Sunday, October 13, 2013

October 13, 2013 - Proper 23C


Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyrs triumph over suffering and are faithful even to death: Grant us, who now remember them in thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to you in this world, that we may receive with them the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
            Let’s begin with some audience participation. Please raise your hand if you can name the prophet Muhammad’s mother. No one? I had to look it up, it’s Aminah bint Wahb. And if any of us had been in the Westland mall in Nairobi, Kenya two weeks ago, our inability to answer that question would have gotten us a bullet in the head, as it did our brother in Christ, Joshua Hakim. He was just one the nearly 70 people who were killed in that attack by the Boko Haram terrorist organization. And this attack, which specifically targeted non-Muslims and Christians, is just but one example of the plight that our brothers and sisters in Christ are facing around the world.

            I preach this sermon with a very heavy heart, and a good bit of anger too. This is the good sort of anger though- the sort of anger that doesn’t allow us to tolerate the intolerable. Not bad anger which is self-centered. But I am grieved and angered by two things in particular. The first is the worldwide persecution of Christians, and the second is the fact that it is going on without much attention being paid to it. I did a lot of research on the topic, allow me to share some of what I found:
            Eighty-five of our brothers and sister in the Anglican Communion were recently killed at All Saints’ Anglican Church in Peshawar, Pakistan. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, notes that attacks like this are happening all around the world, that Christians are being singled out for violence. Their service ended the same way that ours will today- a member of the clergy shouted “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” and the people said “thanks be to God.” And as they walked out of the doors of their church, they were greeted by two suicide bombers.
            Prior to the US invasion of Iraq, there were nearly 1.5 million Christians there, today there are less than 500,000 and 40 of the 65 churches in Baghdad have been bombed in those 10 years.
            Bethlehem, a city in Palestine, the city were our Lord was born has become a ghost town. When I was there a year and a half ago, we saw the remnants of a thriving Christian village. The city is now filled with closed shops and houses that used to be occupied by Christians who have grown weary of the attacks. The Christian population of Bethlehem used to be nearly 80%, now it is 30%. And the same is true for Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth.
            In Maaloula, Syria, a city where many Christian inhabitants still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus himself spoke, Christians were recently forced to convert at gunpoint. The terrorists that did this referred to the Christians as “crusaders,” implying that their violence is payback from the violence done to their ancestors centuries earlier. These Christians are being forced to die or flee from the cradle of Christianity.
            Many Coptic churches in Egypt have been attacked, and one church was forced to cancel Sunday Mass for the first time in 1,600 years. Many Christians there are being scapegoated by the opposition for ousting Morsi.
            In October 2010, the Burmese Air Force was given permission to kill Christians on sight. They were never told how to spot a Christian, but were given the ability bomb Christian villages without penalty.
            Terrorist groups such as al-Shabaab and Boko Haram have been responsible for the deaths of over 3,000 Christians since 2009.
            Due to State oppression, we can only guess at the persecution in North Korea. But estimates are that 25% of the 300,000 Christians there are in forced labor camps because they refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of Kim Jong Un and the national cult.
            The International Society for Human Rights, based out of Frankfurt, Germany, says that studies conclude that 80% of all acts of religious discrimination are directed at Christians, in over 139 nations. Their statistics claim that over 100,000 Christians are killed each year, for reasons directly related to or motivated by their faith. Around the globe, Christians are persecuted, tortured, beheaded, raped, killed, and their homes and churches burned for no reason other than the fact that they are Christian. That means during the amount of time our worship today will last, 11 of our brothers and sisters will be killed because of their faith.
            And all of this is leading to further destabilization in the Middle East, as Christians are often seen as the middle-of-the-road peacekeepers between the warring factions. But in places like Syria, Christians aren’t taking sides and are now the enemy of both the rebels and Assad.
            Before I go any further, I do want to point out the obvious- much of the persecution against Christians is being done by Muslims. But these actions taken by the terrorists are done by extremists, who have a faith that most faithful Muslims would recognize as anathema to Islam. Many leading Muslim clerics have denounced these attacks. We would do well to remember that Islam, which is an Arabic word, means “submission.” Islam is a religion of submitting oneself to the God of Abraham. Furthermore, in its linguistic roots, Islam is related to the Hebrew word shalom, meaning “peace.” Islam should not be judged based on the actions of these terrorists, no more than Christians should be judged on the basis of the Crusades or Inquisition.
