Would
You? Would I?
A Meditation
on Psalm 15
August
23, 2021
Psalm 15 begins
with this question: “O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your
holy hill?” Psalm 15:1. It then gives a series of answers to that question. The
first sort of people it mentions as answers to the question are “Those who walk
blamelessly, and do what is right….” Psalm 15:2a. The list goes on, and it
comes to a group of people deemed to be worthy that raises a significant issue
for me. It includes in its list of the worthy those “who stand by their oath
even to their hurt.” Psalm 15:4c. The term “their oath” is a bit obscure for
me. The study note to that verse in the New Oxford Annotated Bible says the
reference is to honesty in business and legal matters. Honesty in business and
legal affairs is of course commendable. Yet this phrase raises for me the issue
of whether my faith is strong enough to hold when there are negative
consequences to my keeping it and living it. Not just my faith though, but the
faith of essentially all the Christians I know. Would we really stand by our
faith to our own hurt? Not that I have an answer to that question. Still, it is
the question I want to consider here.
We mainstream
Protestant Christians are most fortunate. We face essentially no negative
consequences from our being Christian. It is true that Christianity is no
longer the default faith of most Americans. Certainly being a Christian pastor
no longer carries with it the respect and influence it once did. But though I
once had a stranger tell me that I was taking my life in my hands by wearing a
University of Oregon cap in the midst of Washington Husky land, no one has ever
told me that I was taking my life in my hands by being a Christian. We take
Christianity being legal for granted. We have our right to the free exercise of
our faith guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution
and the Supreme Court cases that interpret and apply that guarantee. Tragically
there has been some violence against Christians and their churches in this
country, but that violence happens rarely and affects only a very small
percentage of all Christians. Some of that violence may come not specifically
because the victims are Christians but because churches are easy targets for
disturbed individuals hellbent on causing mayhem and death. All things
considered though, the US today is quite an advantageous place to be a
Christian. We rarely if ever face the question of whether we will stand by our
faith even to our own hurt.
It was not always
so for Christians. For roughly the first three hundred years of the Christian
faith’s existence in the Roman Empire, which is where almost all Christians
lived, it was illegal to be Christian. The church has made a lot out of the
Roman persecution of Christians in those centuries. It has very probably
exaggerated the extent of those persecutions, but that there were such
persecutions of Christians is a well-established historical fact. Christians
reacted to the illegal status and the sporadic persecution of themselves and
their faith in different ways. Some, I suppose, just lay low, kept their faith
a secret, and figured that the negative consequences of being a Christian would
not touch them. Some became apostates, that is, they renounced their Christian
faith in order to avoid those negative consequences.
Others, however,
held to their faith even to their own hurt. St. Paul was imprisoned and beaten
several times because he proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. People even
plotted to kill him both in Damascus after his conversion and in Jerusalem. There
are no historical records to corroborate these things as historical fact, but
the Christian church has long said that the Romans executed both St. Paul and
St. Peter because of their public proclamation of their Christian faith. There
were others who also held to their faith though it cost them their lives. We
know them as martyrs. Some early Christians even sought martyrdom as the
ultimate expression of their faith.
The Christian
churchtoo has inflicted negative consequences on Christians. It has persecuted
and killed Christians who espoused a variety of the Christian faith of which
the church did not approve. We’ve probably heard of the church burning supposed
heretics at the stake, something that could hardly be less Christian. Jan Hus,
John Wycliffe, and others were burned at the stake for teaching doctrines the
church condemned and for translating the Bible into the languages of their
people so that any literate person could read it. All of these women and men
who the church killed as heretics held to their faith very much to their harm.
There are more
recent examples of Christians holding to their faith very much to their own
harm. Oscar Romero, now St. Oscar Romero, was a Roman Catholic priest who became
archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of the Central American country of El
Salvador, a name that perhaps ironically means The Savior. Though when he was
appointed to that post he was quite a social conservative, Romero became a
powerful champion of the rights of the poor people of El Salvador and a vocal
opponent of the murderous policies of the El Salvadoran government. On March
24, 1980, as he celebrated mass at a hospital chapel in San Salvador, gunmen stormed
in and shot him dead. It is said that his blood mixed with the blood of Christ
in the Communion cup. Also in El Salvador, on November 16, 1989, gunmen murdered
six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s sixteen year old
daughter. These priests were known for ministering to communities caught in war
zones of the El Salvador civil war. Surely they knew how brutal the regime in
San Salvador was. They certainly knew what had happened to Oscar Romero. They
must have known the risks they were taking, but they held to their faith though
it cost them their lives.[1]
Then of course
there is the example of Jesus himself. He was a poor man from a tiny town in a
backwater area of the Roman Empire. He spent his adult life proclaiming the
kingdom of God and teaching the people a new way of understanding God and God’s
will for God’s people. In everything he said and did he criticized and even condemned
the political authorities of the Roman Empire and the religious authorities of
his own Jewish faith. He knew what the Romans had done to the leaders of
earlier popular messianic movements. He knew what crucifixion was. He could
have stayed in Nazareth, kept his mouth shut, worked as a carpenter, and never
drawn any attention to himself. He would have died a natural death in his
hometown. He didn’t. He knew what God was calling him to do. He may even have
believed that God sent him to do it as so many Christians came to believe after
his death.
So he held to his
faith and preached the good news of justice for the poor and oppressed. He
preached the good news of peace through the nonviolent establishment of that
justice. He was from Galilee, by the standards of his time a long way from
Jerusalem. He didn’t have to go there. But Jerusalem was the big Jewish city.
It was the economic center of the region. It was the location of the temple,
the sacred center of Jesus’ Jewish faith. So he went. He caused disruption. See
Mark 11:15-17. He taught what he knew to be God’s truth in the temple, the house
of the religious authorities of his faith against whom he directed much of what
he said. He had a large following, and he surely knew that the Romans did not
tolerate large popular movements directed against them even if, as it was in
Jesus’ case, that opposition was completely nonviolent. He went, and if he didn’t
know it when he went there he surely learned in very short order that his life
was seriously at risk. He could have stopped teaching. He could have slunk back
to Nazareth to lead the quiet life of a small town carpenter. He didn’t. He
stayed. He acted. He taught. When he knew that crucifixion was at hand he
begged God that it not happen. Mark 14:32-36. Yet he ended his prayer saying to
God “yet, not what I want, but what you want.” Mark 14:36. He held to his faith
though it led him to an excruciating and unjust death on a cross.
And I wonder: I
know that we Christians are called to life as Jesus lived, but would I have the
courage to do what he did? Would you? Would my faith be strong enough to
sustain me in whatever came my way? Would yours? To be perfectly honest, I don’t
have an answer to those questions for myself. I certainly don’t have one for
you. I don’t think any of us can have answers to those questions if we’ve never
been threatened because of our faith, if we’ve never had to make a choice
between our faith and our life. I hope that I could cling to my faith no matter
what. I pray that I never find out if I would or not.
[1] We
must not forget these Christian martyrs. The priests’ names were Ignacio
Ellacuria, Ignacio Martin-Baro, Segundo Montes, Amando Lopez, Juan Ramon Moreno
and Joaquin Lopez y Lopes. The housekeepers name was Elba Ramon. Her sixteen
year old daughter’s name was Celina Ramos. May they rest in peace, and may
their example be an inspiration for all of us.
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