I had a high school classmate named Phil, who was just plain different. While his friend spent their summer lolling away playing baseball, Phil would volunteer his time at day camps for underprivileged kids. When his classmates spent their lunch hours looking at Playboy centerfolds they had snuck into school, Phil would avoid them and help the teacher clean the blackboards. While his friends slept in on Sunday mornings, Phil was always at Sunday School and church, a choice which brought derision from his friends.
All in all, Phil was a goody-two shoes who was always made fun of while he was growing up and when he became an adult.
A few years after graduation, Phil was called into the ministry. One day he was driving a van to California to deliver food, clothing and supplies to help with the many natural disasters there. While en route through Arizona, black smoke began pouring out of the van's exhaust and the engine started knocking. Phil knew that sound: the motor had thrown a rod and the van was ruined.
All alone out in the middle of the desert, Phil doesn't know what to do. So he sticks out his thumb when he sees a car coming down the highway. The car slows down, Phil opens the door to get inside and the driver says, "What's your politics?"
Now, you've got to know that back in those days in West Virginia, Republicans were about as rare as Prime Rib at a PETA Convention, so Phil, being the honest guy that he is, replies, "I'm a Democrat," The driver floors the accelerator and speeds off.
Another car comes along about 10 minutes later. Phil sticks out his thumb; the driver slows down and yells out the door, "What's your politics?" "I'm a Democrat," Phil says. Same thing: the driver floors the accelerator and speeds off.
The scene is repeated about five times and Phil realizes he must be in one of those towns. So another car comes, Phil sticks out his thumb, the driver slows down and says, "What's your politics?" Phil says, "I'm a Republican." "Hop in the back seat," the driver says.
As they drive down the road they see a watermelon patch ahead. The driver slows down and yells back at Phil, "Get out in that patch and fetch me the biggest watermelon you can find." "I can't do something like that. That field doesn't belong to you!"
"I SAID,'Get out in that patch and fetch me the biggest watermelon you can find!'" "But I can't: I'm a minister."
The driver pulls out a gun, points it at Phil's head and says, "Look, Reverend, I've just escaped from the state prison and this is a stolen car. You go get that melon for me or I'll make you very sorry."
So Phil gets out, pulls the biggest melon he can find out of the patch, brings it back to the car, places it in the front seat, and climbs into the back seat. He closes his eyes and lets out a sigh. "I've been a Democrat all my life," he says. "I've only been a Republican for ten minutes and already I'm a thief AND a liar." (A note to Republicans: feel free to switch things around when you tell this story.)
Up until this point in Luke's gospel, Jesus had been a little like Phil: someone who only wanted to do good. Jesus was different, and people latched on to that difference like a yellowjacket on a cantaloupe. When Jesus healed the sick, some thought Him the greatest thing since Dr. Christian Barnard. Simply allow Jesus to heal and the health care crisis will vanish. Allow Jesus continued verbal jousting to put down those self-righteous Pharisees and we can kick the hypocrites out of church. Let Jesus continue to feed 5,000 with five loaves and two walleye and the need for community food pantries and soup kitchens will be eradicated.
Jesus knew that so long as He healed, taught, fed the masses and said nothing about commitment, His mission would be just a fraction of what His Father had sent Him to do. So He says this beatitude to let the five loaves and two 2 fish bunch know the true cost of discipleship.
The true cost of discipleship is change. And change is something the world at the time of Jesus could not stand. And in spite of the fact that there is so much change in 2004 and that things can turn so quickly, change is something the world today cannot stand.
In the first century, becoming a Christian came attached with a very high price tag. Following Jesus changed a person in at least four major areas of life.
First, it radically altered a person's social life. In the world at that time, many religions flourished. Much of a community's social life was centered around pagan festivals and social parties. An animal would be sacrificed to some god, tables would be set up, and everybody in the community would come, offer a prayer to the pagan god, and a wonderful picnic would follow. Sounds pretty harmless. But Christians would not attend these soirees because it meant a tacit worship of a god other than Christ. So at first Christians were viewed as prudes, holier-than-thous who didn't know how to have a good time and furthermore, didn't WANT to have a good time.
