The Christian Problem

Vacation is over and I'm back to my regular schedule. Preaching has resumed.
Pentecost 11
August 8, 2010
Ruskin Heights Lutheran Church
Luke 12:32-40

Pliny the Younger was the governor of Bithynia — a Roman province on the Black Sea — and he had a problem way, way back in the year 110.

It was a Christian problem.

More properly, it was a problem with the Christians — the few that were living there, at any rate. They weren’t numerous, but they were being a pain in the neck for his otherwise well-ordered province.

Charges had been brought against some Christians, and he had to deal with them. He had never had much contact with Christians, and he was unsure of how to proceed with the cases. He wrote a memo to the Roman emperor, Trajan, and he outlined for the emperor the steps he had taken.

“The method I have employed towards those who have been denounced to me as Christians is as follows:

“I interrogated them as to whether they were Christians. If they confessed, I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment. If they persisted, I ordered them to be executed, men, women, and their children.”

Governor Pliny goes on to note that since he actually knew very little about what Christians actually believed, he . . . “judged it necessary to extract the real truth, with the assistance of torture, from two women who were called ‘deaconnesses’.”

The emperor wrote back.

“The methods you have employed in sifting the cases of those denounced to you as Christians is extremely proper.”

Violence against Christians was an on-again, off-again enterprise in the early Roman years. Sometimes, investigations, trials, and executions were instigated by the government. Sometimes — as in the case of Governor Pliny in Bithynia — the Christians just fell victim to the prejudice and ignorance of their non-Christian neighbors. They were denounced to the authorities. These flare-ups were random, unpredictable, sharp, and almost always violent.

Harassed and pursued in a hostile world, I have often wondered what these early Christians would have felt when at worship these words were read to them.

“Have no fear little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Sell your possession; give generously to the poor, store treasure in heaven; keep up the housework until I get back.”

Caught as they sometimes were in actual life and death situations, these words of Jesus had to sound — what?

Strange?
Comforting?
Pie-in-the-shy?

If you were an early second century Christian, how could you plan for tomorrow?
Would Visa consider you a good credit risk?
You’d probably want a short, adjustable rate mortgage.

What did those people hear when this Gospel was read to them?
Was it something that would cheer them?
Would they have heard this with some new hope, some renewed confidence, some revitalized sense of determination?

For that matter, what do we hear?
We live these days with our own sense of threat hanging over us.
If the Christians of the second century lived in unsettling and unsettled times, so do we no less.

We face different threats, maybe, but we face them.

We’re located in a poor area of Kansas City that is growing poorer, and fewer, as this area loses population.

We know too readily that since 1987 our congregation has lost about 85 percent of its original membership.

Police calls are up, school scores are down, and lots of schools have closed.

Nobody is actively out to kill Christians — not in Kansas City — but let’s don’t forget those old ravages named in that marvelous phrase “sin, death, and the devil.”

Remember, when we pray evening prayers in Lent we ask God “let your holy angels have charge of us”? Why? We pray it “so the evil one will have no power over us.”

I suppose these remarks of Jesus to his disciples and followers do sound a little unsophisticated — maybe these words are just the words you’d expect from a guy who had his head too high in the clouds; just words.

But think again who said these words.
Didn’t he himself face the same dangers of this world?
Didn’t he himself know there were enemies out to get him?
Didn’t he walk the world as a poor man, rich only in God?
Didn’t his flesh go the way of all flesh?

It’s like this:

If you know this world eventually is going to get everything you’ve got — whether by economic disaster today or by death tomorrow — what final hope is there, except the hope proclaimed to us in God’s Word?

That’s how Jesus lived.
That’s how the Christians along the Black Sea lived when Pliny was their governor.
That’s how Christians of every age have lived.
Some things never change.
And one thing that never changes is the word of our Lord:

So. . .
Pull up your shorts.
Light a lamp,
Give generously to the poor
Tend the housework until the master returns and above all,
Remember,
Fear not, the Father has given you the kingdom.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen