Discovering a
Beatitude Filled Life
“Blessed are those
who are persecuted for Righteousness…”
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United Church, Aurora, CO 4/6/2014
Based on Daniel 3
& Matthew 5:10
This
entire week I have been thinking about the word “persecution” with respect to: What does it truly mean to be persecuted? My partner Paul recently recorded a series
that is a few years old now, call “The Big C”, the “C” meaning cancer. There are four main characters: husband,
wife, son, and a live-in student (around the same age as the son). The wife is dealing with the big “C”, the
husband actually died for three minutes and came back to life, the son is
struggling with being 16 yrs old and having parents who are literally fighting for
their lives, the live-in female student is struggling with her African American
heritage. One of the common attitudes
that I have noted in this family is that each of them is feeling persecuted in
one fashion or another.
The husband doesn’t
feel appreciated or supported by his wife in his new found career as a public
motivational speaker. The mother with
cancer, feels persecuted because everyone thinks that she is spending too much
energy on herself. The son is feeling
persecuted, well because he is a teenager and all of what goes with being at
that stage of life. The young
African-American girl is feeling persecuted because of her color.
The truth is, most of
us feel personally persecuted on some level.
The church in the U.S.A. felt persecuted when prayer was forced out of the
classroom. Teenagers feel persecuted
when they are subject to curfew hours that might not match with their friends
curfew hours. The truth might be, when we feel that we are not “getting” our
way, we often translate that feeling into the act of being persecuted.
Yet is that true persecution
or is it really a matter of our “egos” being bruised? Is “persecution” really just a matter of
differing opinions or is there something deeper in the act? I would say, “Yes” and “yes”. When one person or group of people feel their
way is the only correct way, coupled with a sense of empowerment, you then have
the formula for persecution to arise.
Persecution can
occur as: victimization, abuse, torture, torment, oppression, tyranny, discrimination against, mistreatment, ill-treatment, maltreatment, and subjugation. Now, there is only one
population in middle-class America that I can think of where the majority of
these types of behaviors occur and that is within the teenage population. Honestly, can you show me a teen-ager who
doesn’t feel persecuted?
Seriously, when we read the Gospels, we read it as if it was being
recorded as it was happening, yet Matthew wasn’t written until a generation
after Jesus had died and it was written to an audience that had already
experienced the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. The first audience of Matthew already was
living under persecution. They understood
firsthand the reality of living under the power of a foreign government; they
understood firsthand the persecution that came by following the words of Jesus,
and of being ostracized by the traditional Jewish community.
We live in America, where being a Christian has no penalties, where we
are not persecuted when we identify ourselves as being Christian, because
Christianity is an acceptable religion.
So how do we “Christians” understand the perils of persecution as Jesus
was teaching in the Beatitudes? Blessed are those who are persecuted
because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Well, for the church in America, the
identification of being Christian isn’t the key to this teaching. The
key is found in the word “righteousness”, that of doing right!
In this morning’s text about three young Jewish men who refused to bow
down to the idolatry of worshiping false gods, namely King Nebuchadnezzar, they
are persecuted for standing strong to their religious convictions of following
their one God. These men even though
they were Jews, had been given great power by the King in helping govern
Babylon. It was out of jealously that
the Kings court conspired to persecute not just the Jews but specifically
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Once
the King discovers that these three young men would not bow down to him, in a
rage he had them thrown into a fire.
I think the lesson in this story comes in the reply these three young
men gave when asked by King Nebuchadnezzar to change their allegiance saying: If we
are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us
from it,…But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we
will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. These young men trusted God with their lives
to deliver them from the tyrannical power of the King, but even if they were
not physically rescued they believed so strongly that it was better to die
following the law of their God than to give in and become a part of the system
that they understood as unjust.
We who call ourselves Christian in this country know very little about
persecution for our faith, because the church in general is a part of the
status quo. By definition, one who follows
the teachings of Jesus is called a Christian, and the larger body of Christians
we call the Christian Church. But, if
you find yourself stepping outside of the acceptable norms of the church, then
you might very well find yourself in hot water.
When a Christian Church speaks out against the victimization of segregation,
or against the popular tide of building walls along our boarders, or against
the discrimination that says not all people in our country should have basic
medical care, adequate housing, or access to upward mobility, then that church that
is fighting for justice can expect to be persecuted.
Back in the 1980’s there was an Underground Railroad movement by a
number of churches in our country which was labeled as “Sanctuary Movement”,
helping refugee’s from Nicaragua cross through this country into Canada. It was an underground movement because our
Government refused to give asylum to people whose lives were endangered by
staying in their homeland. Those people
in this country who were helping in this underground movement based on
religious conviction (based on their understanding of doing “rightness”) were being
persecuted by various departments of our government in retaliation for their
actions. I know of several churches in
the Seattle area where members of those congregations were abused by our
government for what the larger Christian Church would call righteousness
sake.
That type of persecution is past history, yet there is a new Sanctuary
movement happening today! I was on a
conference call earlier this week concerning the potential housing by a local
congregation, of a family who has one or more members under deportation
orders. The conversation discussed what
the legal implications would be for the hosting church as they provide housing for
this family. We also discussed how other
churches can help in a supportive role with finances, food, clothing, education
and other things that are needed for a this type of undertaking. There are now three States where churches are
becoming involved in this type of civil disobedience, which is legally defined
if charged as a felony. But because Immigration
reform has continually been stalled in Congress, citizens in various communities
along with non documented immigrants are taking a more radical stand in protest
to the broken immigration laws that currently exist.
I bring this particular example up under this Beatitude because it deals
with persecution in its most basic form.
I would expect a good many members of this faith community to be viewing
this new sanctuary movement as fundamentally wrong because on the surface it seems
to be promoting the issue of “illegal” immigration. Then there are those who would be supportive
of this type of civil disobedience because of their perception of what
constitutes just and unjust laws.
This is a very complex and critical issue and it makes me tremble to
think that I was even on a phone conversation discussing such a topic. I tremble because I wonder if I could act out
in civil disobedience for something that I might in theory think is an
injustice needing to be challenged. I
wonder if I could be a Shadrach, Meshach , or Abednego or would I be just one
of the countless millions who would turn a deaf ear out of fear of being
persecuted for doing the “right” thing. It
is in topics such as immigration reform, of equal rights for minorities, of how
we view the natural resources of our mother earth, and many other issues that
we struggle within our spiritual walk of understand “justness” and “righteousness.”
Persecution comes at many levels, some in big topics like distribution
of resources which include issues like immigration, race, sexual orientation,
and the ecology of our planet, but many come in less obvious levels and are
more personal. For most people, I think,
we want to do what is right for all, but the understanding of justice varies
from person to person. It’s the old
saying, “Where two are gathered, there you will find three opinions.” The truth in the eight Beatitude is of Jesus’
warning to be prepared when you are doing “righteous” acts, because the odds
are, it will not be consistent with popular standards and when that happens you
will be persecuted. Right actions know
no boundaries, but is a call to all of humanity to honor one another as brother
and sister. Amen
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