[The city of Herat in Western Afghanistan had been unstable for some time. Gangs of armed men were roaming the streets, breaking into houses and taking whatever they wanted. One of those houses was home to a Dutch Christian family serving in an aid project there. The bandits broke in, beat the husband with the butt of an AK47, and proceeded to steal everything in sight – and to rape his wife.
The family were evacuated out to Kabul, and then to the Netherlands. While they were in Kabul they received an email from one of their supporters in the West. What did this person write to this wounded family? “You must not have had enough prayer covering or this wouldn’t have happened.”]
Never mind their total lack of compassion; what is their assumption? … That if we serve the Lord, bad things will not happen to us…
[Fawad had gone up to Kabul to see to the distribution of some Christian magazines. He was arrested by the Taliban and thrown in Pul-I-Charki prison. They beat him with heavy electrical cables. Eventually he was released, but he has had kidney problems ever since. Was he out of God’s will? Should he not have gone?]
Fawad knew the risks he was taking. So did that family in Herat. You see, they had read Jesus’ words.
10Blessed are those who
are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven. 11Blessed are you when people insult you,
persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same
way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
One of the problems of being a Christian for any length of time, or even just growing up in a country with a Christian heritage, is that we get used to hearing Jesus’ words and we don’t realise just how strange they are.
Take this blessing thing for instance. What does it normally mean for someone to be “blessed” in the Bible? Well, this week in my devotions I’ve been reading in Deuteronomy and in Deut 28 it describes what it means by “blessed.”
1 If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all
his commands I give you today, the Lord
your God will set you high above all the nations on earth…
Then some specifics…
7 The Lord will grant that the enemies who
rise up against you will be defeated before you… 8 The Lord will send a blessing on your barns
and on everything you put your hand to…
11 The Lord
will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your
livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your forefathers
to give you…
It goes on, but you get the picture. It’s
pretty positive stuff. If you walk with the Lord, he will bless you and things
will go well. In fact, you could say that the mark of walking with the Lord is
that things are going well. You hear the same in the Psalms…Psalm 65:4
Blessed are those you choose [O Lord] and bring near to live in your courts! We
are filled with the good things of your house, of your holy temple.
Put God first, live by his standards, and good stuff will happen to you. That’s the basic idea. We might not be able to relate to full barns, lots of cattle, and enemies running away. Try putting it in modern terms; a nice house, a nice car, money in an RRSP, living in a safe and secure area of the city. These are the things that you might expect to be external evidence of God’s blessing, God’s favour resting upon you.
Then along comes Jesus with his list of “blesseds”…
3“Blessed are the poor
in spirit… 4Blessed are those who mourn… 5Blessed are the
meek… 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… 7Blessed
are the merciful…8Blessed are the pure in heart…9Blessed
are the peacemakers…10Blessed are those who are persecuted…
There’s some people in there who don’t look particularly blessed; the poor, those who mourn, the persecuted. They’re hardly the kinds of people you would choose for a short list “Those most favoured by God.” Cursed by God maybe. Forsaken by God maybe, but blessed? Maybe they were out of God’s will. Maybe they were being punished. Maybe they didn’t have enough people praying for them, either.
Jesus turns lots of things on their heads. We would say that the rich, the strong, the happy, the secure are blessed. Isn’t that what we wish for our children? But Jesus says otherwise.
We’re not going to look at all the beatitudes today. Since today is the International Day of Prayer for the persecuted church we’ll just look at verses 10-12.
People can suffer for all kinds of reasons. People suffer just because we live in a broken world. People get sick. They die. Others take advantage of them. Sometimes people suffer for their own choices. If you abuse your body with drugs or other substances you will pay a price. If you abuse others and end up in jail you may perceive that as persecution but it’s really the consequences of your own actions.
The persecution that Jesus is talking about here happens for two specific reasons.
In verse 10 he says 10Blessed
are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[I heard a story recently of a young man, moving up in his field, who was hired by a successful company. In his first week there the senior management went out for a celebration. After a meal and drinks they all went off to a hotel where the boss had arranged to have prostitutes waiting for them. This young man chose not to get involved in that and went home. The company fired him. What’s more, he was blacklisted among other companies as someone who didn’t “play the game.” Now he can’t get a job in his field.]
For us in the West, that’s a pretty extreme example of persecution. Our experience of persecution for the sake of righteousness usually amounts to minor inconveniences.
But then there are stories of people like Eh. All he wanted was to have a just society in his country with the freedom to pursue his dreams. He stood up and said that. What did he get for his trouble? He lost his place at university, his home, his country.
All across sub-Saharan Africa Christians are standing up and saying it is wrong for them to have Sharia law imposed on them, and they are suffering for it. That’s what’s at the root of the situation in Dafur in Sudan. The Arab, Muslim North of Sudan imposing Sharia law on the Black, Christian and Animist South of the country. Nigeria teeters on the brink of a similar conflict.
Jesus says that standing up for righteousness brings persecution, and we could learn a lot from our brothers and sisters around the world about what it means to stand against the prevailing society and say, “No, this is wrong!”