Kirsten Powers recently wrote in The Daily Beast that “one would think this horror might be consuming the pulpits and pews of American churches. Not so. The silence has been nearly deafening.” Another reporter has called the situation “the greatest story never told of the 21st century.” Today, I want to tell that story, and I ask you to help me in breaking the silence.
Why is it that these stories are going largely untold? Why is it that American Christians are not filled with righteous anger and sadness about this very grave issue? It is, at least in part, because the sort of the Christianity that we tend to practice has been so perverted by Western modernity that it would barely be recognizable to our brothers and sisters that are being slaughtered. And here, I am placing the blame on the propagation of the Prosperity Gospel. This is a modern-day American heresy that says that God wills that all Christians have financial success because of their faith and their history of donations to Christian ministries. Now perhaps you’re thinking- “but Robert, I don’t watch Joel Osteen, I don’t believe in the Prosperity Gospel,” and while I’m glad to hear that you don’t waste time watching these messages, I’d like to challenge the assumption that we don’t all live by the Prosperity Gospel.
Adherents of the Prosperity Gospel struggle when Jesus says “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” And you know- I struggle with that one too, I bet so do you. When something negative happens to us, we ask “why me?” as if we thought we had more deposited in our “good will” account at the bank of God. The Prosperity Gospel also tends to espouse a passive faith, one that consists of check-writing and occasional good deeds, but resists preaching conversion. You’ll also hear them preach about the power of positive thought, that by simply wishing for something, it will be granted through enough faithfulness. Maybe we don’t buy this brand of theology outright, but elements of it have slipped into our American Christian vernacular.
As a whole, we have set the bar so extremely low for our faith in America. And many people struggle to even meet those expectations. We define an “active” church member as someone that shows up 3 out of 4 Sundays, serves on a committee, and gives 4% of their household income. Meanwhile, our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have set the bar so high that it gives us a nose bleed to even think about it. And they’re not only willing to strive for that bar, but they’re willing to risk their life to do it.
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that “we need a church that sees the cost of discipleship and gladly pays that price.” One reason why we haven’t heard more about this widespread persecution is because it might remind us what we are actually called to do through our faith.
Another reason why we haven’t paid much attention to this reality is because we’ve become rather fond of getting sympathy and attention by playing the victim card here in America. Just turn on the television, watch some cable news, and you’ll find discussions about the persecution of American Christians. In her recent book, The Myth of Martyrdom, Candida Moss takes a look at the assumption that the early followers of Jesus were all martyrs. She concludes that what we have is a version of history that was embellished. She suggests that Christians were only persecuted in isolated areas and only for a handful of the first 300 years of the Church. She notes the danger in taking a legend and defining ourselves as if it were a literal history.
Let me be clear, having some of our tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood is not martyrdom or persecution. Having the motto “in God we trust” taken off our currency or not forcing children to say the pledge of allegiance is not a hardship. Last Sunday, I heard a few people complain about the new music that we’re singing; that’s not suffering. And in fact, two of these new pieces come from communities that have known persecution. One hymn comes from the African-American spiritual tradition, the other is Native American in origin. Maybe they’re unfamiliar tunes, but singing them joins us to our brothers and sisters in Christ, and at least in my book, that’s a good reason for doing something a bit different. Not having young adults in our church is not a sign that we’ve become marginalized, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that they don’t want to be here, that we haven’t given them a reason to join us. And while we’re at it, a long sermon never hurt anyone either.
Now I realize that this is a bit harsh, as I said in my last sermon, my focus this fall isn’t going to be on politics, but rather would be more introspective. Not always easy though to hold up the mirror and be told that, perhaps, we’re not really the fairest of them all. But we don’t want to hear that, so it’s been easier to ignore the persecution of our brothers and sisters than to deal with that reality. We like feeling righteous, so we don’t mind claiming persecution. But when we see the real thing, it faces us to question our baseless claims.
