The Challenge of the Martyrs
8:00am Holy Communion
I Kings 19.9; Matthew 10.28-30
Angela Tilby,
Canon of Honour
Jesus said, ‘Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell’.
I’m glad we have the icon of Thomas of Canterbury in front of the altar this morning. It is a gift from Ruth Tuschling, our former Diocesan Spirituality Adviser, who is now living and ministering in her native Germany. Thomas confronts us with the challenge of martyrdom. To give your very life for God, to give your life to save your soul, to give your life as a witness and an inspiration. We have nothing of more value to give than our lives.
I have personally always found martyrdom really difficult. Would I have the courage to retain my faith, my integrity if I had the choice? If I had to face the dilemma that, if I renounced my faith, I could perhaps hold on to a few more years of life; while if I confessed my faith I would be killed. I don’t know about you, but I am a bit of coward. My fear is that I would run for it, that I would safety, that I would be overwhelmed by the need to hold on to the thing that I most value, which is my life.
And that is natural. Perhaps even forgivable. Think of St Peter, who we celebrated last week along with St Paul. The Lord Jesus Christ forgives our frailty, restores those who betray him. He knows whereof we are made, that we are but dust and ashes. And we are mortal. And frightened.
The martyr challenges our faith because he or she asks us to step beyond our natural fears, our trembling bodies and our whirling thoughts. The martyr says, why not keep faith with what we have just said in the Creed? Faith is keeping faith with the invisible world, it is keeping faith with God. The martyr trusts that this world in all its beauty and fascination is not all there is. The martyr trusts that the world all around us springs from, and rests on and travels towards an unseen source, an unimaginable destiny, a sustaining presence.
Martyrdom makes no sense in our time because our present day culture is drifting further and further away from belief. Most of us seem to have accepted that our world is a random accident, that life evolved by chance, that our life ends in death, that though we find some spiritual practice to allay our anxiety and make our lives temporarily happier, there is no meaning to it all, no judgement, no: ‘Well done, though good and faithful servant’ at the end. The universe is sublimely indifferent to everything that we do, to everything that we are.
This is the casual atheism which embraces our culture like a fog. And it is having catastrophic consequences. Let me spell out of a few of them. We have forgotten any sense that we might be accountable to God, or that we should obey God. Yet we drown in rules of our making in, tick boxes, bureaucracy. (Some of these rules are petty, some stupid, some unjust). But we made them. We have forgotten the command to love our neighbour us ourselves, and we have chosen to love ourselves instead. We put our convenience above our neighbours need. And so we trash the planet, as though its wildness and richness were simply there to be plundered. We continue to consume without limit. Meanwhile the nations struggle for land, for resources, for power. And as individuals we struggle for more autonomy, more choice, anything to pretend that we have some control in a world which is godless, empty of meaning and purpose, except for the meaning and purpose we choose to give it. Our world is simply indifferent. There is no father in heaven. No one looking out for us, or the sparrows for that matter.
When Elijah comes to his cave he hears God’s presence as a question: What are you doing here? And he speaks from his heart, of grief and violence and fear and sorrow. And God mimics his turbulence back to him in the earthquake, wind and fire. But then, when they die down, the Real breaks through: the still, small voice from the invisible world.
The life and death of martyrs is a gamble on that still small voice. They trust that this world is not just a bare fact, where the strong always get their way and the weak lose out. They trust that the world is a wonderful outflowing of God’s love and kindness which embraces us all, strong and weak, rich and poor, wise and foolish. This is all we have, and all is from God. Most of us can hardly even begin to respond to the love and grace of God, to the blessing of life itself, to the love we see broken and given for us in Christ.
Yet remember the words of the hymn: ‘Were the whole realm of nature mine, it were an offering far too small: Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all’. That is what the martyr demonstrates, life for life, death for death. And the outcome is death’s defeat and abundance of love. That is the path we are challenged to follow. Today, tomorrow and every day of our lives.