The blessed martyrs

Ephesians 1.3-14; Mark 6.14-29

In the story we heard this morning from Mark’s gospel, we learn that John the Baptist was imprisoned and executed because he spoke up against the law of a powerful family in the name of the law of God.  Herod, the Roman-appointed governor of Galilee, had ‘married’ Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, even though she was still married to Philip.  The priests and rabbis apparently tolerated this situation because they were afraid of Herod’s power.  But John did not.  Presumably he believed that officials who sat in the place of David in Israel had a special responsibility to set an example for others.  In the prophetic tradition to which John belonged, the king was also the pastor or shepherd of the people.  It was therefore intolerable that any heir of David should publicly bless and normalise any behaviour that trampled the love of both God and neighbour underfoot.  John clearly made these observations in the public arena and, having suffered imprisonment for some time, was finally executed for his trouble.

Although Stephen is properly regarded as the first Christian martyr, John the Baptist can be regarded as the prototype of Christian martyrs in that (1) his essential calling was to be a witness to the coming of the Christ, God’s anointed king; (2) he lived that calling out by loudly proclaiming the difference between the values of the messianic kingdom and the values of the socio-political reality in which he lived; and (3) he was executed for his trouble.  This is what Christian martyrs have done ever since, have they not?  Think of the famous martyrs of the ancient world, whose essential crime was a refusal to put aside the Lordship of the Christ for the sake of keeping things nice with the Empire.  Think of modern martyrs like Oscar Romero or Dietrich Bonheoffer, who did not consider themselves free to tolerate the oppressive power of Military juntas or Nazi Führers because of their Christian responsibility to love God and neighbour before even their own safety and survival.  Think of the less famous martyrs of the Philippines or of West Papua, humble pastors and church leaders who dared to confront the murderous greed of their governments in the name of God’s love for the poor.  These many lost their lives not because they were careless or suicidal, but because they felt compelled to bear witness to the faith, hope and universal love that had been revealed to them in Jesus Christ.

It is perhaps difficult for we distracted occupants of the world’s ‘most liveable city’ to imagine our way into the minds and hearts of the martyrs.  For the martyrs believe in God’s blessing so powerfully that they are willing to entrust themselves to that blessing even to the point of death.  They believe, with the writer to the Ephesians, that they are destined to received all that God has promised in Jesus, a share in that great company whose sins and failures are forgiven, a share in the inheritance that the gospels describe as the kingdom of God.  We, on the other hand, are so regularly unsure of God’s blessing that our faith stumbles at the first hurdle.  How can God be God, we ask ourselves, when so many of God’s people live as though God didn’t really matter?  How can God be God when the world is so full of pain and evil?

With thoughts like these we display our lack of genuinely Christian faith.  For we are not called to believe in the church or its self-made righteousness.  We are called to believe in the righteousness of God in Christ, and in his infinite mercy towards all who place their trust in him.  Nor are we called to believe in the evils of the world, as though they had some kind of substance of their own.  We are called to believe in the God who, in Christ, has disarmed the powers and led them captive in his train.  In Christ the powers are revealed for what they are:  hollow nothings which have no more substance than the fear and awe of those who are taken in by their lies. In that light, we are then called to be part of the antidote of God would apply towards everything that is evil, a people of compassion who love our neighbours genuinely, offering care and shelter in the midst of whatever has befallen them.

So let us examine our lives and our faith in the light of the martyrs, their lives and their deaths.  For the martyrs are simply what we are all of us called to be:  ordinary people who trust themselves, absolutely, to an extraordinary God.  Make no mistake, the martyrs do not possess anything that you and I have not already received in baptism.  They have no super-human strength to withstand the darts of the evil one.  The martyrs are tempted in every way, like us, and their biographies are often littered with many failures along the way.  Yet the martyrs, like all the baptised, experience the call to cling not to their own works of righteousness, but to God, and to proclaim this mercy from God before the cruelty of powerful men.  For them, a time came to answer that call even to the point of endangering their lives.  In such a situation, every baptised Christian is forced to choose who they really believe in.  Do I believe in myself, and in the fears and anxieties that flood my body?  Or do I believe in the God of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen that my fears and anxieties, and even my death, may not have the final word?

