The Martyrs' Cross

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Propers: The Fifth Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The Lutheran tradition speaks of Seven Marks of the Church, seven anchors which hold us fast to the Body of Christ. These are Baptism, the Eucharist, the forgiveness of sins, the Scriptures, the clergy, prayer—especially communal prayer in the Divine Liturgy—and finally the Cross. Lose even one of these, and we lose our moorings, we drift away. We cease to be the  Church and we become something else entirely.

Of these seven, the one that has become most baffling to our culture and our context is the Cross. When we call the Cross a Mark of the Church, we’re not just talking about a symbol. We don’t mean crosses of wood or iron, embroidery or ink. We have plenty of those scattered all about this place. Rather, to be marked by the Cross of Christ is to be marked by suffering, by struggle, by self-sacrificial love. For indeed, that is what the Cross is: it is the ultimate sign of love, the sign of giving of oneself, pouring yourself out, for the other, for the neighbor, even for the enemy.

And this doesn’t make sense in 21st Century America. Our entire society is predicated upon easing struggle, easing pain. We seek the path of least resistance. Our household gods are health, wealth, and pleasure, as frankly they’ve always been. So often, in school, in sports, in finding a career, we think that things come naturally, come easily, to the intelligent and the talented. The rest of us just weren’t born that way. And so if something is hard, we quit; it wasn’t for us; our talents must lie elsewhere. If it isn’t easy, we don’t do it.

And we carry this mindset over into our spiritual lives as well. There is this notion, very prevalent in our culture, that religion is primarily therapeutic. It exists to solve your problems, to ease your struggles. If you suffer, if you mourn, if you grieve, if you grapple with addiction or disease or doubt or fear, religion is supposed to solve all that, or at least take the edge off. The opiate of the masses, Marx called it.

And what’s really insidious about this is that if someone then comes to the Church, comes to faith, gets Baptized and prays and sings and kneels at the altar, yet continues to struggle, continues to suffer, we think that something has gone wrong. We think that religion has failed us—or worse yet, that we’ve failed God. It wasn’t easy, it didn’t come naturally, so I guess I’m just not cut out for Jesus.

But just the opposite is true. Jesus Christ never promised us a life of ease. Quite the contrary: He told us to take up our cross and follow Him. Life is suffering, and becoming a Christian only exacerbates that fact. But what Christ has promised us is that He is with us in all of our sufferings, and that He can take upon Himself our struggles and our strife so that they may have redemptive purpose and meaning.

We read this morning the story of St Stephen, one of the first deacons of the Church, and more importantly the first Christian martyr. Stephen was murdered for his faith in Jesus Christ, and because of that we see his death conformed to Jesus’ own. Now, the word martyr has been tainted of late by those at work in the wider world who think that to be a martyr is to die in the act of murdering others—as many others as possible, in fact. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The word martyr simply means “witness,” a witness to Jesus, a witness to the truth. And 2,000 years ago, that could get you killed. Stephen is murdered by the same religious authorities who handed Jesus over to be crucified. His crime is his claim that the Holy Spirit of God is not contained within a building of wood and stone, but dwells now within the hearts of sinful human beings, making us into the living stones of His true Temple, the Body of Christ. And for this apparent blasphemy, Stephen is dragged out of the city and stoned.

Yet even as he perishes, he proves the truth of his own words: he commends his spirit to Jesus, just as Jesus commended His own to God the Father from the Cross; and he echoes the words of Christ, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” For this, Stephen is known as the Protomartyr: not simply the first, but the archetype, the model for all martyrs to come. To be proclaimed a martyr by the early Church, a Christian’s death had to meet three criteria: (1) it had to be an innocent death; (2) the martyr had to die forgiving and blessing his or her enemies; and (3) there had to be some holy moment, some prayer or invocation of God’s mercy.

Never could someone claim martyrdom while killing another. Even St Olav threw away his sword in the end.

In the words of Robin Philips, “The struggle-less approach to Christianity is at odds with the most ancient expressions of the faith, which saw comfort as a danger and put a high premium on spiritual struggle. In the earliest days of the Church, no one needed to be reminded that being a Christian was difficult.” Peter was crucified, Paul beheaded, Polycarp burned, Ignatius eaten. In time, however, things changed. The very Empire that persecuted the Church, the same which had nailed Jesus to the Cross, eventually came not only to legalize but also to embrace whole-heartedly the Christian faith. Jesus conquered the Rome that killed Him, and He did it through forgiveness and love, through the witness of the martyrs.

The bad old days were done. But this raised for us a new dilemma. Who were Christians, if not a people who suffered for love, who offered up their very lives for truth? Who were we, if we were no longer martyrs? Our answer was that if we could no longer die for Christ, as Stephen did, then we would live for Christ instead. We would give generously, forgive freely, live simply. We would pour out our lives for others, no longer in the arena, but in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities. Martyrdom was never about dying; it was about giving of oneself, even unto death.

Some would be monks. Some would be priests. Most would be faithful Christians living a life of self-sacrificial love in whatever their calling happened to be. And so the struggle, the witness, the Cross itself would be carried forward into a new age.

So what does all this mean for us today? Well, there are two things that I want each and every person here to be sure of as we go out into the world this week. The first is that if you are struggling, if you are suffering, if you are wrestling with doubts and temptations, and it feels like you fall and rise up only to fall down again, you are not alone. God has not abandoned you, and you have not failed God.

The Holy Spirit does not do away with our struggles; rather, struggles are often the surest sign we have that the Holy Spirit is hard at work within us, knitting us back together, burning away our dross like silver in the furnace. Christianity does not promise us ease. Christianity promises the Cross! But it is a Cross with a purpose. Our struggles make us stronger; discomfort is how we grow. Without the Cross, we’re not the Church.

In the Cross, suffering and love are inextricably intertwined. To love someone is to pour out yourself for them, and that hurts! But it is a glorious and a noble and a godly thing. This is the love God pours out into us, overflowing into others, that the whole world may not only be joined to God in Christ, but that we ourselves might at last become what we were always meant to be: truly human.

And the second thing of which we must be certain is that we are already loved and forgiven and redeemed. We do not earn God’s love through our struggles. We do not climb a thorny ladder of suffering back up into Heaven. On the Cross, God comes down to us! By grace you have been saved! None of this is about works-righteousness. Christians do not seek out fresh new crosses of our own design. We do not go abroad seeking monsters to destroy.

But as Christians, baptized in Christ’s Spirit, fed and nourished by His Body and Blood, we are made into the Body of Christ still at work in this world. Our job is to be Jesus—a calling more wondrous and terrifying than we can possibly imagine. And when you’re Jesus, you love. And when you love, you suffer. And when you suffer, know that it is nothing less than Jesus pouring out His own life for the world, and He is doing it through you.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.