Secondly, the Christian was also different when it came to the social order. People in the first century were divided among many lines. The rich had nothing to do with the poor. The rich aristocracy had nothing to do with non-nobility rich. The poor freed person had nothing to do with the poor slave. Those of Greek descent had nothing to do with those of Roman descent. Jews had nothing to do with Gentiles. And women as an entire group were lumped together with all the social standing of a watermelon. Society was a fragmented, racist hodgepodge.
But as far as Christians were concerned, Jesus would have none of that. Paul writes in Galatians 3:26-28, "You are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male or female, for you are all in Christ Jesus" Christianity bought immense change because it ceased looking at people as classes and groups and began looking at people as persons. It looked at others solely as individuals made in the image of God. And the race/class-conscious society would not stand for it.
Third, being a Christian also meant big changes in the family structure. Sometimes it meant that the wife was a Christian and the husband was not, or vice versa. There were a lot of mixed marriages in those days, as there are today, and I'm not even talking about mixed marriages where one is a Democrat and one is a Republican. If a person takes his or her faith seriously, it can be a divisive thing, even among families. As a matter of fact, so serious is this thing called faith that Jesus, in Matthew 10:34-37 says:
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me."
More than being divisive, following Jesus brought tremendous change in families because it altered the way the members were to treat one other. In the Jewish world, a wife was little more than a slave. The husband had absolute authority over her. If he didn't like the way she cooked, he could divorce her. If she didn't bear him any male children, he could divorce her. If anything at all was displeasing, he had the right in the eyes of society to abuse her.
But Jesus changed all that. In the Christian family view the husband is commanded to love his wife with the same kind of love that Jesus loves us. Some modern Christians, determined to impose society's views on the scripture, get the heebie-jeebies when they read Ephesians 5 and 6. Paul, in these passages, tells wives to submit to their husbands, and children to submit to their parents. They would do well - as would we - to read the fine print: all family members are to submit to one another and to Jesus Christ, to treat one another as sacred.
Now, there was a fourth way that Christians were to be totally different, and this is important if we truly want to understand what Jesus is talking about. The biggest clash that Christians had with society came because of the way they handled Caesar worship. Caesar worship means exactly what it says, that the leader of the Roman Empire was believed to be a god.
You know what's always been true? Any individual or any organization that does something noble or good or heroic tends to be placed on pedestals. Truthfully, what the Romans did for the world was amazing. They brought military peace to the world. Prior to the Roman Empire, the world was filled with petty despots and cruel kings who had their way in their little fiefdoms. But the Roman army eventually conquered every one of them, exterminated the thugs and bandits who terrorized the countryside, and brought order to society. The Empire built roads, bridges, sewers and aqueducts, a worldwide infrastructure. The roads opened up the world for travel and trade, and in the process enriched the world. Roman architecture was amazing, as buildings built almost two centuries ago are used as classrooms to this day at Oxford and Cambridge.
The Roman world was so huge, from Iraq to Ireland, from Germany to North Africa, from Spain to Egypt. How could the Roman government maintain loyalty? What would insure peace in these millions of people from Celtic speaking redheads in Ireland to Arabic speaking nomads in the Persian Gulf? Since the world owed Caesar a great debt of gratitude, a peculiar practice evolved. Each year, every citizen would come to a temple erected in the honor of Caesar, burn a stick of incense, and say, "Caesar is Lord" in the hearing of the proper authorities. This little exercise guaranteed their status as good citizens and insured their peaceful existence. Two groups refused to participate in this: Jews and the Christians. Jews, if they took the First Commandment seriously about having no other gods than the LORD GOD, would not call Caesar a god. And Christians would not -proclaim any one or any thing was Lord but Jesus Christ. This tacit refusal brought a few jabs from their well-meaning neighbors: "Ah, just go, burn your incense, say 'Caesar is Lord' and forget it. Nobody believes Caesar is God. Most of the Romans don't even believe it. Why be so self-righteous?" But the Christians would not incense their God.
What happened? Christians became the enemy of the state.
At first it was just social ostracism: the cold shoulder. Then gossip. Then slander. Then, almost as the Jews experienced in pre-Holocaust times, Christians were singled out as a group. Their homes were looted; they became objects of mob violence (Hebrews 10:32-34). Then the official persecutions came. The Diocletian persecution ensued.
In an age of religious freedom and prosperity, it's very easy to forget what the early Christians had to go through, how they were persecuted for following Jesus Christ. It is a chapter of history we too often forget. It's true that the Jews had their holocaust, and we should never forget, minimalize or trivialize their suffering. But we should not forget, either, that Christians went through their own Holocaust. They were sown into burlap bags filled with snakes and thrown in rivers. They were sawed in two, placed on catapults and had their limbs ripped off. Women were stripped, put in nets, and chewed to death by wild boars. They were scalded, boiled in oil, and thrown to the lions as sporting spectacles in the Roman Coliseum. They lived in the sewers and catacombs of Rome, hunted down, beaten and starved, the ultimate objects of ethnic cleansing. Christians. People like you. People like me. All for stating, "Jesus is Lord."
You know something? It is very unlikely that in the near future we will be beaten to death in this country for being Christians. But you've got to realize that there is a very subtle persecution that is going on in the world today. In the news media, films, television and entertainment industry, Christians are portrayed as extremist wackos. It's a good thing that my knowledge of Jesus Christ and of Christians comes firsthand, because if I accepted at face value how the media portrays Christians, I would believe that all Christians are intolerant, bigoted, racist people who bomb abortion clinics and murder doctors.
What do the scriptures say about this? In 2nd Timothy 3:12, Paul writes, "All who live godly lives in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." Why is that? Today, as in the first century, a Christian is called to be different. Set Apart. Something that is different and set apart is called, in Greek, hagios. In Latin, the word is sanctus. In English, it means holy.
In the Bible, besides the Holy Spirit, there are predominately three holy things. The first is a holy place, a sanctuary. A sanctuary is a room in a church building that is different and set apart. The reason we don't have Dinner Day in this sanctuary is not because we have pews in here or because we're afraid of getting Jello or marinara sauce on the carpet: it's because the sanctuary is different, set apart, holy.
The second holy thing mentioned in the scriptures is the Sabbath: a holy day. A day set apart for God. It's to be a day unlike any other day. The Sabbath is not for sleeping in and catching up on the stuff you couldn't do while slaving away the other six days. The Sabbath is not for golf, flea markets, or anything that detracts from cultivating your relationship with Jesus. It's to be a day where you recharge your spiritual batteries.
The third thing is a holy life. A life set apart for God, a life that is lived differently than others.
Phil always tried to do the right thing, and in the process was persecuted. But there is something far greater than being liked at all cost, and something that carries a value of eternal consequences. It's called perseverance and hope.
Once upon a time in a concentration camp there was a prisoner who had been sentenced to be executed. In spite of his death sentence, the prisoner had a free spirit and a wonderful sense of humor. One day he takes his guitar, goes out to the middle of the prison camp grounds, and begins to play. Soon a big crowd gathers around, spellbound by his singing and playing. As soon as the guards see it, they break up the crowd and tell the prisoner to never do it again.
The next day there he is again, singing, playing, with an even bigger crowd around him. Again, the guards break up the crowd. This time they smash the prisoner's fingers with a sledgehammer, and tell him to never play again.
The next day he was back, singing, making what music he could with his crippled, bleeding fingers. This time the crowds are cheering. The guards drag him away and smash his guitar.
The next day he is back, singing accapella. What a song. Uplifting. Joyous. And the entire concentration camp is there singing right along, their hearts as pure as his, their spirits invincible. The guards are livid. They disperse the crowds, take the prisoner and cut out his tongue. A hush descends on the camp.
But what happens the next day is astonishing. There, in the middle of the grounds he is again: smiling, swaying and dancing to a silent music that no one but he could hear. And soon everybody was holding hands and dancing around this bleeding, broken figure in the center while the guards stand rooted to the ground in wonder.
© Rev. Duane Brown, 2003
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