John
12:20-33
The Greek word for “witness” gives us the English word “martyr”. It
doesn’t just mean “witness” in the sense of someone who sits on the stand at
the front of a courtroom and describes what they saw and heard on the night of
April 12 between the hours of 9:00 and 11:00.
It does, however, mean someone who is prepared to share “the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.
Specifically, a martyr, as we use the term, is somebody who, at the cost
of life itself, is ready to bear witness to the message of God’s grace for
humankind in Jesus.
Over the centuries, thousands and
thousands of people have been called upon to do that. Some of them, especially from the earliest
days, have stories that have become encrusted with some questionable
material. There was a woman named Thecla
who lived at the time of Paul, whose preaching brought her to faith. At some point she was arrested and asked to
renounce her belief in Jesus, but she refused and was sentenced to be thrown to
wild animals. That’s where the story
goes a little bit off, though. Instead
of lions or wolves, an ancient document says that she was thrown into a pit of
water filled with ravenous seals. Since
she had not yet been baptized, she announced on her way into the water that she
accounted that her baptism. But then the
seals miraculously died instead of her.
Ancient authorities leave out how she actually died, which confuses
things even further, but that’s the nature of ancient authorities.
There is a monastery of St. Thecla
in the town of Ma’loula, Syria. On
December 3, 2013 a group of fighters aligned with An-Nusra, a branch of Al
Qa’ida, opposing the Syrian government in the civil war took thirteen nuns from
St. Thecla’s as hostages. The nuns had
remained in the town when others fled, although they evacuated the orphans who
were in their care. They were moved
around for three months before they were freed as part of a prisoner exchange
on March 9, 2014. They said that they
were well-treated. Nevertheless, they
had no idea when the town was overrun what would happen to them, nor when they
were taken prisoner, nor when they were being used as bargaining chips. What they did know, however, was that the
convent and the orphanage were their responsibility. They also knew that Thecla had faced death
with calmness and trust, and they apparently were ready to do the same.
In our day, we should remember and
pray for people who face such trials. We
should not forget or give up on the 150 Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped
by Boko Haram. We should not ignore the
Christians living in areas held by ISIS or those who lost loved ones just last
week in the bombing of a church in Pakistan, any more than we would ever forget
the Christian children who died in the Birmingham church bombing in our own
country during the Civil Rights Movement.
There is an old saying, that goes
back to a man named Tertullian in the second century, that the blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the Church. He
wrote to the Roman persecutors,
“The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the
blood of Christians is seed.”[1]
He
was repeating what he had heard in the gospel.
“Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much
fruit.” [John 12:24]
Those are the words of the
greatest martyr of all: Jesus.
A martyr may, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany, give
his life as a witness that the loving rule of God comes before that of
power-hungry human governments. Given
the choice between serving Hitler with freedom (or what passed for freedom at
that time) or serving Jesus in a prison, he accepted the prison. The day that he was killed he was called by
Gestapo agents as he prayed with other prisoners. On the way out the door, knowing the gallows
was his next stop, he leaned over and said to one of his companions, “This is
the end. For me the beginning of life.”[2]
A martyr
may, like Oscar Romero, give his life as a witness that the loving care of God
makes all people of equal dignity.
“There
are not two categories of people. There are not some who were born to have
everything and leave others with nothing and a majority that has nothing and
can’t enjoy the happiness that God has created for all. God wants a Christian
society, one in which we share the good things that God has given for all of
us.” [3]
He said that in El Salvador in the days when the wealthy were
maintaining control of society by the use of death squads. He opposed the rule of greed and said,
“By
contrast, whoever out of love for God gives oneself to the service of others
will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. …Only in
undoing itself does it produce the harvest.”[4]
I could go on and on with examples of others, yet each and
every one of them looks back to the words and deeds of Jesus who, unlike them,
who had his wisdom in mind and the courage of the resurrection in their hearts,
had to face death bravely and with love not just for his friends but also for
his enemies. We fool ourselves if we
think that it was somehow easy for him, yet he was obedient to God in the
deepest possible way.
“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me
from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” [John 12:27-28]
And if the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, the
blood of Christ is the source of salvation.
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people
to myself.” [John 12:32]
His sacrifice is the one that theirs points to. His Spirit is the breath that is in them and
the life that carries on in them to all eternity. Without him, all else that follows would be
empty and pointless: one more innocent victim of whoever happens to be the
tyrant currently in power. With him, as
he said,
“where I am, there will my servant be also.
Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.” [John
12:26]
There is not only comfort in that. There is outright joy. One more story: Lawrence was the treasurer of the church in
Rome and when he would not surrender the church’s funds to the emperor, he was
chained to a grille and a fire was lit beneath him. His last words to his executioner were these:
“Turn me over. This side is done.”
[1]
Tertullian, Apologeticum, 50. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ante-Nicene_Fathers/Volume_III/Apologetic/Apology/Chapter_L#cite_note-3
[2]
Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr,
Prophet, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 528.
[3]
Quoted at http://ignatiansolidarity.net/blog/2014/08/13/man-gods-microphone-12-quotes-celebrate-life-voice-oscar-romero/
[4] Ibid.
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