Blessed are those Persecuted for Righteousness sake.
A sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III
March 20, 2005 Passion Sunday
Things began well. One could say that much about Jesus ministry. Things began well in that early period in the Gospel story in which Jesus experienced widespread popularity and success. But that quickly shifted. In His hometown of Nazareth, his message was so severely rejected that only a miracle kept a mob from killing him. Jesus’ own family wanted to have him committed, believing as they did that he had lost his mind and was a danger to himself. Jesus was accused of being a drunk and a party boy. And the rumors and accusations moved on from there. He hung out with the wrong crowd eating with known sinners and was intimate with prostitutes. He was impure and unclean, with no regard for the religious traditions of his people. He was demon possessed if not the devil himself. He was an idolatrer making scandolous claims about God and himself. Increasingly Jesus began to experience the rejection of his message. He reached out to potential disciples only to see them turn away. Even those who followed him did not really seem to get it. In some communities Jesus could not perform healings because of the lack of faith in him.. From the very beginning the religious and political authorities, who felt that Jesus was a threat to their interests initiated a death plot against him. One reason that Jesus may have moved from town to town is that he was in a very real sense, a hunted man with a price on his head trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities. When he finally journeyed to Jerusalem, the masses that greeted him with Hosannas morphed into a lynch mob calling for his death. At Gethsemani we see how the external facts of his being persecuted translated into the loneliness and isolation of the Jesus tempted to despair in God’s seeming abandonment of him. In Gethesemani Jesus wrestled with his God: Where is the blessing of my Abba-Father? Where is the Reign of God that you commissioned me to proclaim? Soon his own discipleship community would deny him, betray him, abandon him. Arrested in the middle of the night, he was tried in a court that was a mockery of an already brutal Roman judicial system. He was tortured, spit upon and reviled and finally executed on an instrument of death that was reserved for slaves and revolutionaries. So much for this one – the one in whom we had placed our hopes. Goodness is cursed. Evil has won. The cross is brutal testimony to the power of evil to take Jesus, his ministry and message of the reign of God and dash it all to the ground. Now as we look upon the Crucifed One we remember the words that he said in the Sermon on the mount. Blessed are those who are persecuted for rightousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. What is this blessing to be found in the midst of persecution? Did Jesus know this blessing and would we if we followed him?
It is a matter of historical fact that the early church experienced this kind of persecution. So many of the writings of the new testament are directed at communities that were suffering violent repression including Matthew’s own community and the churches addressed by the epistle reading of 1st Peter. When I was in Rome this past summer I spent a morning at the Roman coliseum. I found myself remembering the stories of the Christians who died as blood sport at this great amusement center for imperial rome. I remembered Agnes one of countless early Christian martyrs. It is said of Agnes that she was born to a rich and noble family in rome. Her great beauty attracted the interests of many suitors. But her calling and vocation as a Christian was to be more than a Roman wife. One of those rejected suitors so the story goes, denounced her as a christian and she was subsequently brought in on charges that she would not offer prayers or incense to the gods. Because of her defiant resistance, the Roman governor condemned her to a house of prostitution where she would be kept in sexual slavery. Because of her holiness, It was said that no man would go near her. And so she was condemned to die. We see in this story of the early persecuted church a life and death struggle between young woman’s power in Christ to define her own identity versus a patriarchal culture’s claim to identify her in terms of her sexuality. Agnes suffered and died for her faith but did she know the beatitude that Jesus promised to all who follow him. Did She know the blessing of the persecuted? It is said that Agnes greeted the sentence of death joyfully and went to the place of execution more cheerfully than others go to their wedding.
The witness of the saints is not a glorification of suffering for suffering’s sake. The witness of the saints is that of a Christ like life lived fully come what may. And a part of their witness to us has to do with the paradoxical blessing of the persecuted.
why is it that the persecuted church, throughout history and all over the world today seems to flourish? And the unpersecuted church, becomes fat and happy and languishes into indifference? A very powerful part of what I call my second conversion experience was the witness of the martyrs and of the suffering church in Central America. The martyrdom of Romero and the 4 nuns in El Salvador, challenged me to the core. And we know that today in many parts of the world the church continues to experience violent repression and the costly discipleship of faithful resistance. The miracle to be encountered in these places of death is that they are paradoxically places of life. People suffering persecution because of their faith and because of their commitment to rightousness seem to be possessed of a blessed joy that defies explanation.
