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The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
O God, who hast taught us to keep all thy commandments by loving thee and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to thee with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 9)
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The Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
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Scripture citation(s): Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
on
Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42
✛
There is no Armchair Christianity: the Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church.
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On Thursday, we celebrated the great feast of St. Peter and St. Paul and their martyrdoms in Rome. Traditionally, on the day after their twin-feast day, many churches honor the memory of all the early martyrs of the Roman church. Writing to that Church in our Epistle reading today, Paul says, “Now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Poignantly for Peter and Paul and the early martyrs of the Roman Church, that free gift of eternal life came through actual physical death, following the persecution of the early Christians by the Emperor Nero, and the persecutions authorized by subsequent Roman authorities, most notably under the reign of the Emperor Diocletian.
In the eyes of the world, this would seem to be a disaster but, for many who witnesses the spectacle of the killing of Christians in the Roman Empire, it was astonishing that the early martyrs of the church were never seen as failures or even victims, often going to their deaths with grace and fortitude, and making the sign of the cross as they died. Writing in Carthage around the end of the Second century, Tertullian explains the importance of those early martyrs. The Latin phrased is hard to translate poetically.[1]
but is usually transliterated as “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” This is echoed in today’s collect when we recall that the ‘Church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.’
The Greek word for martyr means ‘witness’ – and Jesus prepared his disciples to become, in every way, martyrs. For some, it took a while to truly understand this calling: Peter failed the first time, when given the opportunity to bear witness on the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested, he denied Jesus three times. Paul had to change his name because, as Saul, he had persecuted the church and approved of Stephen’s murder, ironically witnessing the death of the first martyr – a death he would also, one day, embrace himself. Through their martyrdoms, Peter and Paul inspired generations of Christians to follow their example and to bear witness to Jesus Christ.
In our Gospel reading over the past three Sundays, we have heard Jesus preparing his disciples for mission, sending them out to share in his own ministry, and preparing them to be rejected. Today, we hear the end of this period of instruction with these simple words: “Whoever welcomes you, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
It is so easy to think that our mission is exactly that, ours – when, in actual fact, it has never been ours but God’s mission, belonging to Jesus; a mission that he invites us to share even today.
Last week, we were reminded of the consequences of bearing witness to Jesus – “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” But we also heard of the consequences of not bearing witness to Jesus – “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” To bear witness to Jesus is to live in the manner of his life and to live in his ways. It is not enough to simply welcome Jesus in the mass or in the beautiful church building; we are called to welcome Jesus in others when we leave this place, and to bear witness to him in our everyday lives. I think it was the charismatic evangelist Joyce Meyer who famously said, “If you are accused of being a Christian, there should be enough evidence to convict you.” As we welcome Jesus in this Eucharist today, will we bear witness to him for the rest of this week, or will our bearing witness to Jesus conveniently have to wait until July 9th as we put our socks on getting ready for mass?
The sentence before today’s Gospel reading makes it clear: “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” As Fr. Schultz so powerfully put it last week, “We can only be heralds of death’s undoing if we ourselves risk being undone by love, for love, and in love. Which means: there is no armchair Christianity.”
No armchair Christianity. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.
Let me give you a modern-day example. On the day of his death, Archbishop Oscar Romero was preaching a homily at a memorial service for the mother of the editor of a newspaper, a close family friend. The Gospel of the day was John 12:23-26 in which Jesus says, “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. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.”’
Romero lived in the spirit of bearing witness to Jesus and his mission, not simply his own. Listen to some of the words from his sermon on that Gospel, preached at the beginning of Passiontide: “You just heard the Gospel of Christ: we must not love our lives so much that we avoid taking the risks in life that history calls for. Those who seek to shun danger will lose their lives, whereas those who for love of Christ dedicate themselves to the service of others will live. They are like that grain of wheat that dies, at least in appearance. If the grain does not die, it remains alone (John 12:24-25). If it yields a crop, it is because it dies, allowing itself to be immolated in the earth; it is by being dismantled that it produces the crop.”
Romero was not assassinated in his Cathedral, or attempting to do something extraordinarily brave; he was not killed in a stadium preaching to hundreds of thousands, nor as he travelled the world. He was in a little hospital chapel, with a congregation of a few Carmelite nuns and the family of the dead woman he had come to pray for. It was a low mass with no processions, no incense, not even music. The call of Jesus to bear witness to him can be heard in the smallest of gestures and the simplest of tasks.
Romeo went on to preach about the eucharist and how we can be united with Jesus in his self-offering in the mass; he said this, “May this body that was immolated and this flesh that was sacrificed for humankind also nourish us so that we can give our bodies and our blood to suffering and pain, as Christ did, not for our own sake but to bring justice and peace to our people. Let us therefore join closely together in faith and hope at this moment of prayer for Doña Sarita and ourselves.” It was at that moment that the shot rang out.
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.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
There is no armchair Christianity.
Sermon Audio
References
| ↑1 | Plures efficimur, quotiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum. Tertullian: Apologeticus, L.13. |
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