We are fast coming to a time when even Australian Christians – who, for generations, have taken their freedom for granted  - may also be asked these kinds of questions.  With a government like ours – which so clearly despises God’s little ones who suffer because of persecution, poverty or illness - anything is possible.  The questions are certainly asked as we approach that time when our fragile bodies are no longer able to go on, and death suddenly becomes a reality we can no longer avoid.  But the questions are also asked in the midst of our lives, at the noonday of our powers.  I hear God asking these questions of me, every time I become obsessed with my own survival or success, every time I am tempted to worship at the idols of public opinion or economic aggrandisement, every time I am tempted to spurn the needs of another in order to sure up my own future.  When God comes to ask such questions of your own life, how will you respond?  Will you respond with the faith declared at your baptism, a faith in the love and mercy of God beyond even death?  Or will you cling, ever more tenaciously, to the shadows and illusions of the propagandists who dominate our meda?  That is the question for this day and this moment.  Think on the witness of the martyrs.  How will you respond?

The Vindication of the Martyrs

Psalm 23; Revelation 7.9-17; John 10.22-30

A moment ago we heard from the Book of Revelation.  In the scene presented to us, the writer imagines that heaven is like a vast temple or throne-room.  The one on the throne is never named or described in any detail, but we are left in no doubt that it is the God of Israel, Moses and Elijah, the God and Father of our Lord Christ.  Immediately before the throne is one who looks like a Lamb who has been slain.  It is Christ, the paschal lamb who was slain to atone for the sins of the world.  Interestingly, in the Book of Revelation, the one on the throne can never be seen or addressed apart from a seeing and addressing of the Lamb.  One can never see the deity on the throne directly; every view is obscured by the Lamb.  This is very clever theology.  God may only be known by what God reveals of Godself in the face, form and voice of the Lamb.  The Lamb is God, that is, he is all we may know of God.  There is a resonance here with that phrase from Jesus in the Gospel of John:  “The Father and I are one.”  But that is not what I want to dwell on this evening.

Shift your gaze to the scene before the Lamb.  A great multitude is gathered, so large that not even a Channel 7 film crew would feel confident in proposing a figure.  The multitude is composed of people from every nation, ethnicity and language under heaven.  They are robed in white and they have palm branches in their hands.  And what are they there for?  What is their intention and purpose?  Simply this: to offer a sacrifice of praise to the one on the throne and to the Lamb.  In this they are joined by angels, elders, and four living creatures.  The angels represent the hosts of heaven, the elders the people of Israel, and the creatures the whole creation of birds, animals and reptiles.  What we witness here, then, is the worship our own gathering aims to imitate, albeit dimly, as in a glass darkly: the worship, honour and praise that shall one day be offered to God by humans, beasts, and the whole creation:

Amen!  Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgivingand honour and power and mightbe to our God forever and ever!  Amen!

But let us return our gaze, once more, to the multitude arrayed in white.  Who are they, and how did they come to be there?  Well, conveniently enough for us, one of the Elders in the scene addresses exactly that question to the writer of Scripture:  “who are they, and where did they come from?”  It is, of course, a rhetorical question, and the writer barely has time to open his mouth before the Elder replies:  “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal, the time of trial; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  For this reason, they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night.”  He says are few more things as well, but I’ll come to that later.

There’s just one thing I’d like you to note from these words.  This multitude, those chosen by God for salvation, are in fact a group of martyrs.  The phrase “they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb” is not there simply for decoration.  It means, quite literally, that these people have lived their lives in imitation of Christ.  By dying with Christ, by following his way even unto death, they succeeded in casting aside the evils of the world, the flesh, and the devil.  So now they are washed clean, raised to resurrection life with Jesus.  The Lamb was slain to atone for their sins, and these are they who left those sins behind by dying a death like his own.