In the last beatitude Jesus gets personal. Did you notice that in the last beatitude- Jesus makes a shift from third person –those t o 2nd person address- you. Instead of Blessed are they. He says to those around him. Blessed are you.…. you and you and you. What about you..what about us? what about the church in the 1st world? What about this gathering of disciples here at St. mark’s? Where do we intersect with this final beatitude. First we must say that not all suffering or persecution that comes to the church is suffering for rightousness sake. As the church let us confess that the christian can sometimes be “persecuted” by others not because of rightousness, but because of our naivete, or incompetence or grandiosity. With this confession made, we have to ask a harder deeper question: is the church in the fist world persecuted at all? Maybe we have not lived our way into this beatitude “blessed are the persecuted” because we have not been willing to follow Jesus in the way of the cross. Is it not simply a statement of fact to point out that the vast majority of Christians in the uS have not yet experienced the blessing of the persecuted? The church of the 1st world continues to live our lives safely, practice our faith comfortably in a world where God is being crucified again and again in the poor of the world by war, poverty and violence. If we begin to address the imperial realities that lie behind the crucifixion of the poor – we too will be persecuted and we too will be following in the way of the cross.
The Beatitudes are the best glimpse into the inwardness, the spirituality of Jesus which is a spirituality of the Reign of God. If as Christians we desire the blessing of the Reign of God, we will as followers of Jesus practice all the beatitudes. And if we practice them, they will lead us to this beatitude of persecution. If as the poor in spirit, we make an option for the poor, seeing the world from the underside, calling into question the wealth of the rich and the power of the mighty, we will be persecuted. If we mourn for a broken world and for broken lives our laments will become irritating to those who are quite committed to the way things are. If we hunger and thirst for righteousness, if a passionate longing for a just society consumes our being this could very well lead us toward persecution. If we experience the blessing of the merciful our compassion for those around us will eventually lead us to ask hard questions, to take controversial stands on their behalf. If we would be peacemakers and not simply peace lovers as Sue said last week we are undoubtedly going to be plunged into conflicts and potentially persecution. IF you practice the beatitudes sooner or later you will pay the price. And the price is persecution. The beatitude of the persecutions is the Beatitude of the Cross. It is not merely the beatitude of the great cross of martyrdom. It is the beatitude of all the crosses of Christian commitment. Wherever and whenever we experience pain and difficulty as we seek to go against the grain of our world and of the dominant culture. The follower of Jesus learns that in the various ways in which the cross and persecution present themselves along the road of a life of faithfulness to the reign of god – these are part of the mission itself. There may not be a personal enemy slandering us, we may not be hauled before the authorities, not many of us are likely to face martyrdom. But As followers of Jesus we face the possibility of persecution, each time we turn against the grain of our world. The world says “don’t be idealistic, who do you think you are. That’s not practical. Look out for yourself. It’s easier not to say anything. Go along with it”. And Jesus says, “blessed are the persecuted”. More often the followers of Christ simply face the frustration and failure of their efforts for righteousness. Christ’s death on the cross first reveals the power of evil, of sin and selfishness, of the determined and entrenched opposition of the world to the reign of god. If the power of evil can dash to earth the earthly work of Christ whose credibility and genuineness were total. That power of evil should surely find it no more difficult to paralyze and destroy the work of his disciples. We must remind ourselves that If evil could bring seemingly to naught the ministry of Jesus, it will at times most certainly challenge, overcome our struggle for righteousness.
But forgive me God for my impertinence, for still I wonder what is the blessing in all of this? What is the blessing of those who are persecuted for righteousness sake? I can’t tell you how this beatitude works. Just as I can’t explain how it is that the Crucified one will rise from the dead. I can’t explain how The cursed cross that represents the persecution of goodness and the defeat of god’s reign becomes the cross of blessing, in which good triumphs over evil, life over death, love over hate. Let me close this sermon by reading again the words of Jesus a blessing directed to all who would follow him in the way of the cross. “You are blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom. Not only that – count yourselves blessed every time people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens – give a cheer even! For though they don’t like it, I do! And all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company. My prophets and witnesses have always gotten into this kind of trouble. “