“God Nearby”
September 4, 2022
Dear brothers and sisters, grace and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, Amen.
Today’s Gospel reading is, to say
the least, difficult. Especially since we’ve been talking a lot about how Jesus
desires peace and unity among people, in a divided world. But now, all of a
sudden, Jesus starts talking about division – even children against parents. So
what’s going on? Well, the answer is actually quite simple: Jesus is saying
that, first of all, when someone is a Christian, that doesn’t guarantee an easy
life. Hardships can come from following Jesus, especially if doing so involves
resisting peer pressure. In Jesus’ time and shortly afterwards, being a
Christian meant going against the state religion, worshipping Jesus as God instead
of the Emperor, and proclaiming Jesus as King and Messiah. And this means that
sometimes this might mean members of families going against each other. The baptism
Jesus refers to that He has to undergo is also His death: it will be by His
cross, and believing in the power of His death and resurrection, that people
will be able to identify as Christians. And it is for bearing the name of Christian
that individuals will be persecuted.
We have to be careful when we use
the word persecution, however. Lately it’s a word that’s gotten tossed around a
lot, especially as many people on various sides of various controversial issues
have claimed persecution by the other side for trying to express or exercise
their beliefs. The dictionary definition of persecution is “unfair or cruel treatment
over a long period of time because of race, religion, or political beliefs.”
Persecution is also such unfair or cruel treatment which is inflicted on one
group for undeserved reasons, where the group being persecuted is truly
undeserving of being treated unfairly. So what constitutes persecution is
actually very clear and specific.
That is not to say that genuine persecution
of Christians has never existed and doesn’t continue to exist. For example, many
years ago my dad was the pastor of a church in Southern California which sponsored
a Chinese ministry. One of the members of the Chinese congregation had been a
schoolteacher during the height of the Cultural Revolution in the People’s
Republic of China during the 60s and 70s. When the local authorities discovered
she was a Christian, they encouraged her students to rebel against her and humiliate
her for being a Christian by throwing their books on her feet, which they did.
As a result, both her feet were permanently damaged, and even later in life,
she walked with a pronounced limp. Even to this day in China, members of churches
which remain unregistered with the government are subject to imprisonment and
torture. In certain countries, while religious freedom is promised in the law,
conversion to Christianity is either frowned upon by society, or outright illegal:
those who do attempt to become Christian risk being disowned by their families,
fired from their jobs, put in jail, even being executed. Members of one of the
oldest Christian churches in the world, the Coptic Church in Egypt, are
discriminated against in employment, education, and opportunity for no reason
other than being Christian. But persecution doesn’t just take place at the
hands of non-Christian government or religious systems. In the former
Yugoslavia, Christians fought other Christians for territory and dominance. In
Rwanda in the 90s, Christians betrayed and killed other Christians in the name
of ethnic cleansing; even priests and pastors allowed their churches to be used
as places of mass murder. In certain other countries, such as Russia and Eritrea,
both of which are Christian-majority countries, members of Christian groups
which are not recognized as legal by the government risk being thrown in
prison.
Now, it would be easy to go the
direction of blaming persecution of Christians on certain specific political or
religious systems, but the reality is that persecution is perpetrated by all kinds
of different people. It can also be blamed on one simple cause: human sinfulness,
especially the idea that one person or group is superior over another, and this
gives them the right to hurt and deny humanity to others. All that being said,
we Christians, especially those of us who live in this country where we enjoy a
great amount of freedom to worship, are to work for and advocate for the rights
of our Christian brothers and sisters in places where they are persecuted.
Groups such as Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, International Christian Concern,
and Christian Solidarity International have been involved in such efforts to
make the rest of the world aware of the plight of persecuted Christians, as
well as providing direct support by holding secret Baptisms, Bible studies, and
meetings; working to free imprisoned and enslaved Christians; smuggling Bibles
and other materials; and broadcasting radio and internet sermons and worship
services. We are encouraged to both be aware of and actively support the work
of those who help our persecuted brothers and sisters, and pray for an end to
their suffering.
A lot of this also begs the
question: why does God allow His people to be hurt? The answer is, He doesn’t. As
God, speaking through Jeremiah, says, He is a God who is nearby and is not far
away. He fills heaven and earth, so He is fully aware of what’s happening. He
is not standing by doing nothing while His people are being hurt: actually, he
is keeping them sustained to the very end, so they will remain faithful and
receive the reward of eternal life. Again, it’s human sinfulness, not God, that
causes suffering. But these examples we’ve just heard are also meant to
encourage us: that even though many of our brothers and sisters are persecuted,
they don’t give up their faith, belief, and trust in God. And they are also a
challenge for us to ask: how many of us, if we were in that same position,
would be able to stand firm and secure in what we believe? Would we also be able
to say, no matter what happens to me, I’ll never give up my faith in Jesus? These
are the “great cloud of witnesses” we hear about in Hebrews, who, by their
example, encourage us to focus on Jesus. Even though we may at times face
opposition for following Jesus, we can ignore it and cast it aside, looking
ahead to the greater reward of going the direction Jesus leads us.
Even though we don’t face
persecution in this country on the scale we’ve just been talking about, that’s
not to say that we still don’t face troubles. While we may not have to suffer
for being Christians, we also have to recognize that we have to work with
problems every single day: we have to deal with conflicts in our families and
communities; individual hardships; and pains. We also have to admit that there
are certain things that have happened to us because of things we have either done
to ourselves, or to other people, that have been harmful and hurtful, for which
we have had to endure consequences. In those cases, as Hebrews tells us, God is
disciplining us. Not punishing – there’s a difference – but instead, God is
making sure we learn from what we’ve done, and be able to grow and change. If something
has caused damage in our lives, then we learn to give it up and live a
different way. But God does that for us not out of vengeful angry punishment,
but instead out of His love for us: He wants the best for us, to be able to
live the best kind of life, so He helps us mature even through learning hard
lessons. The harvest of righteousness and peace is what comes from the maturity
and confidence from having realized how much better things are since God has helped
us learn valuable lessons. God’s Word, as Jeremiah says, is like a fire, and
like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces, because it smashes through all the
false ideas we would be forced to believe. Especially the ones that try to tell
us God is far away, He doesn’t care, and, most of all, He’s leaving us alone to
suffer and remain in pain. Again, since He fills heaven and earth, nothing is
secret from Him. He is aware of what is happening to us, and is doing something
in secret to turn things around and make things better for us.
In just a few minutes, we will be
receiving Communion, which is the greatest promise that God is here with us.
Jesus will give us His true body and blood to eat and drink, filling us with
His power, to strengthen us. Many of us are coming with feeble arms and weak
knees, as we are beaten down by many struggles from this past week, month, or even
year, and feel we no longer have the ability to continue fighting. We don’t know
if we can go on, because all our personal resources have been sapped. We’ve
also probably noticed that, during the day, it’s harder to face everything life
throws at us whenever we get hungry; but once we eat something, we’re able to
deal with things with greater strength and confidence again. So we will be
receiving spiritual food to help us be able to deal with everything we have to
face this week, and gain greater confidence, not in our own strength or only in
ourselves, but in God’s almighty and supreme power to fight for us and win. We
will be refreshed and able to look our problems square in the eye, and say, you
don’t frighten or intimidate me, because God has already dealt with you. God is
always near – let’s believe He is near to us and is with us, to make everything
peaceful again.
Now may the peace of God, which
passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord,
Amen.
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