A Sermon Based Upon Matthew 5: 10-12;
16: 21-26
By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, DMin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
5rd Sunday of Lent, April
6th, 2014
"Blessed
are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven.
"Blessed
are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil
against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great
in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before
you. (Mat 5:10-12 NRS).
We had hardly unpacked our bags as newly
appointed Baptist missionaries in Germany, when we got an urgent letter from
our Mission Board. Our supervisors
informed us that since America had declared war upon Iraq, there was a real
possibility that we could be targeted or taken hostage for political
reasons. If, God forbid, that such hostage taking would
take place, the Mission Board, nor the United States Government, would agree to
pay ransom nor would promise to negotiate our release. For our own safety we were advised to protect
ourselves to be as inconspicuous as possible and to dress and speak like the
nationals. After I finished the letter,
I took a deep breath and realized this was real. I recommitted myself and my family to God’s care. My only other thought was this: How do you make yourself inconspicuous when all
you can say is Guten Tag?
Few of us have ever had our lives
threatened because of our faith or nationality.
Fortunately, no real threat ever came to us while we lived and worked as
missionaries in Germany. Even though
Christianity was mostly a memory there, there was enough of a memory left, that
most everyone was kind, polite and respectful.
Like most of you, I have lived my
whole life without religious persecution, but that does not mean that I do not
know what it means to suffer for or struggle because of my faith. Even
people who live in a land where freedom of religion is protected by the
constitution, if you profess something to be true, you may undergo moments of doubts,
discouragement, and perhaps some discrimination, if not occasional aggravation or
harassment. In other words, because you
claim something to be true another person doesn’t, you may have people hate you
for no reason, speak evil of you without a cause, or even falsely accuse you. This is why most people, even in a ‘free
country’, understand that the most polite way to keep faith is to keep it personal,
making it a very delicate, private matter not to be discussed in public places
without caution.
Maybe this is part of the reason this final
beatitude about ‘being persecuted for
righteousness’ sake’, takes up more space, has a blessing that is
repeated times, and is longer than any other. Trying to live right and do good is not easy. It can be a struggle and will probably be a
battle much of your life. And if you
try to stay true to Jesus, Jesus warns that you will suffer for it; and even in
certain parts of the world, you could be imprisoned or killed for it. So, here’s the question: If righteousness in
Jesus is so demanding and can even be dangerous, why stay a Christian? Why persevere? Is this way, this truth, and
this life how you want to spend your very short life? Does faith have a currency of value to us
today? Why stay with Jesus, when you
could do your own way and have the ‘good life’?
A
CROSS AT THE CENTER
It is important for us to realize, first
of all, that the main symbol of Christianity is not the star of Bethlehem and
not the empty tomb, but the cross. It
was probably unimaginable to ancient Romans that the cross might one day become
a symbol of a world faith. In the Roman
Empire, the cross was what the electric chair, guillotine, and hangman's noose
are in our world. The only difference
was the cross was a slower, more painful, and extremely humiliating form of
capital punishment.
The cross was barbaric because it was intended
for barbarians. Until its abolition by
Emperor Constantine in the year 337, crucifixion was used within the Roman
Empire to kill slaves, rebels and those condemned for especially abhorrent
crimes. The victims were almost always
noncitizens of low social rank. In areas like Judea, crucifixion was intended
to deter resistance to Roman occupation. After the Roman siege of Jerusalem, many Jews
were scourged, tortured, and then crucified opposite the city walls. Josephus, the Jewish historian says soldiers
“amused themselves by nailing their
prisoners in different positions.” The usual process was to strip a condemned
man all dignity by removing his clothing and then nailing him to a post or tree.
The usual cause of death was not loss of
blood but hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and heart failure. Jesus
repeatedly warned his disciples that he himself would be killed by crucifixion,
yet this was a prediction they ignored or refused to think about. To the contrary, Jesus’ disciples had witnessed
the excitement and welcome Jesus received wherever he went. They saw firsthand his Triumphal Entry into
Jerusalem, with crowds shouting, “Hosanna
to the son of David.” How could they
imagine that only days later he would be dead on the cross and they would be in
hiding?
