How To Endure Persecution: Part I

Summary

How To Endure Persecution: Part I
Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
Sermon Text: Mark 13: 1-13

The Destruction of the Temple Foretold
     As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’
When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
Persecution Foretold
     ‘As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations. When they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Our eldest son Josh came to me one Saturday afternoon. He must have been thirteen or fourteen. Josh had a question and I could tell by his posture and the small pieces of brush that clung to his clothes that he wanted wood. Scrap wood.
Josh had spent the last few hours foraging through the span of massive fir trees that bordered our property. Think sixty feet high. Josh had also just spent a week in Tijuana, Mexico building a house for a family. Hence, I was waiting for his request.
“Are you going to use the wood in the garage,” he asked with a strong voice of confidence. “I might,” was my response. “Can I use it?” “Use it? Yes,” I said. “But it won’t work for what you want to do.” Josh’s face flashed with the strain of contradiction. I said both yes and no. I broke the silence for fear his head may explode. “Get a tape measure and measure the distance between the trees you were looking at. Then come back and measure the scrap wood. If it will work, you can use it.”
Josh bolted like an Olympian lumberjack. With tape measure in hand he plunged into the band of trees. As quick as he left, he returned. Coming back into the house Josh stared at me, put the tape measure down hard on the table and walked off struggling with the clarity that the scrap wood in the garage was not long enough to span the distance between the trees and thus could not be used to build a treehouse of real proportion and majesty.
The wood wasn’t long enough. The trees all stood a good fifteen to twenty feet apart. They appeared close together because their branches were interwoven forming a lovely belt of green. But their trunks were spaced far enough apart for healthy growth. To span the distance would have taken massive lumber, 2x12x20 at least, to accommodate not only the span but also the weight that would rest upon it if it were a joist of a deck. The scrap wood in the garage was no more than eight feet long.
I didn’t know if our son Josh remembers that exchange. It is probably just one of many moments where I was not the most nurturing of fathers. A better father would have said, “the wood is not long enough; let’s go to the lumber yard.” I asked him; he remembers. He said, “yes.” I have never forgotten that moment. Think on it a lot.
Through years Kathy and I have done a lot of work on a lot of houses. Most work was born of financial necessity. We could barely afford the materials; a contractor was not in the budget. Our work was never born of a belief we could better. Many times Kathy has looked at one of my jobs and dreamed of what it would have looked like if a professional had done the work. Drywalling comes to mind.
As we have done all of these projects that moment with Josh keeps coming up. Make sure you have the right material. Make sure you understand what you are getting into. Before you start to build be sure your plan is possible in terms of physics, physical reality. The need to defy gravity is not usually given a building permit.
Yet this moment with Josh also comes up in my day job. Countless times I have heard people struggle and lament, shout and rage, struggle with a terrible situation. And when it comes time to say, “well, this might help,” when it comes to this moment I think of Josh and the scrap wood. I do because you need the right material to overcome brokenness; you need strong stuff to rise above the darkness in life. If your marriage is falling apart, you will need more than a better attitude. If your kid is addicted to heroin, you will need more than words of sympathy, certainly more than a reassurance “all will work out.” You need more powerful resources than that.
The platitudes, the motivational sayings, even determination, is not enough when the profound challenges of life arise. When the sky falls, when words no longer carry meaning, you need a storehouse of materials to rebuild the life that just got wiped away.
Jesus says to those facing grave tragedy, be aware but do not worry.
At first these words may seem hollow, fatalistic even. The sky is falling and you are telling me not to worry? Well, yes. It would be easy to reject this teaching of Jesus as mere fatalism. Bad things happen. I believe that was a popular bumper sticker for quite some time. Bad things do happen. And Jesus has warned his disciples that following him invites disaster. They will persecute you for the gospel he told them repeatedly.
We could dismiss the teaching of Jesus as mere fatalism. Just telling people not to worry is less than adequate. For instance if I were to tell Christians in Sri Lanka or Muslims in New Zealand or Jews in Pittsburgh and San Diego, be aware but do not worry, I am not sure my words would be appreciated. If I were to say to my daughters, be aware that the vote to outlaw abortion in Alabama is threat to your dignity and freedom, but don’t worry, if I said that they would not look to me as someone who understands the level of danger.
