Here is today’s sermon based on 1 Peter 3:13-22:
When is the last time you underwent serious persecution because of your faith?
This question usually brings raised eyebrows in this land of, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” where we affirm that every person has, “…been endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.”
We aren’t persecuted for our faith in the West – are we?
Actually, there are people who live in our country who have been persecuted. Muslims around the country will tell you that they endured insult and rejection during the period after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Nevertheless, the policy of our nation, our laws, and our cherished position is that every person has the right to practice their faith and worship as they please without interference.
This is not the case in many places in our world. The Christian Science Monitor carried a story relating the horror many have endured because of their Christian faith – frequently at the hands of governments.
In Boston, Sudanese refugee Francis Bol Bok has perhaps the most compelling story of all. Enslaved in Northern Sudan by Muslims as a seven-year-old boy for 10 years, he was beaten almost daily for his Christian beliefs. Mr. Bol Bok finally escaped in 1996.
Margaret Chu recalls the 23 years she spent in Chinese labor camps because she refused to renounce her Catholic faith. The hardest times, she said, were when she was forced to labor for 18 hours day harvesting rice. Food was sometimes limited to grass or rice husks. Still, she prayed daily, using her fingers as a rosary, and somehow survived. “Here I have real freedom to believe in God, but my heart is still left behind in China with my friends still under the pressure,” she says.
Mina Nevisa understands persecution this all too well. Her ordeal began one afternoon in 1982, when as a 17-year-old Iranian student; she felt something under a table at the Teheran University library. She reached down and pulled out a Bible, the first one she had ever seen written in her native Persian. Curious, she stayed up for the next two nights reading the book with a flashlight under a blanket, despite warnings from her father, an Islamic fundamentalist priest. The discovery soon led to Ms. Nevisa’s conversion to Christianity, denunciation by her parents and family, and – after the arrest and killing of members of her prayer group – her secret flight from Iran. In Europe, she received death threats after writing “Don’t Keep Me Silent,” a book about the persecution of converted Christians in Islamic countries. So in 1998 she moved again, to the United States.
The fact is that most of us have not endured any real persecution because of our Christian faith. Nevertheless, it takes place in several parts of our world and was simply a part of Christian living in the earliest church. Our reading from 1 Peter is written to Christians who are regularly suffering persecution for their faith. Although we are not certain of the date of the writing of 1 Peter, there are many who believe the persecution took place under the Emperor Trajan.
Whether it was Trajan however, or the earlier Emperor Domitian, there is some compelling correspondence between Pliny the Younger, a governor of one of the Roman provinces and the Emperor Trajan as Pliny tries to figure out what he should do with his investigation of Christians. The letter is written between 111 – 113 A.D. Pliny writes: “… in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness, and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished.”
1 Peter is addressed to Christian people who lived with the threat of death for their faith. Yet, rather than squelch the church or even slow down its growth, persecution actually resulted in a stronger, faster growing church.
The book of Acts tells the story of persecution which broke out in Jerusalem under the leadership of Saul, who would later become the Apostle Paul. Paul stood by approving the death of Stephen, the very first Christian martyr. The writer of Acts reports, “…a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria.” [Acts 8:1]
In addition, what happened to the Christian faith? Did it cease to exist? Did frightened Christians withdraw from the world and from the life of faith?
The story in Acts shows a persecuted church thriving and growing – even more so in the face of persecution. “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison. Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word. [Acts 8: 3-4]
In fact, the fierce enemy of the church, Saul himself was converted shortly after the death of Stephen and he became the chief missionary force for Christ in the early years of the infant church.
However, persecution did not end with the end of biblical days, it was “on again, off again” in the first three centuries of the church’s existence — yet, the church never ceased growing. If nothing else, those early centuries are testimony to the power of God’s Holy Spirit in the lives of the followers of Christ.
One of the strong leaders of the early church was a man named Tertullian, the son of a Commander of a Roman Legion. He was born in Carthage, North Africa in 150 AD. On the way to becoming an influential lawyer with all the advantages of Roman society’s elite, he became a Christian and was one of the strongest voices for religious toleration and a powerful advocate for Christians in the young church. Tertullian first wrote that persecution only caused the faith to grow. He wrote that, the persecution of the church by the Roman authorities actually strengthened the Church of Christ: “It is bait that wins men for (our) school. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow: the blood of Christians is seed of the church.”
What of the church in our time? In our town?
We do not live with a price tag on our heads because of our faith. That is a good thing. — Isn’t it? None of us would be happy to see persecution like that which took place under the Emperor Nero or Trajan break out again.
At least most of us would not. I do remember a pastor from years back who said to the congregation one Sunday morning as he lamented what he saw as a lack of commitment in the modern church, “What we need these days is another good round of persecution where we would have to put our lives on the line for our faith!”
Actually, some writers including C. S. Lewis have suggested that the devil shifted tactics in persecution. In his book The Screwtape Letters, an experienced demon writes to his nephew: “Don’t make it hard for Christians. Don’t persecute them. Make it easy to be a Christian… even respectable.” So the logic went in the malevolent mind of the Enemy.
In light of this “shift” in what it cost to be a Christian, it might seem as though the words of 1 Peter written to a suffering church would not have all that much to say to us modern Christians. But this supposition would be wrong. There are two significant teaching that come from our text that need to very much play a part in our lives as contemporary Christians.
We need to always be prepared to give a reason for our faith in Christ. The text reads, “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you…” The world may not demand an accounting of our faith the way Pliny demanded an accounting and a renunciation of faith — but there is still a need for Christian people who can articulate the faith in terms of how it brings great hope to our lives. It is true that we do this with our words – but it is also important (maybe even more important) to do it with the actions of our lives… important that we bear a sense of hope in Christ even in the tough times.
When you remain hopeful in the face of trial, your faith speaks volumes!
And remember the words immediately following the injunction to be ready to give an accounting of our faith. “… Do it with gentleness and reverence.” In other words the kind of “in your faith evangelism” we’ve frequently seen in our time – does not attract people to Christ, but turns them off.
Clue number one for a vital faith. Remain hopeful in the face of trial and be ready to express or articulate that hope when people want to know where your strength comes from.
No matter what may be going on in the world around us. Whether we are living under terrible persecution, with tough circumstances or in relative peace — the outcome of all things is certain. Listen once again: “Jesus Christ… has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.”
To those early Christians, the message was, “No matter who is in power on this earth and no matter how much they may do to hurt and even kill us – Jesus Christ is even now at the right hand of God and every power and every authority shall one day answer to him!”
The message remains the same for you and me today. Times have changed, worldly powers have come, and gone, circumstances are radically different. But this one thing has not changed. Jesus Christ is even now at the right hand of God and every power and every authority shall one day answer to him!”
And that is why we are faithful and hopeful – no matter what!
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