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Matthew 5:10-12: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you."
One of the outstanding qualities of Jesus was His total honesty.
He never left men in any doubt what would happen to them if they chose to follow Him.
He was clear that he had come "not to make life easy, but to make men great."
It is hard for us to realize what the first Christians had to suffer.
Every part of their life was disrupted.
Their Christianity might well disrupt their work.
Suppose a man was a stonemason.
That seems a harmless enough occupation.
But suppose his firm received a contract to build a temple to one of the heathen gods, what was that man to do?
Suppose a man was a tailor, and suppose his firm was asked to produce robes for the heathen priests,
what was that man to do?
In a situation such as that in which the early Christians found themselves there was hardly any job
in which a man might not find a conflict between his business interests and his loyalty to Jesus Christ.
The Church had no doubt where a man's duty lay.
More than a hundred years after this a man came to Tertullian with this very problem.
He told of his business difficulties.
He ended by saying, "What can I do? I must live!"
"Must you?" said Tertullian.
If it came to a choice between a loyalty and a living, the real Christian never hesitated to choose loyalty.
Their Christianity would certainly disrupt their social life.
In the ancient world most feasts were held in the temple of some god.
In very few sacrifices was the whole animal burned upon the altar.
It might be that only a few hairs from the forehead of the beast were burned as a symbolic sacrifice.
Part of the meat went to the priests as their perquisite; and part of the meat was returned to the worshipper.
With his share he made a feast for his friends and his relations.
One of the gods most commonly worshipped was Serapis.
And when the invitations to the feast went out, they would read:
"I invite you to dine with me at the table of our Lord Serapis."
Could a Christian share in a feast held in the temple of a heathen god?
Even an ordinary meal in an ordinary house began with a libation, a cup of wine, poured out in honor of the gods.
It was like grace before meat.
Could a Christian become a sharer in a heathen act of worship like that?
Again the Christian answer was clear.
The Christian must cut himself off from his fellows rather than by his presence give approval to such a thing.
A man had to be prepared to be lonely in order to be a Christian.
Worst of all, their Christianity was liable to disrupt their home life.
It happened again and again that one member of a family became a Christian while the others did not.
A wife might become a Christian while her husband did not.
A son or a daughter might become a Christian while the rest of the family did not.
Immediately there was a split in the family.
Often the door was shut for ever in the face of the one who had accepted Christ.
Christianity often came to send, not peace, but a sword which divided families in two.
It was literally true that a man might have to love Christ more than he loved father or mother, wife, or brother or sister.
In those days Christianity often involved a choice between a man's nearest and dearest and Jesus Christ.
Still further, the penalties which a Christian had to suffer were terrible beyond description.
All the world knows of the Christians who were flung to the lions or burned at the stake; but these were kindly deaths
compared to Nero.
Nero wrapped the Christians in pitch and set them on fire, and used them as living torches to light his gardens.
He sewed them in the skins of wild animals and set his hunting dogs upon them to tear them to death.
They were tortured on the rack.
They were scraped with pincers.
Molten lead was poured hissing upon them.
Red hot brass plates were affixed to the tenderest parts of their bodies.
Their eyes were tom out.
Parts of their bodies were cut off and roasted before their eyes.
Their hands and feet were burned while cold water was poured over them to lengthen the agony.
These things are not pleasant to think about, but these are the things a man had to be prepared for,
if he took his stand with Christ.
Some may ask why the Romans persecuted the Christians.
It seems an extraordinary thing that anyone living a Christian life should seem a fit victim for persecution and death.
There were two reasons.
First, there were certain slanders which were spread abroad about the Christians.
Slanders for which the Jews were in no small measure responsible.
The Christians were accused of cannibalism.
The words of the Last Supper--"This is my body," and "This cup is the New Testament in my blood"
were taken and twisted into a story that the Christians sacrificed a child and ate the flesh.
Also the Christians were accused of immoral practices, and their meetings were said to be orgies of lust.
The Christian weekly meeting was called the "Agape", the Love Feast.
The name was grossly misinterpreted.
Christians greeted each other with the kiss of peace; and the kiss of peace became a ground
on which to build the slanderous accusations.
Also the Christians were accused of being incendiaries.
