Hilton Head Island, SC – May 29, 2065
The Chapel Without Walls
Acts 7:54-8:3; Acts 16:16-24
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 5:10 (RSV)
Blessings of the Persecuted
Today we come to the eighth and the last of the Beatitudes of Jesus. The word “beatitude” means “blessed or bless-ed,” depending on how you choose to pronounce that word. Various people are blessed for various things they do or are, said Jesus. People are blessed who mourn or who make peace with everyone around them, especially their enemies, and they are also blessed for being poor in spirit, meek, pure in heart, and for hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
No one can ever be absolutely certain that Jesus said everything he is claimed to have said, or when he said it if he said it. We only have the record of what the four Gospel writers said he said, and very understandably they do not all agree on every word Jesus spoke. If they did, obviously there would be only one Gospel, and not four.
The Beatitudes are recorded by Matthew (and only by Matthew) as having been recited very early in Jesus’ ministry. Assuming that is correct, which I am and I trust you also are willing to affirm, it may or may not be valid that Jesus actually said, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The reason he may not have said it is that he himself had probably not experienced much if any persecution up to that time. Later on, yes, especially when Jesus experienced the ultimate persecution, namely, the crucifixion. But likely he had not yet been subjected to any serious resistance when he gave the Sermon on the Mount, which begins with the Beatitudes. On the other hand, if Jesus did include the eighth Beatitude, it is very plausible that he anticipated that in the future anyone might be persecuted who would try to follow the religious teachings and precepts which Jesus intended to proclaim. As the old Gospel song declares, “If you can’t bear the cross then you can’t wear the crown,” and Jesus probably realized that before very long he would be telling his followers that they would have to take up their cross if they wanted to be his disciples. He may have been alerting them to potential future troubles. The eighth Beatitude is an awful kindness, a fearful gift.
For the last year or two of his life, Jesus himself had begun to be subjected to undeniable examples of persecution. When he said in Matthew’s Gospel, “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20), Jesus knew he was already a man on the run. He had quickly become a persona non grata to many of his fellow Jews in Roman-occupied Palestine. In fact, Jesus said that in the very next chapter in Matthew after the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. That means it might have been only a few weeks or months later. Jesus had to keep moving for fear that the local authorities in any of the Galilean towns where he went to preach might arrest him for blasphemy or who knows what.
By the time Jesus reached Jerusalem three years after he started preaching and teaching in the region of the Galilee, he had numerous theological, social, and political enemies. Therefore, sensing what was coming for him and thus also for his followers, Jesus may well have added the eighth and final Beatitude as a kind of ironic benediction to everything he had said earlier by way of blessings. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven, or more appropriately the kingdom of God, was something to which Jesus frequently referred in his ministry. Thus from the beginning of his itinerant Galilean ministry Jesus may have understood in his very bones that persecution lay ahead for him and for everyone else who might agree to become one of his disciples.
I chose two passages from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles to illustrate that persecution of the early Christians was already underway within months or a few years of Jesus’ crucifixion. The first example of this terrible phenomenon is seen in the stoning death of Stephen, who was one of the leaders in the Jerusalem church. According to the text in Chapter Seven, the people who were opposed to Stephen were leaders of the Jewish religious establishment. So they brought Stephen before a council of Jewish priests, and he gave his defense. He did so by recalling many stories from the Hebrew scriptures, stories with which everyone there would have been very familiar, focusing in particular on Abraham and Moses.
When Stephen came to the end of his oration, he did not mince words. “You stiff-necked people,” he declared to his accusers, “as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute?” Then, referring to Jesus, Stephen said, “And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One.” Here he was talking about John the Baptist, who prophesied the coming of Jesus, and was beheaded. And now speaking of Jesus himself, Stephen said, “You have now betrayed and murdered him” (meaning Jesus).
It is not surprising that the priests and their followers took Stephen outside the city walls of Jerusalem and stoned him to death. Many people in the Middle East, then and now, take their religion to extreme and often violent ends. Tragically, Stephen’s defense of himself and Jesus was bound to end in his painful execution.
Stoning is a terrible and gruesome way to kill someone. They don’t put someone who is tied up in the middle of a circle and start throwing rocks at him. Someone might miss, and the stone could ricochet into someone on the other side of the circle. They dig a shallow hole and put the tied-up man in it, then filling it with sand or dirt, and then they start flinging rocks from one side. The person is buried up to his waist so that he cannot climb out of the hole. Stone after stone strikes him in the head or chest until he is unconscious, and then he ceases breathing.
Other persecutions are mentioned earlier in the Book of Acts, but this is the first time someone is executed for proclaiming faith in Jesus Christ. Worse persecutions were to follow for the New Testament Christians. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, several thousand Christians were martyred, and many more were tortured and imprisoned, but we shall never know how many.
There is an important note at the end of the episode in which Stephen was stoned to death. It says of Stephen, “Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him; and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58). This Saul was the man who later became the apostle Paul. Saul apparently did not fling any rocks, but he had no hesitation to stand guard over the cloaks of those who did kill Stephen.
The Bible is such a glorious, inspiring, and brutally candid book! Frequently throughout its pages, to use a modern phrase, “it tells it like it is.” Saul of Tarsus was an early persecutor of the first Christians. Neither Luke, who wrote the Book of Acts, nor Paul himself later in Acts or in his letters to the churches, attempted to whitewash the truth about Paul. He was a Jew who attacked Christians, later becoming a Jewish Christian himself.
