The place of martyrdom in Christian history complicates our sense of right and wrong. It makes us think outrage is the point.
justifying both ends and means
James Hannington and his Companions
John 15:17–27
I’m tempted to cheat and invite us to honor John Wyclif, who the church remembers tomorrow…rather than deal with today’s subject. Of course, I can’t do that. Just acknowledging the desire makes that clear.
As is often the case, we have little to actually honor James Hannington for. His isn’t an illustrious life full of great accomplishment, miracles, or prodigious art. We remember James Hannington and his companions for their martyrdom.
Martyrdom in Christian history has been a source of great confusion, conflict, and in recent years, great suspicion. The concept of Christian martyrs fueled the rise of Christianity early on and served as a huge part of Christian mythology for centuries.
But Christian martyrdom, particularly the most famous martyrs in the first century, has little evidence to support it. In fact, in its two thousand years, Christians have not been martyred in greater numbers than other groups.
In other words, Christians have had a martyr complex for a really long time.
And it has justified some really terrible ideas.
When we approach the telling of this story of James Hannington and his companions, we can find ourselves easily telling the colonialist myth of “civilized” Christians murdered by “savages”— a vision of the world that is as distorting as it is racist. Such a vision is as easy to see as any number of my neighbors describing the defense of their homes as a “God-given right”.
This makes the hero and villain of the story hard to determine.
Given the distorting power of combining martyrdom, colonialism, and the spreading of the Gospel around the world, it would be easy to simply throw the story away. And I think, in this case, we’d be very justified in doing so. But just like I say when we honor terrible Christians from our past, perhaps we can learn something from this.
And for that, I invite us to re-examine the invitation Jesus gives us.
Speaking of Difference
Jesus is fond of speaking of the difference between what God wants and the world we inhabit. This division is central to Jesus’s primary thesis about the human relationship to the divine: that it is God’s way, not ours, that is most important.
But he invests that statement with a theology of overlap: that God isn’t just the pursuit, but the source. That there is a theological reason that means and ends both justify each other. That we cannot have peace by killing others or love of God without loving our neighbors. It’s all a package deal.
And the thing is, Jesus loves to contrast that with the world. We’ve got our junk so wrong. We’ve got to change if we want to see the change God is bringing into the world.
This thesis of change is central to Jesus’s teachings. And the contrast of the two kingdoms is a useful expression of that.
However, there is a downside.
This contrast can act like division and fixate our attention toward hatred of the world and love of the kingdom in ways that translate into worldly division. Not between love and compassion, but in a war between “sacred and secular”.
What we mean by “the world” starts to sound like “non-Christian” and the kingdom of God starts to sound like the church. We make jokes about people making a big deal about Starbucks cups and whether they are wished a merry Christmas, but this Us vs. Them vision is an utter distortion of Jesus’s teaching that also seem totally inevitable from the text.
And as long as we throw it in the theoretical bucket labeled “culture war” we are prone to dismiss it. Even when people are murdered for it.
The contrast between the missionaries who were murdered for what seems like colonial invasion and the late Episcopalian, Matthew Shepherd’s gruesome murder for being gay reveals just how confused and distorting our sense of martyrdom is, let alone what God’s kingdom on earth should actually be about.
Facing hatred
I am deeply conflicted by the end of Hannington’s story. Because the king who had killed him, in the end became Christian. Again, the kind of element in the story that colonialism distorts.
But…I think we should also choose to not be so cynical as that. For as Jesus no more seeks to have us be driven to division for his sake, but instead, to love unconditionally, he also preaches redemption. Where as all the law hangs from love of God and neighbor, the central movement of the faith is repentance: to turn toward God.
And just as many are seduced by the idea that we are waging a culture war on behalf of God, let us not see Jesus’s words as an invitation to condemn. But to simply be honest. That sin and hate are present. That our neighbors use racist bigotry and fear of losing power to hurt their neighbors. And that is awful. That is using the Lord’s name in vain.
And it gets worse.
That sin leads us to be convicted. Just like those who aided escaped slaves were criminalized and condemned. Those who organize workers, feed the hungry, clothe the needy, raise up the concerns of their neighbors, speak out against state violence.
“I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”
It is hard for us to face what is at the root of this teaching from Jesus when Christians aren’t the minority. And there have honestly been very few times when Christians have been forced to witness as Stephen does in Acts. This is certainly true for American Christians.
But I think the extremeness of this and our cultural dominance gets us to distort what we’re actually seeing and experiencing.
Jesus says that he is commanding us to do this work so that we may love one another. And it is essential to remember why facing hatred with love and truth and strength and trust is so important. Because these are the ends and the means, both.
And our lives are full of messy relationships and messy situations. And because of that, everything can feel messed up. But, if the purpose of Jesus’s teaching is for us to love one another, we should begin, not with our most cynical and combative and reactionary responses.
We should start with whether something feels like love.
Of course, that doesn’t explain everything, nor is that the end of the conversation. But it is a pretty good smell test. Does this smell right or does it spell rotten?
Sometimes love doesn’t feel like hugs and kisses. But love never feels like hate. And that’s a start.