to serve.
" suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us..." (Romans 5.3ff)
