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Ten years ago I wrote a book on martyrdom, Christian martyrdom, on how Christianity can neither be understood or practiced without also understanding martyrdom, without also, at least in principle, being open to it for oneself.[1] I also suggested that if we wanted to know how to behave as genuine Christians today—in this post-truth, politicized, and violent world—then we should imitate the early Christian martyrs, because they simply spoke truth and suffered, refusing violence, as Jesus did. Because they didn’t believe the lie that we believe, that one can be both a Christian and comfortable in the world.

The idea came from a former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey; we were having dinner with him, and I was telling him about my work. It was his suggestion that what was missing among Western Christians today, particularly, was an understanding of martyrdom. Just a few years after 9/11 with fears of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and jihadi extremists, it was understandable, he said, that Christians in the West would want to distance themselves even from the word “martyr.” But which would be devastating for Christians to do—to think that Christianity did not necessarily involve conflict and suffering and death, to think Christianity was comfortable, to think that Christianity could exist without martyrdom. That’s why I wrote my little book on martyrdom, which I think a total of five people have read. Because I wanted to learn more about real Christianity—the hard, genuine thing and not the soft, false replica.

You see, I had always been influenced by those Christians who were also the causers of conflict. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the first such hero for me. Not only had he been arrested for justice and basic humanity, martyred too, he was also a preacher unafraid to pack a punch. “[A]ny preacher who allows members to tell him what to preach isn’t much of a preacher,” he said. “I got…my anointment from God Almighty,” he told his congregation. “And anything I want to say, I’m going to say it from this pulpit.”[2] King was a causer of conflict, and I admired him for it. He was a Christian, and it killed him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was another hero. A Lutheran theologian and pastor, he was killed by the Nazis; he had conspired against them, preached against Hitler. “Do and dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment,” he wrote.[3] He talked about “cheap grace,” a “poison” ruining the Church.[4] We Christians are guilty, he said: guilty of not proclaiming the full counsel of God, guilty of not keeping Sunday holy, guilty of not speaking up about sexual immorality, guilty of not speaking up to power, guilty of desiring security and power for ourselves. We have “not borne witness to the truth of God,” he said; we’ve not been honest about our “defection from Christ.”[5] He accused himself first: “I am guilty of cowardly silence…I am guilty of disloyalty and of apostasy from Christ,” he wrote—Bonhoeffer, one of our best.[6] Killed, as I said, by the Nazis in 1945; his face, even those evil guards noted, was “shining with happiness.”[7]

You see my point, hopefully. You see why these are my heroes; these are but a few of them. I don’t need to explain very much why I think people like King and Bonhoeffer, why the early Christian martyrs, are heroes of the faith for me. Because they were Christians, plain and simple; because they reveal what Christians can and should be doing, and that’s causing trouble. Not peace, Jesus said, but rather division. The world hated me, so it will hate you too, he said.[8] “I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian,” the martyr, Saint Perpetua, said to her father; those words drove him crazy; he tried to beat her Christianity out of her.[9] You know what I mean. You know what Jesus means. “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, rather, division.”[10] Father against son, mother against daughter, you know what Jesus means here. It’s not a question of understanding but of will. It’s a question about whether we’ve got the guts to be Christians, or whether we think just talking a good game will do.

The problem is that we’ve made the mistake of thinking that being good Christians should make us good citizens, good neighbors, good, stable rulers of the world. We Christians for too long have been the curators of the world; we Christians have become the world. Jacques Ellul, the French theologian, said the problem is that Christians have lost their “style of life,” that their spiritual condition no longer affects them; rather, Christians today are instead shaped solely by their sociological conditions—by class, by nation, by economics.[11] See, for example, the grotesque mutations Christianity has suffered in our own time in our own country. It’s because we’ve not heard Jesus here, or either just not believed him, that we really should choose him over the world, peaceful suffering and death over violence, that we really should sometimes choose conflict instead of negative peace. This is what we refuse to accept, this very difficult invitation. Because we prefer to get by, prefer not to carry any sort of cross. Because crucifixion looks painful, and we want nothing to do with it. Even if it means missing out on the resurrection, hoping at the very least that maybe we’ll be able to buy Easter on the cheap, not looking at his scars, pretending not to hear him when asks, “Where are yours?”

Friends, you know what I mean. You know the cost of Christ’s grace. You know it’s free but not cheap. You know we’ve got a long way to go, that we’re a long way off from anything like being genuine disciples—I raise my hand first! I’m still trying to get Catholics to open their Bibles, go to Mass on Sundays like they ought to; we’ve got a long way to go before we’re the Christians God wants us to be. And thank God that God is infinitely patient, that he loves us so and waits for us. But goodness gracious, let’s stop messing around and try giving real Christianity a chance. Let’s love so much we get in trouble for it. Let’s forgive our enemies, the worst ones. Let’s pray in public. Let’s stand up for the family, for the unborn, the poor, the migrant—you know what Jesus would say! Let’s cause trouble in the name of Christ. Let’s be what we’re called to be—witnesses of Jesus Christ in life and even death. Shining with happiness and singing alleluia before a dark uncomprehending world no matter what; for death where is thy sting?[12] Amen.

[1] Joshua J. Whitfield, Pilgrim Holiness: Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness

[2] Martin Luther King, Jr., A Knock at Midnight, 112

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Stations on the Way to Freedom”

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 57-58

[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 110-116

[6] Ibid., 113

[7] Malcom Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered, 180

[8] John 15:18

[9] The Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas 3.2-3

[10] Luke 12:51

[11] Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 121

[12] 1 Corinthians 15:55

© 2019 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield