Nine people
were shot to death, December 29, 2017 after gunman attacked parishioners
leaving a worship service in the town in Helwan, south of Cairo. Eight of the nine were Christians who were
leaving the St. Menas “Mar Mina” Coptic Orthodox church.
In Iraq,
where 52 people died in Our Lady of Salvation Catholic church in Baghdad when
security forces attempted to free worshippers taken hostage by militants, some
Christian communities decided against Christmas celebrations, for fear of
attacks by extremist groups.
Elsewhere,
a young medical student at one of America’s prestigious universities, Notre
Dame, describes, in detail, the hostility he confronts daily as a Christian. He
spoke of students and friends who deride the possibility of possessing both
faith and intellect, medical professors who actually apologize when the
language of design inadvertently slips into lectures on the body, and the
isolation that comes from trying to stand in the shadows of this increasingly
antagonistic majority.
It seems a bit
illogical to me, but whenever I’m faced with stories of those who live their
faith among people who hate them for it, I find myself with varying degrees of confoundment,
inspiration, sadness, and thankful all mixed together, like nothing I’ve ever
experienced before. Is it because of cognitive
desistence? Different but a bit weird. I
know it startles my everyday ease with the faith to serious reflection. To
think of any pervasive opposition in Grace’s life as a believing university
student awakens this seasoned grandfather’s apathy. I’m wondering, this morning…
how courageous is the believer who follows Christ among those who hurl insults
and hostility? How treasured is the Bible that must be buried in the backyard
for protection? How sacred is the faith of one who is willing to die for it?
I admit, I
live my daily life in a quite environment. Sure not hostile. For the most part, about the only news of
persecution I intake is at church and then it is minimal. So, most news of
persecution is mostly foreign, frightening, and difficult to fathom. These experiences,
related to me, bring the words of the early church to life in a way that I can’t
remember of having ever considered. When
the apostle Paul wrote that nothing will separate us from the love of Christ—neither “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or
danger or sword”—he
was referring to struggles that were dangerously real to him and the people to
whom he was writing in second Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but
not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not
destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of
Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” Chapter 4. St. Peter, the pastor, also encouraged believers in their troubling
situations. He urged them to stand firm in their convictions regardless of
their affliction; he reminded them that discomfort and suffering was a sacred
part of following the wounded one. “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are
suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that
you participate in the sufferings of Christ,” he says in the fourth chapter of Peter 1. I’ll tell anyone it’s rather hard, most of
the time, for me to sallow the pastor’s words of encouragement that I not see my
painful trials as strange or out of the ordinary, but as something that further
marks me as a believer and unites me in even greater intimacy with Christ. How can this be when I am so readily able
to throw the same pastor’s message to those who are suffering with so much greater
troubles than mine?
No where do
I see that apostles’ words taking away the injustice of brutal murder. But I do
think they do assuage (new
word) the shock of its occurrence. Jesus is telling His followers to expect persecution; in fact, He emphatically is saying to me, I, as a
follower will be blessed by it. I see my sitting with the others, gathered
round about Him, when He
spoke candidly, in Matthew 5, “Blessed
are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil
against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in
heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” My take away is that persecution may
be always jarring, unfair, or lamentable, but it is not strange when it happens
to me because I follow Christ. I wonder; is it stranger when it is
not happening?
I remember Mark Twain once writing, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of
the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” I suppose because I live my
life of faith without challenge, significant trial, dangerous risk, to further my
spiritual maturity, deeper reflection may well be appropriate. Is it possible
that I have so shut myself up in a Christian circle that I have closed myself
off from the world and hence any chance of suffering for Christ? Is it possible
that I am so at ease among the majority that I avoid venturing out as the
minority among those who might hate or hurt me? Oh, I do experience some hostility
and very minimal persecution indirectly at times. But how I personally interact
with the angry, the lost, and the broken masses Jesus once wept over is another thing entirely. Have I lost some
of the zeal I once had for salting things down?
Surely salt that remains content within the shaker has lost its
saltiness.
Sovereign
Father, thank You for Your story which instructs me in all life here on earth
of which injustice, brutal death, suffering and struggle are a part. At times I confess my uncomfortableness with
Your instruction. Give me grace as I mature into being extremely
comfortable. I thank You for those believers
and their examples who live courageously in dangerous places around the world,
providing me a lesson in depicting what can happen when the salt of the kingdom
is allowed to season the earth. I pray that Grace and other believing students,
especially in castles of higher learning will receive a special grace in holding
fast to their Christian beliefs. I
commit to supporting their efforts in also being the hand of Christ among some of
the church’s most forgotten. May the
Holy Spirit remind me often the words of Jesus. “‘No servant is greater than
his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also,” and then he
was led away like a sheep to the slaughter.
Amen