After Jesus was dead and buried, the
disciples were also slow to believe the women who were the first witnesses to
the resurrection. But when those doubting disciples came face to
face with the Resurrected Lord himself, it turned their world upside down. Resurrection is only reasonable explanation
for such an unimaginable change of perspective concerning the cross. What had been a symbol of Caesar's
ruthlessness, now, became for Christians the sign of Christ's victory over
death. After the resurrection, the cross
viewed in such a transfigured light, that the apostle Paul came to oddly declare,
“Far be it from me to glory except in
the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6: 14). (Based
on Jim Forest in, The Ladder of the
Beatitudes, (pp. 138-139). Orbis Books, 2011, Kindle Edition).
Today, we live on a sort of ‘glory’ side
of the cross, as the cross has become a great symbol of God’s salvation accomplished
through the death of Christ on the cross.
But we should not think this means that now, God’s salvation is about security
or always playing it safe with life. To live
a ‘righteous’ life will not always bring earthly security, nor will it always make
you rich, healthy, happy or safe. Jesus explained
clearly that “If any want to become my
followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Mat
16:24-25 NRS). Having assurance in
Christ is not like having insurance. If
anything, because we follow this Jesus who died on a cross, we ought to be reminded
that safety is not what Christianity was or is about. Jim
Forest, tells of a New Yorker cartoon which illustrated a young couple being
shown a house that is nothing more than a castoff army tank. “It's a little
small inside,” the real estate agent admits, “but you can't beat it for
security.”
CAUGHT
IN THE MIDDLE
If being “saved” does not mean being
safe, what does salvation mean? In this
final beatitude, Jesus says that the blessing of faith can come even when you
find yourself “persecuted for
righteousness’ sake.” How do we understand
such a blessing, and why would we ever want it? Perhaps a clearer understanding might begin
with some a definition. The meaning of
the word ‘persecuted’ is explained in
this text as having people “revile you”
(to insult or berate) and “utter all
kinds of evil against you falsely on my account”. The point is that if you choose to walk in the
spiritual footsteps of Jesus in this world, and if you try to live rightly, you
can and will find yourself stepping into a battlefield, an ongoing spiritual
war, an ever- present conflict between good and evil, and between right and wrong.
As the apostle Paul so graphically described
it to the Ephesians, you will enter a “struggle”,
that “is not against enemies of blood
and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic
powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the
heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12 NRS). This might sound melodramatic, sensational, or
theologically heavy for most people. Few
spend much time thinking about their lives with such ‘drop-dead’ serious, life
and death, light verses darkness terminology.
Most people are just trying to get through the day, make a living, get home,
raise their family, and have a little fun once in a while. Probably we would never think about life this
way at all, unless we run into a problem.
(It’s kind of Like Lindsey Lohann or Justin Bieber living such an insolated
and insulated life that they don’t realize they might have a problem). It can be so very ‘innocent’, so ‘unnoticeable’
and even seemingly ‘unmentionable,’ where this struggle with ‘darkness’ shows
up in us.
When I reflect about my own struggle
with ‘darkness’ or my struggle ‘against spiritual forces’, I think about a particular event with
one of my childhood friends, whom I went to church with. We were walking through a popular department
store dreaming and wanting some new toy off the shelf that we had no money
for. I can remember him telling me he
could get that toy out of the store without getting caught. Now, what you have to realize, here is that I
had a Father in the store business. I was
taught not to steal, but I also knew something about what stealing meant to the
shop owner. The truth was that in that moment we both knew
that it was wrong to steal, but we were also fixated on how much fun it would
be to have that toy or how exciting it might be to get out of that store
without getting caught. I was not going
to help him do the deed, but I did not insist on him not doing it, and I even helped
(him and me, I thought) by being a lookout. I did not come up with the idea, but I was participating
in ‘darkness’.
You might say that this was just
childhood ignorance, since we were both children and neither of us realized the
full consequences of our actions.
Perhaps. But consider another familiar
situation. What if you were out on the
ball field at play with your classmates?
It could be softball, or any game.
On that ball field is less adult supervision and things happen that
could not go on in the classroom. What if, someone among your classmates wears
glasses, isn’t athletic, is shy, or is uncoordinated, or weaker than all the
others? What if, one of stronger ones in
the group starts picking on them or worse, pushes them around and threatens to
hurt them? You could take up for them,
or you could just watch what happens. Will
you risk being ‘persecuted’ along with them, or will you have the strength to
stand up to that bully.
