READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Genesis 28:10-17
Ephesians 4:22-28
St. Matthew 9:1-8
Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father
and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love.
Who speaks to you today, only through His Gospel, saying,
“And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves,
’This man is blaspheming’”
Thus far from our Gospel reading, important enough to be mentioned, because this charge of blasphemy is what sends Jesus to His death. It is no small accusation. It is in God’s Word so that we realize martyrdom is real, not just for Jesus, but for all who bear His cross. This belief that we too are martyrs, strengthens our faith and let’s us see the world and our neighbor in pity and forgiveness.
Maybe the joke goes, “In mother Russia, you do not comprehend sermon, sermon comprehends you.”
Perhaps, then, we can make the statement: “You do not prepare for martyrdom, martyrdom prepares you.” Or similar: in order to teach that though you may feel you need to prepare to die for the faith, endure some apocalypse situation, or even share your faith in an aggressive way, you will not be able. Only the Holy Spirit does this, as our ancient Christian martyrs teach us.
That is, even though they were put in such audacious situations and condemned by such outrageous and unjust accusations and demands, they knew the right way to act and the right things to say. Now you could chalk this up to someone adding those details into the legend, writing it down after the fact, but we have a promise for just such a thing.
In Luke 12:12, Jesus promises, “…the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” That is, the Spirit of Jesus will prepare us for martyrdom or to speak in front the super-spiritual, who are closer to God than we are, allegedly. The words we are to say and the strength needed to see it through, will be a gift no preparation can produce.
We confess this faith: the Christian is a martyr. Martyrdom is a real thing and it is a noble thing. Those who suffer through it are the Christian heroes, showing us just how heroic and courageous faith is. They treasure their confession of the one, true God such that they would rather suffer and die than fall away from the faith.
Our October Reformation hero today is Jan Hus. From Bohemia, he was ordained a priest and began preaching and teaching his people in the common language, which was Czech, in Prague. Until 1409, he was teaching that Scripture alone was the only authority in the Church, which led to him teaching against Roman practices such as simony (the act of selling church offices or roles), the sale of indulgences (granting remission of sins in purgatory for a price), and pilgrimages to view relics.
In 1412, he was excommunicated by Pope Alexander and forced to leave Prague, when he refused to stop preaching. Under the false pretense of safe passage, Hus was coaxed out of exile to attend a Church Council meeting in Constance, Germany, where they thoroughly condemned him and turned him over to local authorities to be burned at the stake July 6, 1415 for no other reason than “he was preaching the Word”.
Turned over to a secular court because, you know, God has that whole thing about “you shall not murder”. But if we hand him over to someone else and they murder him for us, then our hands are clean, right God? Sound familiar.
“Pilate said to them, ‘Take [Jesus] yourselves and judge him by your own law.’ The Jews said to him, ‘It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.’” (John 18:31). As in, we don’t have a good enough case so we must kill him. God will understand. It isn’t us doing the actual killing, so we’re not responsible.
For Jesus and for the martyrs in Him, He says, “They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (Jn 16:2). So it will be persecution coming from the so-called “God’s chosen people”, because they are concerned with pleasing Him and making sure He is still almighty.
In our sin, we find that we are not willing to side with the martyrs. They are troublesome for us and extreme. If they just go along, they will get along. If they just spoke nicer and acted more Christ-like, then they would not have gotten arrested. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about.
This is the timid, false faith which sin, death, and the devil produce in us and want in us. It stagnates us and makes us indecisive. We waffle back and forth between “I have nothing new to learn about the faith” and “if I just keep my head down, martyrdom won’t find me”.
Soon, it will be impossible to forget Jesus’s words, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you…But the word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’” (Jn 15:18, 25)
There was no cause to hate Jesus. For which work do you condemn me, Jesus asked. Was it the good deeds? Was it the compassion on the poor? Was it love of neighbor? No. And this is the frustrating part. It is not for any logic or reasonable argument to be made in court and found sound. It is simply because Jesus is not like you.
Once, you were of the world, hating the things of God without reason and despising His Word. Once you were on the devil’s side. What would I have done, as an apostle, at the time of Jesus’s arrest? Probably the same thing they did. I would have been a coward.
That would have been for the salvation of the world, though. Had Jesus been prevented from going to the cross, He would not have completed His work. And, if He had not completed His work, Abraham, Jan Hus, and all the patriarchs and martyrs would have died in their sins. Nothing heroic about it as we can all accomplish such a feat.
But in the martyrdom of Jesus Christ, death is swallowed up. In the martyrdom of Christ, the Way is made to gain heaven. In the martyrdom of Christ, the Word of God is given proper authority over all, even the decrees and decisions of kings, presidents, and councils. For when the Pharisees condemn Jesus for blasphemy, they are merely revealing their own sin.
Their blasphemy is that God has not promised to forgive sins through men. Their blasphemy is that God has not said to all of creation “obey me alone” so that a paralytic might regain his legs through the Word. Their blasphemy is to accuse Jesus of lying about the very thing God had come to accomplish for all eternity, since the beginning: the free forgiveness of sins.
Jesus is not lying. He is not lying about the lovingkindness of God, He is not lying about the martyrdom of God, and He is not lying about the eternal life of God. What is death? It is nothing compared to the Life God possesses, which is the same life given to you, in Christ. “For it is not I who lives, but Christ Who lives in me. I am crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20).
This love is what God declares. Just as He declared the heavens and the earth to spring into being, that same word is spoken to you who face death. Jesus goes ahead of you. He shows, with His own life, what the conclusion of this world is: martyrdom. But He goes on and shows what the conclusion of life in Him is: none. There is no end to His life, therefore there is no end to your life, Dear Christian.
It is the Word alone, in the flesh, Who gives such authority to men, to have faith in His Word of life over the word of death. Readiness to die is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and that the Lord will give it at the right time, when it is needed. The martyrs are not examples of superhuman faith; they are examples of the power of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. Cheerfulness in the face of death is not accomplished by our own strength, but by the Word of God.
Adam knew this. Though he faced his own death, a Savior was promised to him, through the Word. Job knew this. He even had the audacity to declare that even “after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:26). And every person that died in the faith. They knew and believed and so received Faith, which also possesses the eternal life of Jesus.
The gift of bearing the cross is the gift of the Holy Spirit. It may be that we live out a life of relative comfort, yet steadfastly support our church, and that is our martyrdom. Yet, we do not forget that the day of the Lord is coming, like a furnace.
And in that day, we will indeed have to live through it, but it will go just as it did for the 3 young men in Babylon. They were in the fire, but the fire did not touch them, because they were in the fire with Jesus. They did not plan that beforehand. But Jesus endures forever, and they will be made like Him, so we will endure forever in Him.
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