G.K. Chesterton said: Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found hard.
Do you agree or disagree?
What does Chesterton mean that “it has been tried and found hard?”
Living in the world as a Christian can be hard. The world is happy for us to be like everyone else, but we know that we have been called to something different. As I said last week, we have been called to be a blessing to the world.
Certainly Christianity cannot be sampled as one samples morsels from a big box of chocolates: “I only like milk chocolate and I don’t like nuts, so give me this one, not that one.” Rather, Christianity requires complete surrender of one’s life to God, and one cannot fully understand Christian spirituality without surrender.
Alternately, the successful Christian cannot succeed on one’s own power, the power for success comes from the Spirit of God, and God’s Spirit only comes to us after we surrender to God. The nominal Christian who tries to do what Jesus would do without surrendering first to God has no power and will find the way hard indeed.
Finally, Christianity requires a complete rework of one’s thoughts and attitudes. Basic terms like love and forgiveness take on new meanings for Christians—e.g. “You have heard love your neighbor and hate your enemy, but I say to you love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:43-44) The fantasy is that Christianity would be great if one could live in a Christian enclave, away from the world; however, our call is to live in the world, to engage the world, and make a difference in the world.
1 Peter 2:13-25
Commentary
The context for today’s passage is the two verses immediately before
Today’s verses are an exposition of what it means to live such good lives!
Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. (v11-12)v13 submit … for the Lord’s sake. Our submission is a offering we give to God.
v15 it is God’s will [to] silence the talk of foolish men. Making a difference in the world begins by winning the hearts and minds of the people.
v18 Slaves. Before the Civil War, this verse was used to justify slavery in the South, but the theme through NT is to urge people to remain in the relationships they were in—just or unjust—before becoming Christians. (Eph. 5:22-6:9; Col. 3-18-4:1; 1Tim. 6:1-2).
v19-20 unjust suffering. This is the suffering of the Christian martyr; the one who deserves punishment is no martyr!
v21 to this you were called … you should follow. We think of Christ’s martyrdom as paying a price for our sins. Could it be that there is redemptive power in our martyrdom as well? We cannot pay for the sins of another, but just as Jesus broke the power of death and sin by dying, so we break the lies that people labor under by following Jesus’ steps as a martyr.
Application
As I noted before, when I started this sermon series, urging you (like the captives in Babylon) to seek the peace of the place where you live, Priscilla asked, “I understand all that. But aren’t we sometimes to resist? Should the Germans have not hidden the Jews during the war?” Of course they should have hidden the Jews. However, instead of trying to make heroes out of the German citizens, let us consider a different class of people: the millions of martyrs who were arrested the killed (at the concentration camps, or elsewhere).
Perhaps you have been to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.—if you have not, I strongly encourage you to go. The museum is a testament to all the martyrs—Jews and Gentiles alike—who died at the hands of the Nazis. While the term Holocaust is commonly used to refer to the Nazi systematic murder of over 6 million Jews, they also tried to eliminate other ethnic, racial, and religious groups, including: gypsies, Poles, Soviet citizens, Soviet POWs, Catholics, homosexuals, the handicapped, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, bringing the total number of non-combatants killed by the Nazis as high as 17 million. The Holocaust Museum is not just a memorial to the dead Jews, but rather to all those persecuted and killed by the Nazis.
When I went to the museum, one of the most moving moments was when my children, my nieces, and nephews met a Holocaust survivor who had come to visit the museum. The woman—in her seventies, at least—showed the children the number tattooed on her arm. She described the living conditions, her brutal treatment, and the hopelessness of her situation. All of the children were in tears. The woman was so kind, so gentle—strangely she was not judgmental. Rather, the story told itself; the moral presented itself; and the children learned a powerful lesson without her telling them what they needed to learn.
What is World War II without the Holocaust? Hitler is still a crazy megalomaniac who needs to be taken down; millions will still die taking him down. However, at the end of the war, does everyone speak with one voice, saying, “We must make sure this never happens again!”? World War I was originally called The Great War, and the War to End All Wars; but everyone was wrong, for the Second World War began barely twenty years later. The slaughter of the innocents was so dastardly that Jews and non-Jews alike agreed that such power and such genocide should never be allowed to happen again. In the 60+ years since, the world has seen plenty of wars, but the wars have been regional conflicts; moreover, genocide—the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, the Second Sudanese Civil War, the persecution of ethnic minorities in Iraq or the former Yugoslavia—has not been allowed to continue. In a world without the Holocaust, perhaps some of these conflicts mushroom into world-consuming wars; however, in a world with the Holocaust, evil still persists—it always will—but it is constrained at a price paid by the millions of Holocaust victims.
This is what martyrdom does. Martyrdom, by definition, never sees justice in its own time. Jesus dies on a cross; 17 million die at the hands of the Nazis; 240 years of slaves in America die in slavery; later generations of black Americans are forced to live as 2nd-class citizens under the lie of “separate, but equal.” Martyrs, by their suffering, expose the injustice in oppressive systems in such stark terms that others—sometimes even the oppressors—say, “Stop! This cannot be allowed to continue.” The centurion at the cross—the commander of execution squad—says, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:39). The Allies’ Nuremberg Trials and subsequent courts judge the Nazis for their war crimes. 6% of all males in the Northern States, aged 13-43, die during the Civil War to free the slaves. During the American Civil Rights Movement, Jews and other minorities demonstrate for the rights “coloreds,” and National Guard troops ensure that court orders desegregating schools are followed. However, none of this happens without the martyrs who pay the price to make others take notice.
You too are called to be a martyr. It may be as innocuous as being held up to ridicule; it may cost you financially; it may cost you your family; it may cost you your life. Our society gives us the message daily, “Do what is in your own best interest, and stand up for your rights,” but Jesus says, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Through these actions, and by God’s Spirit, you will change the world.
Points to Ponder
Martyrdom may start with something as simple as forgiving somebody whom has hurt you badly, but to the one who can suffer injustice in small things Jesus says, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things!” (Matt. 25:21).
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