It is true that they spoke of the coming end of the world, and they clothed their message
in the apocalyptic pictures of the end of the world in flames.
Their slanderers took these words and twisted them into threats of political and revolutionary incendiaries.
The Christians were also accused of tampering with family relationships.
Christianity did in fact split families as we have seen.
So Christianity was represented as something which divided man and wife, and disrupted the home.
There were slanders enough waiting to be invented by malicious-minded men.
But the great cause of persecution was also political.
Let us remember he situation.
The Roman Empire included almost the whole known world, from Britain to the Euphrates, and from Germany
to North Africa.
How could that vast amalgam of peoples be somehow welded into one?
Where could a unifying principle be found?
At first, it was found in the worship of the goddess, Roma, the spirit of Rome.
This was a worship which the provincial peoples were happy to give, for Rome had brought them peace
and good government, and civil order and justice.
The roads were cleared of brigands and the seas of pirates.
The despots and tyrants had been banished by impartial Roman justice.
The provincial was very willing to sacrifice to the spirit of the Empire which had done so much for him.
But this worship of Roma took a further step.
There was one man who personified the Empire.
There was one man in whom Roma might be felt to be incarnated, and that was the Emperor.
And so the Emperor came to be regarded as a god, and divine honours came to be paid to him,
and temples were raised to his divinity.
The Roman government did not begin this worship; at first, in fact, it did all it could to discourage it.
Claudius, the Emperor, said that he deprecated divine honors being paid to any human being.
But as the years went on the Roman government saw in this Emperor-worship the one thing
which could unify the vast Empire of Rome.
Here was the one center on which they all could come together.
So, in the end, the worship of the Emperor became, not voluntary, but compulsory.
Once a year a man had to go and burn a pinch of incense to the godhead of Caesar and say,
"Caesar is Lord."
And that is precisely what the Christians refused to do.
For them Jesus Christ was the Lord, and to no man would they give that title which belonged to Christ.
It can be seen at once that Caesar-worship was far more a test of political loyalty than anything else.
In actual fact, when a man had burned his pinch of incense, he received a certificate, a libellus,
to say that he had done so, and then he could go and worship any god he liked,
so long as his worship did not interfere with public order and decency.
The Christians refused to conform.
Confronted with the choice, "Caesar or Christ?" they uncompromisingly chose Christ.
They utterly refused to compromise.
The result was that, however good a man, however fine a citizen a Christian was, he was automatically an outlaw.
In the vast Empire Rome could not afford pockets of disloyalty, and that is exactly what every Christian congregation
appeared to the Roman authorities to be.
A poet has spoken of "The panting, huddled flock whose crime was Christ."
The only crime of the Christian was that he set Christ above Caesar; and for that supreme loyalty
the Christians died in their thousands, and faced torture for the sake of their supremacy of Jesus Christ.
When we see how persecution arose, we are in a position to see the real glory of the martyr's way.
It may seem an extraordinary thing to talk about the bliss of the persecuted; but for him who had eyes to see
beyond the immediate present, and a mind to understand the greatness of the issues involved,
there must have been a glory in that blood-stained way.
To have to suffer persecution was an opportunity to show one's loyalty to Jesus Christ.
One of the most famous of all the martyrs was Polycarp, the aged bishop of Smyrna.
The mob dragged him to the tribunal of the Roman magistrate.
He was given the inevitable choice -- sacrifice to the godhead of Caesar or die.
His immortal reply was, "Eighty and six years have I served Christ. and he has done me no wrong.
How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"
So they brought him to the stake, and he prayed his last prayer:
"O Lord God Almighty, the Father of thy well-beloved and ever-blessed son,
by whom we have received the knowledge of thee ... I thank thee that thou hast graciously
thought me worthy of this day and of this hour."
Here was the supreme opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty to Jesus Christ.
In the First World War Rupert Brooke, the poet, was one of those who died too young.
Before he went out to the battle he wrote:
"Now God be thanked who has matched us with his hour."
There are so many of us who have never in our lives made anything like a real sacrifice for Jesus Christ.
The moment when Christianity seems likely to cost us something is the moment when it is open to us
to demonstrate our loyalty to Jesus Christ in a way that all the world can see.
To have to suffer persecution is, as Jesus himself said, the way to walk the same road as the prophets,
and the saints, and the martyrs have walked.
