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| Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity By Anonymous - http://days.pravoslavie.ru/Images/ii2736&4000.htm, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20576321 |
For all the saints who from their labors rest...
St. Barnabas again celebrated All Saints with committing and interring ashes instead of baptizing people. It was good to give a measure of closure to a family, while also commemorating the place of the saints in our lives as those who are still with us...even if we don't see them any more.
The Gospel was Luke's version of the Beatitudes. It was interesting to me to consider the blessing of being persecuted as a "saintly quality." And then I remembered my first church history lesson in seminary.
And thus begins this sermon for All Saints' Sunday, Year C....
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Texts for the Sunday: Daniel 7:1-3,
15-18; Psalm 149; Eph. 1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31
Prayer: O God, open our ears that we might hear you; open our eyes that we might see you; open our hearts to the wonders of your love. Amen.
As I
was studying our Gospel…with Jesus giving us a litany of blessings and woes…and
thinking about this being our celebration of All Saints Day… I was reminded of two
of our very earliest holy women: Perpetua and Felicity.
Who
are they? I’ll tell you!
They
were two women of the third century … who faced persecution and were martyred
for being Christians in the time of Roman oppression.
Perpetua
is the one we know the most about because she kept a diary of her ordeal.
Both
she and Felicity were pregnant and gave birth in prison and surrendered their
children to family members to raise and care for them. Perpetua’s father kept
pleading with her to renounce her beliefs, but she refused. She had visions
while in prison… a little like a reading from Daniel… where she felt confirmed in
her faith in Christ and her rejection of the demands of Roman society. Perpetua
was supposed to devote her life to caring for her father. Instead…she was devoted
her life to Christ.
Eventually,
she and Felicity and the other Christian martyrs were brought to the
amphitheater, whipped by gladiators…and then the Romans unleashed a boar, a
bear, a leopard and a wild cow to attack them. An editor finished Perpetua’s
diary…noting that after the wild beasts had had their way with the Christians…
these Christians gave each other a kiss of peace as soldiers stabbed them with
swords. Perpetua’s executioner was apparently new on the job and not very
skilled… so she reportedly took his weapon and helped him…with joy… to slash
her neck. And the story ends with extolling the virtues of these early martyrs
of Christianity.
Such
an account of a life certainly leaves one to ponder the meaning of “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you,
revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man.”! (Lk.6:22)
At the Inquiry class on Wednesday night, a question
came up about saints and the meaning of saints. Do we worship saints?
The short answer is “No, we don’t worship them. We look
to them as examples of a life well-lived in a Godward direction that we should learn
about and then emulate.”
Fortunately, we aren’t living in a time and place where
we’re jailed for our Christianity.
And—thanks be to God—we don’t have to worry about being
fed to wild animals as sport for the masses to show our faithfulness to Jesus.
But what we can take from a story of two women such as
Perpetua and Felicity is an example of remaining faithful and sticking close to
the Source of our faith even when all the odds are stacked against us and there
is enormous pressure for us to turn away from our faith.
That tension still exists in our world today in big and
small ways.
Election season always seems to bring out the worst in
us.
I was once asked how the state legislature in Florida
might address the problem of bullying in schools.
“Well,” I said, “We might start with the political ads
y’all run during the campaigns. Kids see their political leaders mocking and
attacking each other; what do you think they’re going to do in school?”
(I was never invited back to participate in such public
policy discussions again).
We didn’t hear this part today…but Jesus’ address to
the crowd with these blessings and woes was delivered “on the plain.”
In Matthew’s version, they’re with him on the mountain.
But here in Luke…Jesus is on the level with everybody…laying
out the Beatitudes.
How do we take what Jesus says here?
Some have read these words as saying that things will
be so much better for those who are poor, hungry, and weeping when they die and
go to heaven.
Your life is terrible on earth; it will be so happy
when you’re dead.
I don’t believe that’s what Jesus is saying.
What we must remember…especially since this is Luke’s
Gospel: Jesus IS the poor, the hungry, the weeping.
Jesus is talking in the present moment… both his and
ours.
Jesus is a member of the oppressed… and occupied…
Jewish people living under the rule of the Roman Empire.
These words…which seem so contradictory to logic… are a
way to remind his disciples… both the ones who were with him in the First Century
Palestine… and those of us still following him in the 21st Century…
that God is with those who are facing the powers and principalities hard at
work to undermine the confidence in Love.
Jesus is with us…especially the “us” being pushed
aside.
One man who knew this well was the 20th
Century theologian Howard Thurman.
Thurman is among my favorite religious thinkers. He
wrote several books…his most well-known one is called “Jesus and the
Disinherited.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. carried it with him everywhere
he went.
It contained the basic ideas that would become King’s
non-violent approach to the Civil Rights Movement.
Thurman had seen and experienced racism growing up in
Daytona Beach, Florida. Because he was black, there was no school for him to
attend beyond the seventh grade. But Thurman was determined. He was home-schooled
with the help of a school principal.
He completed and passed eighth grade and went on to live
with a family member in Jacksonville where he attended Florida Baptist Academy.
He graduated from Morehouse College and earned his seminary degree…and would go
on to start the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco.
Thurman’s vision was to create a worship space where all
people--white, black, brown, Asian—could come together in the presence of God…and
through God…discover the common bond that weaves us altogether.
The church had challenges.
There were disagreements.
But it is still in existence today.
No amount of racism or bigotry or obstacles thrown in
his way would stop Thurman from pursuing the dream of building Beloved
Community in the still very segregated era of 1940s America.
Thurman drew his strength and determination from his
deep belief in Jesus as one who knew what it was to be a disinherited.
A person for whom society was determined to keep down
and press their back against a wall.
And Thurman saw how Jesus answered the hate of his day
by remaining doggedly committed to acting out of a place of Love.
And so he made that same commitment.
While Thurman is not in our pantheon of Episcopal saints…
his is a life such as his that one can look to and see how the light of Christ
burned brightly in him.
That same light exists in each one of us.
We can live lives worthy of emulating.
We may never start a church… or go to our deaths proclaiming
our faith in Christ in the face of a bitter enemy.
We can see the anger and the hurt and
discord in our world…and face it with a spirit of mercy…compassion… and love.
Blessed are you who risk ridicule from the world to
remain steadfastly on the side of Love. In
the name of God…F/S/HS.
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