Witnesses, Not Warriors

The scriptures referred to are 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18 and John 21:15-19.

If you put “armor of God” in the search function of Amazon, you get a plethora of not only books on the subject but also challenge coins, wall art, plaques, bookmarks, travel mugs (Father's Day gifts!), medallions, figurines, dog tags, wrist bands, pens, sew-on patches, children's crafts and playsets of plastic armor labelled as a “Christian Character-Building Costume.” People love those verses from Paul's letter to the Ephesians, which cast following Jesus in a military light. The core of the passage is this: “For this reason, take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:13-17) It makes you want to sing “Onward, Christian soldiers.”

But did you notice something? All of the pieces of armor that Paul mentions—belt, breastplate, footwear, shield and helmet—are protective, except one: the sword of the Spirit; that is, the word of God. So our only “weapon” is the scriptures. And he follows that with this verse: “With every prayer and petition, pray at all times in the Spirit, with all perseverance and requests for all the saints.” (Ephesians 6:18) He says we are not to call down curses on our enemies but pray for the needs of all Christians. There is no justification here for being aggressive towards others. Instead, we are to live by the golden rule.

You can find the golden rule in practically every religion and ethical system. Many of them state it negatively: “Do not do to others what you wouldn't want done to yourself.” Which merely prohibits doing harm to others. Jesus, however, stated this moral principle positively: “Treat others in the same way that you would want to be treated.” (Luke 6:31) In the parable of the good Samaritan the priest and the Levite who pass by the man beaten and left for dead could say that they didn't do further harm to him. But the Samaritan does what the victim really wants and needs: he helps the man. He cleans and dresses his wounds, gets him to an inn, takes care of him all night and in the morning, gives money for his continuing care. Jesus says that is how you love your neighbor. (Luke 10:25-37)

And the irony is that Jews and Samaritans considered each other enemies. They were different ethnically and religiously. Yet Jesus used them to expand the definition of who our neighbor is. And in the Sermon on the Mount he makes this explicit. He says, “You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor' and 'hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be like your Father in heaven, since he causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45) In an agricultural society, both sun and rain are good things. Because God is good to all, so must we be. (Matthew 5:48) And since we are to love both our neighbor and our enemy there is no one we can hate and so no one we can either harm or neglect.

The reason I bring this up is because this Sunday we are commemorating the apostles Peter and Paul. And our readings are about the sufferings they endured for the faith. Both were martyred for proclaiming the good news about Jesus Christ, who died to save the world. And none of those 3 people died in a physical battle. In fact when Peter tried to defend Jesus by wielding a sword and wounding one of those who came to arrest him, Jesus rebuked him and said, “Put your sword back in its place! For all who take hold of the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) And then Jesus healed the man whose ear was cut off. (Luke 22:51) Jesus' last healing was that of a person who came to have him crucified. He meant what he said about loving our enemies.

Paul had been a persecutor of the church, arresting Christians and dragging them off to prison. (Acts 8:3) Describing his earlier life to King Herod Agrippa, he said, “And that is what I did in Jerusalem: Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons by the authority I received from the chief priests, but I also cast my vote against them when they were sentenced to death.” (Acts 26:10) Then on his way to do the same in Damascus, the risen Jesus appeared to him, saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:5) After seeing Jesus, he changes his life and mission, from violently trying to stamp out those who follow Jesus to peacefully bringing the good news of the crucified and risen Christ to non-Christians. Perhaps Paul was thinking of those Christians he had harmed when he said, “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: 'Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners'—and I am the worst of them!” (1 Timothy 1:15) And he changes his name from Saul, the name of the king who persecuted David, Jesus' ancestor, to Paul, which means “small.”

Both Peter and Paul went on to be imprisoned for proclaiming Jesus as Lord. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul catalogues all the times he had suffered on his missionary trips. “Five times I received from the Jews forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with a rod. Once I received a stoning. Three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I spent adrift in the open sea. I have been on journeys many times, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own countrymen, in dangers from Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers from false brothers, in hard work and toil, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, many times without food, in cold and without enough clothing.” (2 Corinthians 11:24-27) He went from causing suffering for those who followed Jesus to suffering for following Jesus himself.

Their deaths are foreshadowed in our passages from John's gospel and from Paul's second letter to Timothy. After giving Peter the opportunity to reaffirm his love for Jesus three times, mirroring his three denials of Christ during his trial, Jesus predicts Peter's eventual arrest and death. And Paul is obviously thinking that his death is near. Second Timothy is thought to be Paul's last letter, written from prison in Rome while awaiting his probable execution. He wants Timothy to come to see him before it is too late. (2 Timothy 4:21) As he says in today's passage, “...the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” That sounds final.

