To be a confessing Christian is to be one who longs to act, think and be more like Jesus, and one who, along that journey of transformation, admits deep need for God’s power, grace and body. Lent is a time to re-admit this need.
In the early years of The Way of Jesus, persecution was the norm. One of the readings from this Sunday’s lectionary comes from an epistle Paul wrote from prison (Philippians 3:4b-14). He was in prison for being a Christian. There have been, and still are, countless “red martyrs‖men and women who bleed while they bear witness to an unbelieving world that ultimate hope is found in Jesus and his Kingdom of forgiveness and love and justice. But the majority of this blog’s readers don’t know what this kind of suffering is like. Sure, we understand, at least in some sense, the world’s inevitable suffering–broken relationship, death come too soon, loss of a job, and so on. But what about when death comes too soon because of the name of the one we call Lord? What about losing a job, e.g., an academic position, or even campus access for his name? These things do happen, but they’ve never happened to me, and they haven’t happened to most of you. So how can we possibly understand this sacrifice? [Read more…] about White Martyrdom and the Unpersecuted People of God