Epiphany 4: There are Some Things Worth Dying For

Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

There are some things worth suffering for. There are some things worth being reviled and persecuted for. There are some things worth dying for. If we cannot come to terms with these truths, then we may never completely grasp the full depth of Christian faith or the Christian life; because right there at the centre of the Christian narrative is a man reviled and rejected – a man of sorrows. At the centre of the Christian narrative stands a cross and a place of execution. There at the centre, stands a man who while able to escape both rejection and death, embraces them because he believed that there are some things worth dying for. Jesus Christ the rejected, Jesus Christ the reviled, the persecuted, Jesus Christ the executed was the over-riding pattern of Christian life for the first few centuries of the Church’s existence. The very word martyr comes from the simple Greek word meaning “to witness”; for so many of the first Christians witnessing to Christ and the Christian life was synonymous with suffering and death. Witnessing to Christ meant, as Paul says to the Philippians, sharing in Christ’s “sufferings by becoming like him in his death”. (Philippians 3:10)

Undoubtedly the world around us saw us as foolish, misguided religious fanatics. The world-view of Ancient Rome was one in which overt power was the paradigm, and its victims were to be considered casualties at best, but more usually derided; and those who purposely got in its way were fools or idiots. One might commit suicide to preserve one’s honour and that of one’s family, but to embrace the sort of public executions meted out by the Roman judicial system would be nothing less than a humiliating sort of madness, foolishness; and perhaps it is in this context we should hear Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God….For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength”. (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25) What we Christians were saying is that in Jesus a new paradigm had been inaugurated in which it is not our own power or our control which gives us the victory, but instead a power which comes from God and which is revealed not in holding on to our life, but in letting go so that we hold on to something deeper and more lasting.

Jesus could have escaped the cross by violence. He could have cursed from the cross those who put him there and those who mocked him. Feeling a victim, he could have lashed out at those suffering with him. Yet, to have done any of these would have been to give the lie to all that he had been, lived and taught. Instead, recall how he reproached the disciple who cut off the ear of one of those who came to arrest him in the garden, and actually healed the fellow; instead, he prayed for those who nailed him to the cross and those who mocked him as he hung there; instead, he offered hospitality to the thief crucified with him. To the outside world Christian martyrdom may appear to be some kind of foolish acceptance of victimisation, but for those born into the wisdom of God it is an assertion of the liberty we have in Christ in the face of powers which try to convince us we are powerless slaves. It is the proclamation that there are some things worth dying for, and the insistence that there is real freedom in our capacities to do so.

Just over 360 years ago today, King Charles I of the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland stepped out of a window in the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace in London and onto a platform specifically erected for his execution. It was the culmination of a political and religious struggle we now call the English Civil War, and which for a time dispensed with the monarchy and bishops, as well as making illegal the Book of Common Prayer. Historians will judge Charles as not the finest example of monarchy. His commitment to the divine right of kings rode roughshod over the sensibilities of Parliament, and he demonstrated something less than consideration towards dissenting religious groups; yet his commitment to the Church of England, its forms of order and worship, particularly as expressed in her middle way of the Elizabethan settlement, her governance by bishops and in the Book of Common Prayer is unquestionable. In fact, when he was finally captured, “tried” and condemned to death, he was offered his life should he be willing to abandoned his commitment to episcopacy and to the Book of Common Prayer. He refused, and at his execution said, “I die a good Christian according to the profession of the Church of England as I found it left to me by my father….I have a good cause and have a gracious God.” His enemies may have seemed to have had the victory, but his example was remembered among many in his kingdoms, and the Commonwealth – the government established after his death – lasted some eleven years only; after which the monarchy was again restored, and the throne assumed by Charles’ son; also restored were the episcopal order and liturgical worship of the Church of England. Holding on to what really mattered to him, in his death Charles gained for us a substantial inheritance. Anglicanism would not have survived in its present, rich form had he renounced it all from the scaffold. His example was honoured and commemorated almost immediately and he is the first saint officially commemorated by the Church of England after the Reformation. At the scaffold he lay aside earthly power for meaningful victory, saying: “I go from a corruptible to and incorruptible Crown.” There are, he believed, some things worth dying for.

From our perspective of religious tolerance, this reflection on martyrdom may seem strange and distant. Yet, ironically the 20th century has been called the century of martyrdom – more Christians were killed for their faith in those hundred years than in all the previous centuries combined. Chances are we will never face these kinds of overt violence, or be forced to make the kinds of choices many of our Christian sisters and brothers have had to make or have to make. Yet, does that then excuse us from coming to terms with the reality that there are some things worth dying for? If we have nothing worth dying for, what does that then say about how we live our lives, about what we believe as ultimately valuable or precious? If we have nothing worth dying for, what does that say about our principles; more importantly, what does it say about our faith as Christians centred as we profess on Jesus Christ who believed profoundly that there surely are some things were suffering for, being reviled for, dying for? Ask yourself for a moment if you really believe there are some things were dying for, and if so what are they? It's a good thing to know about one's self. Of course, the goal of the Christian life is not to seek out persecution, ridicule, even death. Yet, neither should we shy away from it, for we know that should it come and we meet it with principled integrity we are in good, good company: “Blessed are you when people 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 in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:12).