These folks need to be vigilant, need to be tenacious and courageous. Yet, I believe we miss the teaching of Jesus here about persecution, if we hear his words as dismissive. He’s not saying, don’t worry with a sense of “don’t give it a second thought.” “You will be betrayed and put to death. Don’t sweat it.” No. I believe he is saying you need to find better material than worry if you are going to endure, if you will survive the danger.
We need to remember that the people who are reading this teaching of Jesus, the ones who read it for the first time, they were facing terrible persecution. When Mark wrote his gospel the emperors of Rome were actively seeking and killing Christians and Jews. Christianity was illegal for almost three centuries, but there were two times when the empire sought to persecute Christians on a large scale.
When the church read Mark for the first time this was one of those large-scale persecutions. The temple of Jerusalem had just been destroyed, the land of Palestine was forbidden for Jews. The images of Christians be fed to the lions- this was the time of that. Households were divided between those who believed Jesus was the resurrected one and those who believed he was a prophet put to death by Rome. What Jesus is saying to them is not a wild prediction of what may happen in the future. Jesus’ words were a description of what was happening to them.
Jesus says be aware and don’t worry how you will defend yourself or speak what you believe. We can imagine how these words were heard by someone who was arrested for their belief, betrayed by a family member, pressured to abandon his or her faith. They needed great strength to endure to the end, to be saved, Jesus says. We never find this strength in worry or fear. Worry and fear are scrap wood, poor material.
Too often, we try to build our future with scrap wood. We build our lives with pride or fear or anger. We maintain relationships or roles because we fear the consequence of honesty. We live with greed or the need to control and suffer the limitations of their material. You will not find the power of friendship, the power that spans the gap, the power that endures, if you live by pettiness or selfishness. It just doesn’t span the gap. You need material like kindness, joy, trust, forgiveness, generosity: these are things that span the gap, that build a place to dwell in peace. Fear never spans the gap.
Too often, as well, we respond to challenges as if they are persecutions, making something large that is really small. There are people and places that offend us and we treat the offence as a tragedy when they are far from that. I read a quote from Warren Buffet that speaks to this. He said, “you will continue to suffer if you have an emotional response to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.” So much of our world is a battle of words with no power, words upon words all driven by offence. How often do we posture to no avail?
There are a lot of dangerous and destructive things that happen every day in the world. Of these Jesus says, be aware, but do not worry. There are a lot of trivial things, foolish things that we take far too seriously. The early church that was reading the Gospel of Mark was not consumed by trivial things. They were facing real challenges. Those who endured would once again struggle with the trivial. It is a good problem to have.
I shared this with you before, but it is worth repeating. There are moments we have lived in Africa that make the line between real tragedy and the challenges of the mundane. Living there for a time helped me see what is and what is not worthy of our time or energy. I could see that line when I stood in a rural clinic. There was a large courtyard and people were strewn everywhere. People were dying of AIDS, of malaria, of dysentery, of malnutrition. There were hundreds of them strewn on the ground, everywhere. Some old, some young, some who should be at work or raising a family. There was no way to treat them all, to offer what they needed. This was tragic.
I can remember looking at them and feeling helpless, feeling terribly inadequate, in no way able to solve such massive suffering. And this is just one set of villages in one small part of Africa. This was just a bit.
I learned so much in that moment. My own problems and worries and struggles faded, became so small, so trivial. This is good. It is right to see how most of what we struggle with is really trivial. Better, though, was when the sense of powerlessness, poverty of spirit, opened my heart to real power, the power of the Holy Spirit. I could see how much of life was beyond my grasp, and I must enter the presence of the Holy Spirit with faith, not fear.
You don’t have to go to Africa to find tragedy. I have found it here too. But there was something that came with the scale, the size, the power. I could see the distance between the trees, the span. Here I could sense the power of silence, the need to be present without worry or dread. Because worry doesn’t do it, and help anybody. Just be there. In that moment I could see, the scrap wood would never do.
The good news of the gospel is this: we are in this together, you and me. We have the right materials; we have the stuff to span the gap to endure. We have each other; we have friendship and faith; we have mercy and generosity. God is much better father than I am; He has taken us to the lumber yard so to speak. We have the material to span the gap. We have the Holy Spirit so we are not ruled by fear or driven to act by offence. We have the power to rise above the mundane and speak words of faith where fear clamored to be heard. We abide in peace and not be driven by anger. In this we become the witness of God’s love and mercy. We span the gap. Amen.