We don't have a lot of information about how Peter and Paul died. In the 1^st letter of Clement, written around 96 AD, Peter's successor mentions the martyrdoms of both of these apostles but gives us no specifics. Tradition says they died during the reign of the emperor Nero around 64 AD. Roman historian Tacitus says that Nero blamed the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome that same year and so, as the two most prominent leaders of the church, the apostles were probably executed as scapegoats. Tradition also says that Paul was beheaded, which is plausible since he was a Roman citizen. (Acts 16:37-38; 22:27-28) Tradition says that Peter, not a Roman citizen, was crucified upside down, supposedly because he was too humble to die as Jesus did.

Neither of these men were warriors but witnesses to the good news. And indeed that is all Jesus intended his followers to be. (Matthew 10:18; Luke 21:12-13) Jesus says, “I am sending you out as sheep surrounded by wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16) So this is not a call to fight but to proclaim the gospel.

People who are trying to justify Christians fighting often go the the Old Testament. But Biblical Israel was a small country sandwiched between great empires: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon. It was fighting for its existence. In Jesus' time it was occupied by the Roman empire. Many Jews were looking for a Messiah who would lead an army to throw out the Romans and establish a physical, political kingdom of God. They wanted a David 2.0. Jesus wasn't going to be that kind of Messiah. He wasn't going to shed the blood of others to make another kingdom with borders. Instead he let his blood be shed to establish a kingdom that has no borders. He had rejected Satan's offer to give him all the kingdoms of this world. (Luke 4:5-8) And he didn't authorize his followers to operate like every other group seeking power in the way the world does. He tells Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom was from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities.” (John 18:36) When he told Peter to sheath his sword, he was saying that to all who would follow him.

You may object, “But that leaves us defenseless.” Yes and no. From an earthly standpoint, it may seem to. But consider this: The Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God led them out of Egypt and into the promised land. Later the kingdom of Judah fought against the Babylonian empire. They were defeated and taken into exile in 586 BC. And yet after 70 years in exile, they returned home after the Persian empire defeated the Babylonian empire. Eventually the Roman empire broke apart and was destroyed. Earthly kingdoms and empires rise and fall. But the Jews are still with us—not because of their military might but because of God. God is our only sure defense. As Psalm 18:2 says, “The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” God is our defender, though it does not always look like that at the time.

I love the musical Godspell. It is based on the gospel of Matthew. Until you get to the very end. The disciples take down the body of Jesus and carry him out of the theater, singing a mournful tune. Then for the curtain call they come back singing an upbeat tune. But by not showing the resurrection, it is not clear why they have changed their tune, why they are so happy. In the gospels we see the impact Jesus' death had on the disciples. They only turned from discouraged cowards fearing the authorities to courageously declaring the good news because Jesus rose from the dead. That vindicated that he was who he said he was and it destroyed their fear of death.

If you follow Jesus' commandments—turn the other cheek, do not resist the evildoer, pray for those who mistreat you, give to everyone who asks of you—it could get you killed! (Luke 6:27-30) But Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do.” (Luke 12:4) How we are to act is based upon the God of life who raised Jesus from the dead. Death does not have the last word. But if we turn aside from the way of Jesus because of the threat of what violence can do to us, or the terrible promise of what we can achieve by violence, then we must fear the loss of our relationship with God and the loss of who we are called to be: the body of Christ. The times when Christians used violence against their enemies—the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the heresy and witch trials—have greatly harmed our witness to the world. Jesus said that it is by our love that the world will know we are his disciples. (John 13:35) Love does no harm to others. (Romans 13:10)

Forswearing the use of violence is scary. But that's how the early Christians impressed the pagan Romans. They saw how fearlessly Christians faced persecution and martyrdom. The Roman historian Tacitus says that Nero “inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians (sic) by the populace.” Some he had crucified, some he had thrown to wild animals and others he burned alive as living torches to light his garden. Tacitus, no fan of Christianity which he called a “most mischievous superstition,” nevertheless says, “...there arose a feeling of compassion: for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty, that they were being destroyed.” And later, when plagues hit Rome, pagans noticed that Christians did not flee to the relative safety of the countryside but stayed in the city, nursing the sick and dying at the risk of their own lives. In a culture that had no sense of social consciousness or one's duty to the unfortunate, the compassionate and selfless actions of Christians attracted people to investigate following Jesus Christ.

