Texts:  Rev 2:8-11, 2 Cor 4:5-18, Mark 13:7-13                                        2^nd Lent Midweek

“Don’t Be Afraid to Suffer”

            In the name of him who was dead and came back to life, dear friends in Christ: last week we began our series of meditations on the letters of the Lord Jesus to the seven churches of Revelation.  We observed that these letters contain words of encouragement and also of rebuke and correction that have direct application to all Christian churches today.  When we met here last week, we heard about the church at Ephesus, and how the Lord said that they were in danger of losing their first love – that they had fallen into attitudes of legalism that threatened to destroy their faith in the Gospel message; and that how they should repent, and return to their original understanding of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in the sacrificial death of the Lord for our sin.

Tonight we’ve come to the second letter: the one to the church at Smyrna.  Smyrna was a city located about 35 miles northwest of Ephesus; and though today that city is nothing but ruins, Smyrna has become the modern city of Izmir, home to about half a million people.  The name “Smyrna” means “myrrh”, which is a highly prized aromatic resin used make perfumes and scented lotions.  You may remember that it was one of the gifts presented to the infant Jesus by the worshipping Magi.  And in the ancient world, it was favored especially for use in preparing bodies for burial.  Presumably, Smyrna was a place where the shrub like trees from which myrrh is taken were found in abundance – hence its name.

The first Christian church there was probably planted by people evangelized and trained by St. Paul or St. John, and so it belonged to what might be thought of as the second generation of churches – those not directly founded by an apostle of the Lord.  And, to make things difficult, there were a couple extraordinary circumstances in Smyrna that militated against the planting and growth of a Christian church.  The first was that the city was an important center for the imperial cult of Rome.  And by that I don’t mean so much the worship of Roman gods like Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury; what I mean is the worship of the Roman Emperors.  You may recall that the Roman Senate had proclaimed Caesar Augustus a god after his death.  They dedicated temples to him and decreed that sacrifices should be offered to him throughout the empire.  They did the same with his successor, Tiberius Caesar.  Augustus and Tiberius were the two Emperors who reigned during the life and ministry of Jesus.  The next Emperor, Gaius (who was called Caligula), declared that he had become a god while still living among the mortals, and he demanded to be worshipped as such. The Romans obliged; and after that they pretty much got into the habit of making all their emperors gods while they lived.

Now, most places in the empire, the people were polytheistic pagans of various sorts.  They were used to the idea of having lots of gods and goddesses, and so the addition of a few more was really no big deal to them.  When the Senate announced a new god in the person of the emperor (either living or dead), people in the cities and provinces throughout the empire did what was required to make their Roman conquerors happy.  To do anything less would have been viewed as disloyalty or treason.  But some cities, like Smyrna, eager to show their enthusiastic support of Rome (and hoping to win points with their conquerors) would go all out.  You see, the Romans would sometimes grant special favors or privileges to a city, like a special deal on taxes, or, what was coveted by all, the rights of Roman citizenship.  And in hopes of securing such favors, some cities would really kiss up, so to speak. In the Army we called it “bootlicking” (or other terms that are unrepeatable here from the pulpit), and I know there are a lot of other terms to describe it; but you know what I mean: that fawning over those in authority for the purpose of gaining special treatment.  That’s what the citizens of Smyrna did with respect to the cult of the Roman Emperors. They built magnificent temples and performed lavish rituals to honor these so-called emperor gods in the hopes that the Romans would see their great devotion and reward them accordingly.

But, of course, the Christians refused to recognize and worship any god except the Lord.  That refusal made others think of them as traitors.  Their refusal to offer sacrifices to honor the emperor was seen as an act of rebellion.  Add the fact that they were said to worship a man who had been condemned and crucified by the Romans for the crime of claiming to be a king in opposition to Caesar, and you can see how they were vulnerable to all kinds of slanderous accusations.  So, while Christians – even though they were good, law abiding citizens – were getting a bad name for failing to worship the emperor, the citizens of Smyrna, already predisposed to kissing up to Rome, thought they could earn extra points by arresting, torturing, and persecuting these terrible outlaws.  They thought the Romans would smile on them all the more when they saw how zealously they punished anyone who would dare insult their emperor god.

Then, on top of this, there was in Smyrna a fairly large Jewish population.  In the first century, the Jews, in general, hated Christ, the Gospel, and all Christians – and they did everything they could to stamp them out.  But outside of Judea, they usually didn’t have a lot of authority because they only made up a small percentage of the population.  Now, in Smyrna, when the pagan citizens started persecuting the Christians, the Jews were only too happy to keep things stirred up by making all kinds of outrageous accusations against the followers of Jesus.  Like everyone else, they denounced them for being disloyal to Rome for not worshipping the emperor.  Which was kind of ironic, because the Jews refused to do it too – the difference was that they had special permission dating back to the days of Augustus that allowed them to get away with it.  But the Jews made other accusations.  For example, because they heard that the Christians had a ritual in which they consumed the body and blood of the Lord, they went around telling everyone that the Christians were cannibals.  This made people hate and persecute Christians all the more.

The result of all this was that it made Smyrna a very tough place to be a Christian.  They were arrested and put in prison.  They had their property confiscated.  From time to time they suffered attacks from angry mobs, who beat them and destroyed their homes; and when things like that happened they could get no help or protection from local authorities.  When things were really bad, the Christians were tortured; sometimes they were forced to face wild animals in the city stadium; and some were even nailed to posts, surrounded by piles of bundled sticks, and burned alive.

Small wonder then, that the Lord, when he dictates the letter to this beleaguered church, describes himself as the one who has overcome death.  It is an important reminder to these hard-pressed people that before them, he too was maligned, arrested, beaten, forced to suffer unjustly, and was tortured to death for the sake of the truth—but that wasn’t the end.  It was the path that led to life and eternal joy, not only for himself, but also for everyone who would place their hope and trust in him.