Now, of course, there are martyrs and there are martyrs.  We happen to live in a world in which it is still very, very likely that you will be murdered because of your faith in Christ.  According to the American-based organisation, International Christian Concern, it is currently very dangerous to actually practise Christian faith (as opposed to having some private opinions about God) in the following parts of the world: Ambon and Aceh in Indonesia, Mindanao in the Philippines, China, Palestine, Nigeria, Pakistan, some parts of India, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt and Morocco.  And I’m sure that’s not the whole story.  In places like this, faith is indeed costly.  You can lose your job or your home because you attend a church.  And you can lose your very life if you decide to oppose the social or economic policies of the government or the military in the name of Christ.  For Christians from these parts of the world, martyrdom is a daily possibility.  You could really be put to death after the manner of the saviour.

But then there is the martyrdom to which I believe WE are called, ‘we’, that is, who live in the democratic West.  According to the Book of Revelation, it is ONLY the martyrs who make is to heaven to be with God.  All of us are called to martyrdom in one way or another.  So how do we, here in the West, die after the manner of Christ, how do we forfeit our lives for the sake God?  Well, this is not a trick question.  The answer is pretty straight-forward really.  Being a martyr in the West is exactly the same as being a martyr in those countries where Christians are openly persecuted.  For the Christian is one who, by definition, has ‘unplugged’ from the Matrix, the basic principles and powers of the world, in order to live life by a different code and agenda—the code and agenda of Christ.  Every Christian who is literally martyred in Mindanao or Pakistan does so because they are already, in a sense, dead.  Baptism is the Christian’s funeral.  In baptism we die to all the powers and influences that colonise us—from the ‘terror’ rhetoric of governments to the consumer religion of television—and rise to share in the freedom of God’s radically new society.  Christ died because he believed the world should be different than it is, because he was motivated by a vision of God’s coming justice.  In baptism, the Christian renounces what Christ renounced and embraces what Christ embraced.  Anyone who does this, whether the consequence be a literal death or not, is a martyr to Christ’s cause.  The root meaning of the word ‘martyr’ is witness.  Anyone who dies with Christ in baptism witnesses to Christ’s way.  Whether one literally lives or dies thereafter is very much up to the community in which one happens to live.

Now, in that perspective, the resurrection we celebrate in this season of Pascha takes on a very specific meaning.  For the persecuted Christians of the late first century, the Christians for whom the books of John and Revelation were written, resurrection was primarily about vindication, the vindication of what we might call the “lost cause” of peace with justice.  To their eyes, the resurrection of Jesus was not simply a miracle, a display of divine magic to wow anyone who might be watching on television.  It was God’s vindication of Jesus’ cause, God’s stamp of approval on the life he lived for the sake of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalised and the wretched.  When Jesus was crucified it appeared, of course, that Jesus had been abandoned, that God was on the side of the Romans and their aristocratic Jewish collaborators.  But his resurrection burst forth like a neon-sign in the fog, a sign which declared that Jesus’ cause was God’s cause, that Jesus’ values were God’s values, that Jesus’ people were God’s people.

It is on that basis, and that basis only, that any of us could dare to die with Christ, to live and die with him in the service of the forgotten and forsaken.  For if Christ is risen, then his cause in just.  It is God’s cause, and so we can count on God to vindicate all that we do in imitation of Christ, even if the powers that be make life very difficult (even impossible) for us.  Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow, we need not despair.  For the Lamb that was slain is risen to be our shepherd, the one who knows what we feel and seeks to befriend and protect us in the night-time our fears.  Because he is risen, we are assured that God will never loose us from God’s grip.  He will hold us tight to Christ, so that even if we die with him, we shall also live with him. 

All of us, then, are called to be martyrs.  To worship Christ and his ways even unto the ridicule of our friends, even unto the loosing of jobs and homes and reputations, even unto death.  But God promises that if we do so, that if we will only let go of such things, we shall experience a freedom and a joy we never imagined was possible.  The joy of the redeemed who, even though they die, yet they live—and far more abundantly than even the Murdochs or the Packers.

This homily was first preached at South Yarra Baptist Church on the fourth Sunday of Easter 2004.