Of course, Bullying is just a fact of
childhood, right? We know that children
can bully each other, but adults don’t do such things, right? During the time of the Nazism in Germany, Adolf
Hitler ordered the military to annihilate all the disabled, diseased, and so
call inferior, weaker people who were only considered a drain on the economics
and welfare of the greater society. By
then, Hitler had gained total power over the life and death of the German
people. Everyone was afraid of Hitler
because he had gained total power to decide who lives and dies. What started as simply a proud people wanting
success for their leader and overlooking some of his mad ways, became the
expected way for that politic to get ahead in the world, to prove its strength. The politic was able to do this, not because
it began as an evil deed, but it began as an unopposed evil thought, which
believed that in the grand scheme of things, if you trust in your own strength
without God, only brute force, only the survival of the fittest, and only the and
success of the strongest, the best, the brightest, and the best looking, really
matters. “If only it were all so simple,” wrote Russian
novelists, Aleksandr Solzhenitzen. “If
only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it
were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through
the heart of every human being. And who
is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, in The Gulag Archipelago, 1973). No wonder Jesus advised his
disciples to make sure that before they looked at the “splinter” in the eye of another,
they first considered the “log” blocking their own vision (Matt. 7.4). In other words, we all struggle with darkness
and we all struggle with knowing what is righteous and what is unrighteous. And even if what is ‘right’ is clearly obvious
beyond all arguments to the contrary, the question still remains: will do actually
do it?
It is the few people who realize,
struggle with, and come to ‘know’ what is right and really try to do it, and even
to promote good in their world, who will be “persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” They are the ones who will be caught in the
middle and will be ‘persecuted’ for going against the ‘natural grain’ of how
things are. They are also the ones who
show us all how things should be, could be, and hopefully one day, will be,
when God’s kingdom fully and finally comes. In the grand scheme of things, and in the end,
“Theirs will be the kingdom” says
Jesus, because they are the ones who have ‘hungered’ and ‘hurt’ for God’s kingdom
all along. All along, sometimes at great
personal sacrifice and costs, they were willing to be different and made a
difference. Like Jesus, they are the
righteous ones who see what needs to be done, and do something, even if it
hurts. They give themselves to making
sure that, God's will is ‘done on earth, as it is in heaven,” and that the righteous
kingdom keeps coming and breaking into this world, through their own faithful witness
and their redemptive work in the name of Jesus Christ.
STAYING
WITH JESUS
Don’t take this call to ‘heroic’
suffering for righteousness’ sake and for God’s kingdom to mean that Jesus desires
suffering. Jesus does not summons the ‘persecuted’
to ‘rejoice’ along with the prophets
because they suffer with them, but to ‘rejoice’
because their “reward will be great in
heaven.” In a culture that grows more impatient, so
that delaying gratification is not at all what we want (We want it, and we want it now!).
And when the idea of rejoicing over what can only happen later, rather
than sooner, sounds ridiculous, how could we ever adopt or even consider, the ‘delay
of joy’ as a part of our life, hope and worship? How could we ever agree with the person who
inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., who
said, “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in a single lifetime; therefore we
are saved by hope (Reinhold Niebuhr).” We probably won’t agree to such a delay
in your joy at all, unless something happens that causes us to reconsider. Following Christ is certainly not the choice for
anyone whose goal in life is security. “You
had better buy the tank,” as Jim Forest told us. “The windows are tiny and
there is no guest room, but it will probably keep out thieves. You will have
the well-guarded if lonely feeling of being in a safety deposit box inside a
bank vault.”
So, at the conclusion of this beatitude,
and all the beatitudes, we come to most basic issue: What does staying with Jesus have to offer us
when so many other more immediate joys claim to offer us so much more? What kind of uncommon, common sense would
make you want to stay with Jesus because, your reward is not here and now, but ‘your reward will be great in heaven?’ Could I convince you to hunger and thirst to do
right, even if it hurts? Probably not,
but what I can do it give you at least one last good reason. It comes from a classic movie which everyone
should see. “Last Holiday” is an ironic
British comedy written by J. B. Priestly and released in 1950. It
unsuccessfully remade in 2004, but in the original black and white British
version, Alec Guinness plays George Bird, a salesman as cautious as a civil
servant, who has never married because what women see in his face is dread of
life, not an attractive quality. A
persistent headache has made him consult a doctor. After medical tests, Bird
has been told to come back the next day for the diagnosis, but by the time he
returns the files have been mixed up. The doctor has someone else's results in
Bird's folder and so informs him that he has an untreatable illness and will be
dead in six weeks. In fact, all Bird needs is an aspirin.