To suffer for the right is to gain a share in a great succession.
The man who has to suffer something for his faith can throw back his head and say,
"Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod."
To have to suffer persecution is to share in the great occasion.
There is always something thrilling in even being present on the great occasion, in being there when something
memorable and crucial is happening.
There is an even greater thrill in having a share, however small, in the actual action.
That is the feeling about which Shakespeare wrote so unforgettably in Henry the Fifth in the words he put
into Henry's mouth before the battle of Agincourt:
"He that shall live this day and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his friends,
And say, `Tomorrow is Saint Crispian':
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, `These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
......
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
When a man is called on to suffer something for his Christianity that is always a crucial moment.
It is the great occasion.
It is the clash between the world and Christ.
It is a moment in the drama of eternity.
To have a share in such a moment is not a penalty but a glory.
"Rejoice at such a moment," says Jesus, "and be glad."
The word for "be glad" is from the verb, "agalliasthai", which has been derived from two Greek words
which mean to leap exceedingly.
It is the joy which leaps for joy.
As it has been said that it is the joy of the climber who has reached the summit, and who leaps for joy
that the mountain is conquered.
To suffer persecution is to make things easier for those who are to follow.
Today we enjoy the blessing of liberty because men in the past were willing to buy it for us
at the cost of blood, and sweat, and tears.
They made it easier for us, and by a steadfast and immovable witness for Christ we may make it easier
for others who are still to come.
In the building of the great Boulder Dam in America many men lost their lives in that project
which was to turn a dust-bowl into fertile land.
When Boulder Dam was completed, the names of those who had died were put on a tablet
and the tablet was put into the great wall of the dam, and on it there was the inscription.
"These died that the desert might rejoice and blossom as the rose."
The man who fights his battle for Christ will always make things easier for those who follow after.
For them there will be one less struggle to be encountered on the way.
Still further, no man ever suffers persecution alone.
If a man is called upon to bear material loss, the failure of friends, slander, loneliness, even the death of love,
for his principles, he will not be left alone.
Christ will be nearer to him than at any other time.
The story in Daniel tells how Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace
heated seven times hot because of their refusal to move from their loyalty to God.
The courtiers watched. "Did we not cast three men, bound, into the fire?" they asked.
The reply was that it was indeed so.
Then came the astonished answer, "But I see four men, loose, walking in the midst of the fire,
and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods." (Daniel.3:19-25)
Browning said on Christmas Eve and Easter Day:
"I was born sickly, poor and mean,
A slave; no misery could screen
The holders of the pearl of price
From Caesar's envy; therefore twice
I fought with beasts, and three times saw
My children suffer by his law;
At last my own release was earned;
I was some time in being burned,
But at the close a Hand came through
The fire above my head, and drew
My soul to Christ, whom now I see.
Sergius, a brother, writes for me
This testimony on the wall--
For me, I have forgot it all."
When one has to suffer something for his faith, that is the way to the closest possible companionship with Christ.
There remains only one question to ask.
Why is this persecution so inevitable?
It is inevitable because the Church, when it really is the Church, is bound to be the conscience of the nation
and the conscience of society.
Where there is good the Church must praise.
Where there is evil, the Church must condemn.
And inevitably men will try to silence the troublesome voice of conscience.
It is not the duty of the individual Christian habitually to find fault, to criticize, to condemn,
but it may well be that his every action is a silent condemnation of the unchristian lives of others,
and he will not escape their hatred.
It is not likely that death awaits us because of our loyalty to the Christian faith.
But insult awaits the man who insists on Christian honor.
Mockery awaits the man who practices Christian love and Christian forgiveness.
Actual persecution may well await the Christian in industry who insists on doing an honest day's work.
Christ still needs his witnesses.
He needs those who are prepared, not so much to die for Him, as to live for Him.
The Christian struggle and the Christian glory still exist.
Our Beatitudes close with the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven and the exhortation to rejoice in gladness.
Our journey has ended on a triumphant note of Resurrection joy.
What we have lost, we have been given back in double measure, an Easter gift for eternity,
and our cups are running over.
"All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seekest it in My arms."
— FRANCIS THOMPSON
This concludes the eighth Beatitude.
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