The second reading from Acts is a rather strange story. To make a fairly long story fairly short, Paul, Luke, and a Christian named Silas went to Philippi, a city in northern Greece. There they encountered a slave girl who had a spirit in her (whatever you might choose to think that means). She was what we would call a fortune-teller. For days she kept following Paul and his friends, telling everyone they were sent from God to proclaim salvation. Paul and his chums should have been pleased to hear that, but she was so loud and disruptive that we are told Paul drove the spirit out of her. When that happened, the slave girl’s owners were angry, because she earned money for them by her fortune-telling. So they had the magistrates of Philippi sentence Paul, Luke, and Silas to prison. I suppose the charge was restraint of trade or some such thing. On the way to the prison, some of the irate Greeks beat them with rods until they were bruised and bloody, and then their feet were locked into clamps inside the prison.
In one sense this could be considered divine pay-back to Paul for having been the coat-watcher when Stephen was murdered. For this sermon, here is the point: persecution increased in New Testament times and especially afterward in the 2nd and 3rd Christian centuries.
Normally ordinary people are not persecuted by physical abuse or by execution. It is only the most committed zealots who meet that fate. Tradition says that most of the original disciples were martyred, as was Paul, so tradition declares. It is a sad fact that extremists often take extreme measures against extremists. And many of the first Christians were extremely devoted to Jesus and his Gospel, and many others were committed to other religions.
One of the most famous martyrs of the early Church was a man named Polycarp. He was the elderly bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor, or what now is modern-day Turkey. A pagan mob brought him before the Roman magistrate in Smyrna. He was given the option of worshiping the Roman emperor as divine or of choosing death. The old man calmly replied to the magistrate, “Eighty and six years have I served Christ, and he had done me no wrong.” With that the soldiers tied Polycarp to the stake. As the flames were lit, he prayed, “O Lord God Almighty, I thank Thee that Thou hast thought me worthy of this day and of this hour.” I would venture to say that few if any of us, about to be burned to death at the stake, would be so calm or pray so firmly and fervently. But then, few of us are likely as extreme in our faith as was Polycarp – or Stephen or Paul. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. They are already in God’s kingdom just by being servants of what is right and proper.
Joan of Arc was another Christian who was persecuted unto death. She lived during the last stages of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Wearing the clothes and armor of a man, at age 19 she led a French army against the English in an historic battle. For her heroic efforts she was turned over to the English by some Anglophile Frenchmen, and ended up being burned to death as a witch and heretic. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
But in the minds of persecutors, there is no persecution if those who are punished or slain deserve it. The Jews who were enraged at Stephen believed he deserved to die, as did the Romans who executed Polycarp or the English who burned Joan at the stake. Those who imprisoned Paul, Luke, and Silas were convinced their corporal punishment and imprisonment was entirely justified.
Millions of Christians have been recently been driven from their homes in Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, South Sudan, Nigeria, Libya, and elsewhere in Asia and Africa. Many thousands have been killed, and only God knows what the number actually is. The persecution has occurred precisely because they are Christians. Churches have been destroyed, and homes have been burned. Twenty years ago at least 10% of the populations of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq were Christians; now the numbers are 5% or under.
ISIS has driven many thousands of Christians into exile, and has killed many others in their purges in Iraq and Syria. They are persistent, consistent, and merciless in their attacks.
In China, it is estimated there are between sixty and a hundred-million Christians. If so, that potentially makes China the nation with the second- or third-highest number of Christians in the world, after the USA and maybe Brazil. Under the current President Xi Jinping, however, a state-sponsored persecution is underway, whereby Christians are being systematically harassed by the government. Churches have been closed and the homes of pastors or parishioners destroyed. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, but the persecution continues.
Nevertheless, Christians have also persecuted Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and others. No doubt when Jesus uttered the Beatitude about persecution, he was thinking only of his own followers, but I am sure that in today’s world he would be as concerned about those of other religions who are attacked by his contemporary disciples.
What can we do about these matters? They occur so far away from us! Nonetheless, we should never make life difficult for anyone of another faith or religion, no matter how foreign it is from our own beliefs. There aren’t many Muslims on Hilton Head Island, but should you encounter any, be kind to them. There are many more Jews than Muslims here, and no group of people are more indebted to the Jews than the people of The Chapel Without Walls. Hindus and Buddhists around here are almost as scarce as proverbial hen’s teeth, but should you come across any, be kind; they are strangers in a strange land. Further, we should speak out against people or governments whose policies deliberately attack anyone of any particular religion. Not only is that un-Christian, it is also irreligious, inhuman, and immoral.
Two organizations in Italy, one Catholic and one Protestant, have joined together to sponsor a thousand refugees from Lebanon and Morocco to come to Italy. They especially seek out the most vulnerable: mothers alone with children, the elderly, and the sick. They provide all the expenses needed to bring these persecuted people to safety, paying for their visas, travel, resettlement, and legal expenses. The kingdom of God has been opened to those refugees because some Italian Christians have welcomed them into their country.
John Bunyan was a Baptist preacher who lived in England in the middle of the 17th century. It was not an easy time to be a Baptist. In fact, for much of his lifetime it was the safest for every Englishman to be an Anglican. It was Bunyan who wrote the famous allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan wrote that book and eight others while he was in prison from 1660 to 1672. He was freed, but was later imprisoned under another royal regime.
In Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr. Great-heart and Mr. Valiant-for-Truth recited a poem. Dusted off and prettified for later centuries, and to suit more modern theological sensibilities, it became the text for our last hymn today, “He who would valiant be.” We have sung it two or three times in the last 12 and ½ years, so it isn’t as though none of you has ever heard it. I shall never forget that it was the favorite hymn of a wonderful nearly-centenarian lady I knew in Morristown, NJ. In her memory I want you to sing it lustily, even if you object to doing so. It won’t hurt you. And if you don’t sing with gusto, you probably deserve to be persecuted. . . . But fortunately for you, I shall not be the one to lead the persecution. Someone else will have to do it.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.