Do you know the origin of the word martyr? It comes from martys, the Greek word for “witness.” Because of Christians standing up for their faith even when it cost them their lives, it came to mean what it does today: suffering and even dying for your beliefs. The earliest saints honored by the church were martyrs. The second century church father Tertullian maintained that “the blood of the martyrs is seed.” St. Augustine picked up on this and expanded it saying, “The earth has been filled with the blood of the martyrs as with seed, and from that seed have sprung the crops of the church. They have asserted Christ's cause more effectively when dead than they were alive. They assert it today, they preach him today; their tongues are silent, their deeds echo around the world.”

And even today we remember people like missionary Jim Elliot, who died trying to contact an Amazonian tribe. His wife Elizabeth Elliot completed his mission, converting the people who murdered her husband. We remember Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who was assassinated while celebrating the Mass for criticizing the human rights abuses of the Salvadoran government. We remember Polish friar Maximillian Kolbe who volunteered to take the place of a stranger in a starvation bunker in Auschwitz. We remember Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated for working peacefully for racial equality. We remember pastor Wang Zhiming, killed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution for refusing to renounce his Christian faith. We remember Archbishop Janani Luwum of Uganda, killed for speaking out against the human rights abuses of Ida Amin. There are people killed for their Christian faith around the world these days, like Esther John, a Pakistani woman, Manche Masemola, a South African woman, Lucian Tapiedi of Papua New Guinea, the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS in 2015, the members of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity killed in Yemen in 2016 and many more.

Recently we have had a self-styled “Christian” evangelist kill an elected official and her husband and shoot another couple. Did he bring glory to Christ or did he blaspheme Christ's name by this action? Jesus knew about religious fanatics who take it on themselves to be judge, jury and executioner. He said, “...a time is coming when the one who kills you will think he is offering service to God.” (John 16:2) James, Jesus' brother, writes, “For human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.” (James 1:20) Preachers, quoting the Sermon on the Mount, have been confronted by church members asking where they got such woke nonsense. And when they were told that the preacher was quoting Jesus, they said that what the Lord said was weak and didn't work.

Paul knew about weakness. He suffered from some ailment he called “a thorn in my flesh” that tormented him. (I think it was an eye problem. See Galatians 4:13-15) He said, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10) Perhaps he was thinking of Psalm 28:7 which says, “The Lord is my strength and my shield. My heart has trusted in him and I am helped.”

Jesus did not lead an army like Mohammed did. Jesus did not triumph like worldly kings, by slaying his enemies and dying in bed, old and powerful. By worldly standards, he was not a hero who fought his enemies but a loser who did not offer resistance but let himself be killed by them. But that's not how God sees it. As it says in Isaiah, “Having suffered, he will reflect on his work, he will be satisfied when he understands what he has done. 'My servant will acquit many, for he carried their sins. So I will assign him a portion with the multitudes, he will divide the spoils of victory with the powerful, because he willingly submitted to death and was numbered with the rebels, when he lifted up the sins of many and intervened on behalf of the rebels.'” (Isaiah 53:11-12)

Anyone can kill for their cause. With today's weapons, it's easy and the killer is so removed from his victims that he is safe. But few willingly die for their faith, not paying back evil with evil but with goodness, not using weapons but the word of God. Why were the apostles willing to die if necessary for their faith in Christ? Because they knew that earthly death was not the end. Jesus showed that. He didn't just talk about eternal life, he demonstrated it. And because he had undergone and defeated death, they did not fear death, nor any of the things that lead up to it, like disease or persecution. It's not that they sought death; they just didn't alter what they did because of it.

And when you don't fear death, you can do extraordinary things. You can give of yourself to help others. You can defy those more powerful than you: kings and their kingdoms, emperors and their empires, rulers of nations, leaders of corporations and cults. Because they will not last. They are temporal and temporary. The Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Roman and British empires are no more. In comparison with eternity, they were mere blips. The things of this world don't last. God's word does. God's people do.

It's hard to remember that when things get scary. It takes faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died for us and rose again and who will come again. On that day we will see, as it says in Revelation, “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 11:15) In the meantime, we trust in the one who said, “I have told you these things so that you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering but take courage—I have conquered the world” (John 16:33) And he did it without making a fist or drawing a sword or firing a shot. He did it with words and acts of self-sacrificial love. Go and do likewise.