He tells these Christians, “I know your afflictions and poverty—yet you are rich!”  No, certainly not rich in the eyes of the world – not with the sorts of things that people try to acquire to bring short-lived security and happiness in this life; but fabulously wealthy with the unseen lasting treasures given by the Holy Spirit:  faith, forgiveness, eternal life, and the peace of God that passes all understanding. They had riches that would endure forever, and that no one could take away from them.

            And then, in what is certainly the least severe word of rebuke contained in any of the seven letters to the churches, the Lord tells them, “Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer.”  He then foretells what he describes as “ten days” of persecution that they will suffer at Satan’s hands.  And consistent with the apocalyptic nature of the Revelation, we need to understand that these ten days are symbolic:  they are not ten literal days, but refer to an unspecified but relatively short period of intense affliction.  The point is that the Lord himself has set its duration and determined its end.  And we find this is historically true:  whenever and wherever the church has suffered periods of extreme persecution, the periods tend to be rather brief – and here’s what’s amazing:  it’s usually the patient suffering and great faith shown by persecuted Christians that eventually leads their tormentors to stop their attacks.  The persecutors begin to admire the calm acceptance and steadfastness displayed by faithful Christians when facing death and torture – some, even to the point of wanting to learn more about a faith so strong that it could lead people to behave so. Before long the attackers stop; and we even find that the church often grows when it’s under the most pressure. All the more reason for us all to heed the Lord’s command not to fear – especially in times of persecution.

            Fear, please understand, is caused by lack of trust in God’s promises.  Fear is a major symptom of unbelief.  It comes by focusing on the present earthly danger or discomfort (the things that are seen and experienced) rather than looking at Christ and ahead to the glorious goal (the things that are unseen).  Think of St. Peter walking on the water.  He was fine as long as he looked at Jesus.  He started to sink when he turned his attention to the wind and waves – that’s when he began to doubt and fear.  And it’s in our fear that Satan finds one of his most powerful allies in his attack on the church of Jesus Christ.

First, because fear causes the church to surrender its clear confession of the truth.  You see, faith, true faith, always leads to the confession of the faith.  Like we heard from St. Paul in the reading from 2 Corinthians:  “I believed, therefore I have spoken.”  The same Spirit that creates faith in us also compels us to speak our faith.  We want to announce it to the world.  We want to share its life-giving message with others.  But when fear enters in, we become afraid to speak out.  We become worried that the message might offend or cause confrontation or division, so fear silences the Gospel.  Or in an effort to make the Gospel message more agreeable, fear may cause us to change its message.  For example, it may cause us to eliminate the scandal of the cross, disavow the exclusivity of the Gospel, or allow for some measure of human merit in the plan of salvation.  Whatever it is, the church stops proclaiming the whole truth – and if you’re only feeding Christians part of the way, you’re going to end up with underfed Christians who are ill equipped to face the foe.

Second, fear causes denial of the truth.  Take St. Peter on the night of Jesus’ arrest. Though he had shortly before sworn that he would gladly die beside his Lord, when put to the test, fear caused him to deny that he even knew Jesus. 

Finally, fear can cause faith to be abandoned altogether.  In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus speaks of the grains that fell on rocky soil.  The plants sprang up quickly, but when the heat of the day came, they withered and died. He explained that these represented those with shallow faith who, when persecution came, gave in to their fears and renounced the saving truth of the Gospel.  

            Which is why Jesus tells the Christians at Smyrna not to fear what will come upon them, but instead to cling all the more to the faith in Christ that saves, continuing to speak it out clearly even in the face of Satan’s attacks.

Now, perhaps it may seem that this admonition from the Lord, as important as it is, is far removed from us. Yes, the church is being persecuted in various parts of the world – and some Christians (especially in Moslem countries) are facing such things as forced conversion, loss of property, arrest, rape, and even murder.  But there’s nothing like that going on around here.  No one is threatening to imprison us, or torture us, or put us to death. Agreed.  But that’s all the more reason to be ashamed that we too are subject to fear.

In our little Synod, like the church at Smyrna, we are not the biggest, not the richest, not the most popular church around.  But we are rich:  rich in the Gospel and God’s truth  – and often terribly maligned by others who call themselves Christians precisely because we insist on sticking to the truth.  But this runs us afoul of what might be thought of as the American civil religion.  It’s the idea that all religions are equal, and that all paths lead to heaven, and that no one group has all the right answers.  It’s a cult of inclusion that is willing to mix and match statements of faith so that each person can have his or her own designer religion.  It’s what the pagans of our days believe, and they take offense when we refuse to confess the same thing.  And here’s the sad part: we are not faced with a tiny fraction of the peril faced by the Christians at Smyrna, but we often allow ourselves to be afraid of it.  Though the worst thing that will happen is that they will call us “intolerant”, “bigoted”, or “arrogant”, still we let these threats cause us to fear; fear that forces us into silence, compromise, denial, and I’m afraid that for some, the forsaking of the faith altogether.

So, like the church at Smyrna, we will do well to listen to the Lord’s warning not to fear.  And when do we feel afraid, we need to recognize that it’s Satan’s ally in our midst, and repent of our lack of trust and turn again to him who said, “Don’t fear, for I have overcome the world.”  If you are with him, there really is nothing that can harm you.  Recognizing that, we will be encouraged all the more to speak the faith that we believe; and we, like the Christian congregation at Smyrna, will be a fragrant offering to the Lord.

Jesus said, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you a crown of life.”  So may give us his Holy Spirit to keep us both faithful and fearless.  In his holy name.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!