The White-Robed Martyrs

Texts: Revelation 7.9-17; Psalm 34.1-10, 22; 1 John 3.1-3; Matthew 5.1-12

On this All Saints Day, I should like to turn to the Book of Revelation, which purports to be a vision given to a fellow named John, who happened to be in prison for the sake of Christ on the Greek island of Patmos.  The vision he is given takes place largely in heaven, and concerns things which ‘must soon take place’.  An angel instructs him to write down what he sees and make the contents available to each of seven churches in the region of Asia Minor. 

The Revelation to John is a fascinating read on many different levels.  First, it is written almost entirely in a poetic-symbolic language which scholars call ‘apocalyptic’.  Apocalyptic means, literally, an unveiling of the truth, which is kind’ve ironic, because most readers find the symbols of Revelation quite mysterious and impenetrable.  The book becomes much more readable if you happen to have (a) a vivid imagination of the kind that is able to appreciate fantasy or science-fiction novels; and (b) a fair-to-middling appreciation of Jewish literature and theology.  If you have neither, then I’m afraid you will continue to struggle!  The book is also fascinating because of the insight it gives into the self-understanding of Christians who are being persecuted for their faith.  Most scholars date the book as having been written sometime in the final decade of the 1^st century, when the early persecution of Christians by the Roman state was just beginning to become more pronounced.  In many ways, the Book of Revelation was written to assure a persecuted community of Christians that God remains faithful to his people, and to encourage that community to also remain faithful to God, even in the face of strong opposition.  Not surprisingly, the Book of Revelation became a firm favourite of various persecuted churches down through history, while it has been hardly read at all by churches that felt or feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’ with their political environment.

Armenian martyrs 1916

What I should like to do on this All Saints Day is ask a particular question of the Book of Revelation, and see what answers it might yield:  who are the saints and what is their vocation? For the sake of time I shall have to be mercilessly brief and to the point.  The answers I give may therefore succeed only in raising yet more questions in your minds and hearts, which I shall not be able to address right now.  If this is the case, then please do feel free to chase me afterwards.  As you are probably aware, I thrive on being chased about such things!

So, ‘Who are the saints, and what is their vocation or purpose in life?’  Well, according to the passage we read a moment a go, the saints are a great crowd of ordinary Christian people who are marked by the following characteristics:

1. they are drawn from every language, tribe and ethnicity
2. they stand before the throne of God and of Christ, ‘the Lamb’, praising God day and night
3. they wear robes of white, and hold palm branches in their hands
4. they are people who have survived something called ‘the great ordeal’
5. their robes have been, rather strangely, washed white in the blood of the Lamb
6. they are sheltered and protected from pain and evil by God
7. the Lamb, again rather strangely, is their shepherd; he leads them toward something called the ‘springs of the water of life’.

 What does all this mean?  Well, it’s not that difficult to work out if you bother to read the rest of the book.  The saints are those who trust Jesus Christ with their lives, absolutely—so absolutely that they are willing to choose even death over the prospect of serving authorities that would usurp Christ’s rule, especially the authority of the state.  This become clear once you begin unpacking some of those mysterious apocalyptic symbols.  The ‘great ordeal’, for example, is an extended time of persecution in which Christians are tempted to abandon their faith for the sake of more cosy relations with a morally questionable state.  In Revelation, the Roman state is called ‘the Great Babylon’ and its emperor ‘the Beast’.  The beast’s demand that every citizen worship the beast and do everything that it says is an apocalyptic way of talking about the tendency of the state to undermine the absolute rule of Christ in the lives of his followers.  There can be no doubt that the early Christians would have had a much easier time if they had chosen to put their beliefs aside at certain points, in order to obey the law of the land.  But the Book of Revelation will allow no such compromise.  The saints are those who will NOT compromise.  The saints are those who a therefore willing to choose persecution, prison, and even death, over capitulation to the state and its values.