It is a reality that St. Paul knew, as expressed in today’s reading from 2 Timothy, as he writes “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David- that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal.” And he adds “but the word of God is not chained.” So how might we unchain the word of God? How might we remember Jesus Christ, who is present with those being persecuted?
The first thing we can do is to be in solidarity with them. We can remember that we are baptized into the Body of Christ, and right now, part of our body is being tortured. What hurts one part of the body, will hurt the whole. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote “the ultimate purpose of God is to establish a holy community, which is at last fulfilled in the Body of Christ.” We can be in solidarity with them by living a faith that is genuine and respectful to the sacrifices they make. Perhaps, we can prioritize the Kingdom of God over worldly comforts.
And we can also be in solidarity with Jesus, the suffering messiah. We can remember the words of the collect from Morning Prayer that says we walk in the way of the cross, finding it none other than the way of life and peace. We can embrace the challenges of live, instead of running from them.
The second thing that we do to address this persecution is action. As the prophet Jeremiah says in today’s reading “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.” In other words, do ministry where you find yourselves. Don’t wait for something else to come along, this place is the perfect place to do God’s work. We could put off action on this subject, but those of us in power, and we are all in power, have a responsibility to respond. Bonhoeffer also wrote that “silence in the face of evil is evil itself. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” And Martin Luther King said “in the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Our first action is to ourselves model the peace we want in our world. We can do this in our daily lives. Paul warns his audience to “avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.” Perhaps we can work a bit on that. We fight about so many silly things. If you want an example of this, just read any article about Congress. But the problem isn’t contained to the Capitol. The problems of Congress are the problems of our culture. Our first action is to live the mantra- “let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”
And we also need to be a more peaceful nation. The simple truth is that Christianity is associated with the West, and the West is associated with the United States, and the United States is seen as an international bully of sorts around the world. In the book Writing in the Dust, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams reflects on the world, post-September 11 and writes “from the point of view of a villager in Afghanistan whose family has died in a bombing raid, a villager who probably never heard of the World Trade Center, the distinctions between what US forces are doing and what was done on September 11th will be academic.” The fact is, drone strikes are used as anti-American propaganda. And if America is going to be seen as a Christian nation, then we must also be known as a peaceful nation. The only causalities of our drone strikes aren’t just the targeted terrorists and the surrounding collateral damage of human lives, but it is also the payback that our brother and sister Christians face on our behalf.
And so the second action that I would ask you to consider is standing up for peace. One way to do this is to write our elected representatives. And you might ask them to consider supporting a piece of legislation introduced by the Republican Congressman from Virginia, Frank Wolf. The bill has passed the House by a vote of 402-22 and calls for the State Department to have a special envoy to focus on the plight of religious minorities in South Central Asia and the Middle East. The bill sits in the Senate, waiting for the dysfunction to stop. So you might want to prayerfully consider asking our Senators to take up this important bill.
            And lastly, we can, and should, pray for our brothers and sisters. We should not forget Jesus’ admonition to “pray for those who persecute you,” remembering the hardened hearts of the terrorists as well.  Prayer is a very powerful tool, as it both changes our attitudes, but also has an impact on the world as we work together with God to bring about the Kingdom on earth as it in heaven. So let us pray:

Almighty God, we come before you this morning with heavy hearts that ache for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering much on account of their faith. We ask that you grant them a sense of peace amidst their faces, courage in their daily plight, and steadfastness to continue their walk in your most holy name. We pray for those who commit these acts of evil, that their hearts might be turned from hatred to love. We repent of our selfish desires which pull us away from your ways, our shallow and self-serving claims of persecution, and our inaction from our places of prestige. Give us the fortitude to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, give us grace to follow you in the way of life that goes through the Cross, and make us aware of opportunities to cry out at the blood of our persecuted brothers and sisters. Lord, make us instruments of your peace, that in our peace, others might respond in kind to us. We give you thanks that we are members of the Body of Christ, and right now Lord, parts of our body are hurting. Take away their pain, and help us to do the same. This we pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.