Martyrs here, martyrs now

In his own time, Jesus was not a very famous guy.  He was not a political or military leader who would have made headlines.  He lived and taught in the boondocks of the Roman Empire.  Despite that, there is enough documentary evidence outside of Scripture to convince most historians that a charismatic, itinerant preacher named Jesus lived and taught in first-century Palestine.  We even hear from Roman historians that this preacher was crucified during the rule of Pontius Pilate.  However, the resurrection is another story.  It is a non-historical event.  Nobody had ever done this before, nobody has done it since.  Non-Christians at the time wrote off the early disciples’ claims as a mere hoax, or perhaps simply the imaginings of desperate, powerless peasants.

So, why are we here today, celebrating our belief in the one who conquered death?  Why do over one billion people in the world today believe?  Largely because virtually all of those desperate, powerless peasants were killed in agonizing and horrible ways simply because they believed what could not be proven.  They could have denied their story and lived, but they did not.  Tertullian, a second-century Church father, noted that the blood of these martyrs was the seed of the church.  Seed that died, and seed that bore great fruit.

But the age of martyrs continues.  Today, the church celebrates the witness of St. Paul Miki and his companions, 26 people who, like Jesus, were crucified – not in Jerusalem, but outside Nagasaki, Japan in 1597.  It makes sense that we read the end of Matthew’s gospel on St. Paul’s day when Jesus tells the disciples to “teach all nations,” promising to be with us until the end of the age, for Japan in 1597 was far-off in both distance and time from that mountaintop in first-century Galilee.

Over two hundred years after St. Paul and his friends witnessed to Jesus with their lives, Christian missionaries were once more allowed to preach in Japan.  They found almost no trace of Christian faith as it had been rigorously persecuted for centuries.  In time, though, they discovered thousands of people living around Nagasaki who had secretly preserved the faith preached by St. Paul Miki as he hung on his cross.

There was a time in my life, not so long ago, when I, like perhaps many others around me, only knew of these martyrs in stories that happened in times long past and in far distant places.  Surely, while these accounts could encourage me in my own faith, such things would never happen here!  And while I knew that Jesus had called each one of us to pick up a cross and follow him, I was sure my cross would not be a literal cross like that of St. Paul Miki and his friends.  I was blessed, fortunate to live in an enlightened society with great freedoms and wealth.  For people like me, a figurative cross would be so much easier to bear.

I was wrong, so very wrong.

In the past month, I have seen – first hand, in the flesh, not just in some book or heard from in some far-off place – people who picked up and carried a cross that they or I could never have imagined;  people who embraced that  cross in a way that I can only pray to have to courage to do.

They witnessed to me – as they witnessed to our country and to the entire world – by carrying a cross of love in the face of hate; by celebrating the joy of life in the face of desperate loss and sadness; and by offering God’s mercy and gentleness in the face of great evil and violence.

While I continue to mourn the great loss and pain we have suffered in Newtown, I thank God for the great faith of those who bore this cross most intimately.  Their witness has made the kingdom of God more real to all of us in Newtown today, and, like the witnesses of the early martyrs, like the witness of St. Paul Miki and his companions, will continue to make the kingdom more present to all the nations until the end of the age.

Thanks be to God.