Some of you may be asking, ‘What was so wrong with the Roman state?  In what ways did it threaten Christian beliefs and values?’  The answer is at once stark and subtle.  Starkly, the Roman emperor demanded the absolute allegiance (even the worship) of his citizens.  He demanded that every citizen of the empire bow before his image, as the embodiment of absolute authority in heaven and on earth.  What this actually meant in daily life was much more subtle.  Worshipping the empire meant accepting and enacting its ethics.  It meant accepting that slaves, women and children were the property of men, and could therefore be treated or mis-treated according to men’s whims and fancies.  It meant accepting that those who were richer than yourself deserved your fawning obeisance, while those poorer than yourself were to be regarded as a resource to be exploited.  It meant accepting the superiority of Roman blood, such that the Roman state had a right to invade, subjugate and enslave the peoples of other lands and nations.  It meant accepting your fate in life, and never questioning your station or fortune. 

You can now see, I am sure, why Christians got themselves into trouble with the Romans.  The early Christians preached a classless society, a society in which it one’s social and ethnic markers were of no relevance whatsoever.  In Christ, they believed, all the social distinctions which make men and women somehow ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than one another, has been done away with.  In baptism, they believed, the human person was immersed in Christ’s death and resurrection, putting to death their social and economic significance in favour of a new identity which came as a pure gift from God.  That is why the Book of Revelation imagines the saints in robes of white:  white is the colour of baptism; white is removing of every colour, all that one may or may not have achieved in life, in order to accept the pure gift of God’s acceptance and love.  It is also why Revelation insists that not even the threat of death should dissuade the Christian from their baptismal vow to obey only Christ.  For if, in baptism, the Christian had already died to the authority of the world, why would being killed, physically, make any difference at all?  If, in the end, it was only God’s acceptance that ultimately mattered, what could the evils of state-sanctioned torture possibly steal away? 

In the end, the Book of Revelation does not see even the threat of violence and death as a power that is able to overcome the power of God.  For its vision of the saints is one in which their refuge in God’s care has been won for them by the violent death of their own Lord at the hands of the Roman state.  Note well.  The blood that makes them clean is not the blood of their own martyrdom, but that of their Lord Jesus, the one imaged as a slaughtered lamb.  The saints persevere not because there is anything special or heroic about them, but simply because they place their faith and trust in Christ, who alone has overcome sin, evil, and death.  They believe that he can carry them in his wake, as it were, all the way to the banqueting room of heaven.

Let me conclude with a few remarks about the relevance of this vision of the saints for our own time, our own sainthood, if you like. 

Since the upheavals of the Reformation, the Western church has settled into a fairly cosy relationship with the state.  In our own time, most of us have grown up assuming that the aims of our state authorities and the aims of the church were more or less compatible.  We therefore assumed that there was nothing particularly odd about being a good citizen as well as a good Christian.  I suspect it is time, however, to wake up from these assumptions, for everywhere in the Western world, the state is departing from even the thin veneer of Christianity.  In Germany there is no longer any doubt about this, of course, because there the state went on a mid-twentieth-century rampage, which left the church in tatters because it believed, even well into the second world war, that Hitler was a Christian—even when he was hanging Swastikas in the churches and putting its more errant clergy in prison.  In allied countries, however, many of us still believe that the state is more or less Christian, if only because some of our political leaders claim to be churchgoers.

I put it to you, however, that the time of multi-lateral co-operation between church and state is coming to an end in the West.  When the Australian state refuses to engage seriously with Aboriginal people over the tragic consequences of our colonisation; when it fails to care for people living in poverty; when it locks people away for years at a time without there being any kind of trial; when it proposes legislation in which anyone who expresses opposition to state policy may be imprisoned without charge or even shot dead; when it refuses to honour its obligations to asylums seekers under international law; then the alliance between church and state has well and truly come to an end.  In the present circumstances, it may well be time for the Western churches to take out the Book of Revelation, to dust it off, and to begin a serious study.  For here is a book that may teach us a great deal about how to be a saint when the state is showing every sign of becoming a dangerous beast.  I recommend its vision of sainthood to you this morning.  Not as a curious historic relic, but at a model for our own life and times.