But the doctor's error transforms Bird's
life. He quits his job that very day,
empties his bank account (there is no longer any point in saving up for old
age), and books a room in a luxury hotel, a coastal resort for the affluent. He had never imagined setting foot in such a
place until he spotted the graveyard racing toward him. A day later he begins
his last holiday. No longer needing to
play it safe, Bird can say and do things he previously would never have dared–
there is nothing left to fear. For the
first time in his life women find him attractive. Bankers, corporate
executives, and government ministers are soon lining up for his advice,
offering partnerships and vice-presidencies. Everyone senses in him a mysterious quality, a
detachment and freedom that make him a figure to be reckoned with. The viewer
alone knows just what that mysterious quality is: Bird's death sentence has
been his liberation. He is no longer a
prisoner of the terrifying future. He living
his life more seriously, more soberly, becoming more intentional about doing what
is good and right than ever.
However, the people in the hotel where
Mr. Bird is staying are far from a happy group. In many ways their holiday hotel is a
well-appointed purgatory. Bird becomes something of a Saint Francis in his
efforts to help his fellow guests become less selfish people, though it takes
only his being late to a meal in his honor to sour their affection for him.
What they don't know is that the guest of honor has just been killed in an auto
accident while off on a mission of mercy. The doctor with the wrong file was
right after all, not in his diagnosis but in the basic fact that George Bird–
not to mention every one of us– is going to die and there's nothing we can do
about it. The physician's only error was that it took less than six weeks to
happen (As told by Jim Forest in, The
Ladder of the Beatitudes (pp. 155-156). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition).
‘Last Holiday’ could point us to what Jesus
meant when he says “great is their
reward in heaven.” True joy in life
comes not from playing it safe, but from stepping into a life in which we are no
longer in charge, in which you and I hold on to nothing. We too can even be made free now, free as a
bird like George Bird, by the news of our own mortality and our only true hope.
What normally keeps most of us from living
this, any or all the beatitudes is mostly fear– fear of the unknown, fear of others,
fear of the contempt, fear of poverty, and ultimately, the fear of death. Fear
can make any of us a people of little faith, who don’t do anything. “If you had faith even the size of a mustard
seed,” Jesus tells us, “you could
move mountains” (Mt 17: 20). Jesus
wasn't referring to Mount Sinai or Mount Tabor but to more intimate barriers
and obstacles of our faith: our own mountains of caution and disbelief, our
mountains of fear.
But the main word throughout these beatitudes
is not ‘reward,’ but “blessed.” Truly it is only the poor in spirit—who realize
that they have nothing to lose, but everything to gain, who are blessed. Truly, it is those who have had significant losses
and mourn, who have the blessing of learning life is about ‘loving’ and ‘being
loved’ or it is nothing at all. Blessed
are also those who hunger for righteousness, who are merciful, who are pure of
heart, who make peace, who are as willing as the prophets to risk punishment
for the sake of God's kingdom, because the ‘blessings’ of God do not come when
we go after them, but God’s blessings come when we desire and do what is right,
because now, through Jesus’ filter of truth, we can clearly see what God’s surprisingly
‘great’ salvation means. For Jesus, salvation is not a living a life
of playing it safe, but God’s salvation comes by living a life that does God’s
will no matter what, because in the beginning, at the end, and also now, in the
middle of life, God’s will is all that matters.
I want to conclude with words that
reminds us what matters most. These
words are not found in the Bible, but were written on a wall of Shishu Bhavan,
a children’s home in Calcutta, India, which was once operated by Mother Teresa’s
order, the Sisters of Charity. They
tell remind us what it means to bless others with the blessing God gives us,
because, at the end, and in heaven, only God’s blessing matters:
“People
are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
If
you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway.
If
you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
The
good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Honesty
and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.
What
you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
People
who really want help may attack you if you help them. Help them anyway.
Give
the world the best you have and you may get hurt. Give the world your best
anyway.” Amen.
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