A Call to Divorce, Part 2 (concl.): Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Here we come back to the reward of the kingdom of heaven.  We started with it and we end with it.  It belongs to the poor in spirit and to those persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  By beginning and ending with it, Jesus seems to say that his followers will strive for all of these things and they will face persecution.  But fear not, he says, your reward will be great.  And he enjoins us to meet persecution not with groaning or complaining, but rejoicing and gladness.

In America we have Blessed are those whose rights are upheld, for theirs is American freedom.  Blessed are you when others respect you and honor you and praise you for your talents and personal achievements.  Rejoice and be glad, for you will be remembered, for so they praised the great Americans who were before you.

The American church, to an overwhelming extent, seems to have bought into this mentality.  When we see the nation moving away from practices that coincided more closely with our own (such as prayer in schools) we moan about a loss of freedom of religion and demand that things go back to what they were.  When legislation causes us to fear for our personal freedom, we insist that the legislation be changed to guarantee our own rights.  We petition and protest in support of ourselves and are unwilling to accept what persecution might come.  And so people utter all kinds of evil against us rightly, and for this we have no reward.

These days, when Christians in America suffer actual persecution, it is generally the lesser persecution of shame.  Scoffers laugh at us because we believe in Jesus and to the world that is foolishness.  Our rights are not in danger, and we are in very little actual danger of being prevented from practicing our religion.  This country does still uphold the right to hold any religious opinion we desire, and it doesn’t seem likely to change that any time soon.

So why do people seem to be turning against Christians these days?  I suggest that it’s because we’re whining more.  We aren’t getting everything our way and some minority groups are being raised a little bit and given more dignity.  This endangers our position of political and economic security and often superiority.  We aren’t being threatened, but our worldly supremacy is.  Perhaps rather than seeing this as the world overcoming the Church and leading into a great persecution, instead we can consider it a time when God might be humbling us because we haven’t humbled ourselves.

Now, if we are being shamed because we are whining, then we are being shamed for doing a shameful thing.  We are not being persecuted for righteousness or for the name of Jesus.  We are being persecuted for things that we ought not do and for our own fear and pride.

So what happens if we stop whining and start to more fully live out the gospel?  What happens if we strive to make peace and to meekly love our neighbors and to throw off our ambition for the sake of poverty of spirit?  Will our country see the good we are doing and praise us for it?  Will the persecution, even the persecution of scoffing, end?

If we start to live out the gospel, the persecution might finally begin.  The world meets the righteous with persecution almost every time.  It is rare that prophets died quietly in their beds.  Even during the reign of Christendom, the saints often met persecution from other Christians who were envious or proudly blind.  Actual righteousness is not a popular thing.  If nothing else, it often makes people feel guilty because you aren’t doing what they are.

Earthly security and honor are not only not promised by Jesus, they are not offered.  What he offered is earthly trouble, telling us that if they hated the master, they will hate the students.  This didn’t change with Constantine and it isn’t new to the post-Christendom world.  The world has always and will always hate Christianity because following Christ is, at its very heart, a call to leave the world and follow Jesus.  The world will despise people who abandon worldly values in favor of Christian values.  This is a guarantee.

Jesus said that the world will know that we are his disciples because we love one another.  It seems evident to me that this is different from upholding a Judeo-Christian moral code in secular legislation, or adamantly insisting that I am a Christian along with a demand that my rights are upheld.  When the world sees this, they know that we are “Christians.”  They know that we are affiliated with an organization of people that carries certain conservative moral values and certain religious opinions.  They do not know that we are disciples of Jesus, because Jesus didn’t do these things.

How, then, do we show the world that we are disciples of Jesus?  In pre-Constantinian Rome, the Christians were evident and were seen as a threat to the empire because they were meeting the physical needs of their community.  People didn’t need the government because they had the Church.  And these were not simply impersonal charities.  They were brothers helping brothers.  And when the brothers were helped and there was more to give, they spilled out into their communities and helped everyone within their reach.

I wonder, sometimes, whether St. John would reprimand us for our method of giving today.  He reprimands the church for claiming to love God but not loving their brothers, asking how they can claim to love God who they have not seen when they do not love their brothers that they have seen.  I wonder if he would look at the difference between how we give to impoverished nations and how we give to the poor within our own congregations and ask us how we can claim to love our brothers that we have not seen when we do not love our brothers who are among us.  I think he would echo the Lord’s sentiment in instructing us: “You ought to have done the one without neglecting the other.”

We are instructed to do these things, called to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, leaving the demands and values of the world behind.  We are not called to take the values of Christ and fit them into our culture as best as we are able.  We are called to sacrifice worldly gain, knowing that like the disciples who had left everything for the sake of following Jesus, we will receive a hundredfold in return; and with it persecutions.

So have we counted the cost?  Are we willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus?  If persecution begins and the righteous of this nation are fined, jailed, or killed, will we remain faithful to Christ?  Will we be faithful to Christ even if it starts a violent persecution against us?  For mercy’s sake, I hope so.