Jesus says, 10Blessed
are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Not theirs will be the kingdom; theirs is the kingdom. It’s because they’re living out the values of the kingdom in their daily lives that they experience persecution. It’s because they cry out against injustice that they experience persecution. It’s because they take up the cause of the poor against the powerful that they experience persecution. It’s because they stand up against dehumanising practises that they experience persecution.
If you live by the values of the kingdom in a society that rejects them, you will be persecuted, it’s part of the package.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The other reason Jesus gives why people suffer persecution is found in verse 11, 11Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
All over the world people suffer because of their faith in Jesus. You may find this hard to believe but the average Christian is not white and is not western. The average Christian is African or Asian and theologicaly much more conservative than most of us Westerners. The average Christian today is also poor, often so poor that Westerners simply can’t imagine it. But when you look at pictures of people starving in the camps in Darfur, remember that the majority of those people are Christians, brothers and sisters in the Lord.
African, Asian and South American Christians are also very likely to be persecuted for their faith and they connect with the New Testament in ways we don’t.
When Jesus wasn’t talking about exorcism and healing, things that are very alive in these churches, much of what he talked about addressed issues of persecution and martyrdom. These are live issues for millions of Christians around the world who do in fact live in constant danger of persecution or forced conversion, from either governments or local vigilantes. For modern Christians in Nigeria, Egypt, the Sudan, or Indonesia, it is quite conceivable that they might someday find themselves before a tribunal that would demand that they renounce their faith upon pain of death.
These ordinary believers see their experience reflected in the Bible. One Christian in Maluku, Indonesia, says that the recent massacres and expulsions in that region are “according to God’s plan. Christians are under purification from the Lord.” The church in Sudan, the victim of perhaps the most savage religious repression anywhere in the world, has integrated its sufferings into its liturgy and daily practice, The service book of the Anglican church in Sudan includes the line (“Death has come to reveal the faith / It has begun with us and it will end with us”).
Our experience as western Christians is not the norm. This is the norm. This is why the Bible speaks so much of suffering and persecution, because it’s part of the package of following Jesus. If we don’t experience it, we can be thankful, but we can’t be complacent. Our brothers and sisters around the world, the great majority of believers who are neither white, nor western nor wealthy, live with this threat hanging over them every day.
So, given that reality, what are we, and
they, to do? What is the Christian response to persecution? Jesus is clear, Rejoice
and be glad…
You see what I mean about strange? You’re starving to death in a refugee camp in Darfur. Sudanese soldiers regularly come through, killing men and raping women, and Jesus says, “Rejoice!” How in the world can he expect people to rejoice in situations like that? Here’s how…
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, This life isn’t all there is. Maybe we don’t think about that much because this life is pretty nice for us, or at least most of us. But Jesus says that those who are persecuted can rejoice because they can look forward to the final end, when everything will be set right. You see heaven, and God’s final victory over sin and death, are not just nice ideas to help people deal with dying. They’re really important to God’s justice. If there is no future in which every tear is dried and every wrong is righted, then the bad guys win! Injustice wins. Genocide wins. Rape and murder and deportation win.
But there is a future with God beyond this world. And Jesus says that we can rejoice, and our brothers and sisters in the persecuted church can rejoice, because in the long term, these present sufferings pale in comparison with the presence of God. That’s why one of the most popular books of the Bible among suffering Christians is the book of Revelation, because they get it! It’s not about figuring out dates and timetables. It’s a book of comfort to persecuted believers and the message is simple. Jesus wins! That’s worth rejoicing over, even in the midst of terrible persecution.
Jesus says we can rejoice when we look forward to the end, but he also says we can rejoice when we look backward, to those who have gone before us.
Rejoice and be glad…
for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
He’s telling them they’re in good company!
In Hebrews 11, after the writer lists all the heroes of faith that God rescued.
He goes on to list those that God didn’t rescue. 35bOthers were
tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better
resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others
were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they
were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in
sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the
world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in
caves and holes in the ground.
This is what it means to be faithful to Jesus is a world that rejects him. Suffering for the kingdom is not unusual, it’s the experience of all God’s messengers. If they killed our master, why should we expect to be any different? Jesus says as much in Matt 10:24.
But what does this mean to us, sitting secure and safe in Hamilton? No-one is about to beat down our doors and drag us off to convert to Islam or Hinduism or Buddhism on pain of death. But that is the threat that hangs over the daily experience of many of our brothers and sisters.
Many more are harassed by the state or by family or village vigilantes. They remind us that, together, we are the church and when one part of the body is in pain the whole body is affected. When one of my brothers or sisters in Sudan or Burma or China suffers for righteousness sake or for the name of Jesus I cannot stand idly by and say it has nothing to do with me. The UN may say that these things are internal matters of nation states. Jesus says that these are family matters of the people of God.
I’m not saying that we should pray for persecution to come our way. That would be to disobey scripture, which says we should pray for peace and a quiet life. Besides, only a fool would pray that his wife be raped or his best friend hacked to death with an axe.
But we can come alongside these brothers and sisters in prayer and sometimes in assistance. It’s all very well to preach on this kind of thing. It’s very different to actually rejoice in the midst of it. They need God’s grace and our prayers to be able to stand.