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But memories do not have to be limited to tomorrow. I would
propose TODAY as a Memorial Day for us...a visit to ANOTHER
cemetery...that hallowed ground that contains the mortal remains
of loyal soldiers who have given their lives for an even greater
good than freedom and democracy...those who have given their
lives in defense of the Christian faith - as Paul would describe
them, "good soldiers of Jesus Christ." They too need to be
called to mind so that we might remember with gratitude the
glorious heritage that we share.
Over here is an interesting headstone...the grave of a man
named Polycarp. Polycarp lived in the second century after
Christ, a time of intermittent but bitter persecution for the
church. Christians were sometimes covered in the skins of wild
animals and then torn to death by dogs; they were crucified or
set on fire to burn like torches in the night; they were
confronted by lions in the arena...and for no other reason than
they confessed Jesus Christ as Lord. Polycarp was one of those
and a leader among them. He was the Bishop of the church at
Symrna, on the Mediterranean coast of what is modern day Turkey.(1)
Polycarp was one of those valiant defenders of the church
who refused to make compromise even if his very life depended on
it. He was arrested and brought before the Roman proconsul and
urged to renounce his faith. "Respect your years, " the
proconsul cried, "Swear by Caesar and I shall set you free; DENY
CHRIST." But softly Polycarp replied, "For 86 years I have been
his servant and he has never done me wrong. How can I blaspheme
my King who has saved me?"
Back and forth they went with the proconsul alternately
threatening death by wild beasts or burning at the stake. None
of it seemed to bother Polycarp. It was almost as if the bishop
were perfectly content to die...and he was. The proconsul was
amazed. It seemed as if he wanted some way to avoid his task,
but there was none. He sent a crier into the middle of the arena
to announce three times, "Polycarp has confessed that he is a
Christian." And the crowd came back, "BURN HIM ALIVE.'
The rest happened in less time than it takes to describe.
The crowd rushed to collect wood and kindling from workshops and
public baths to build the pyre. When all was ready, Polycarp
prayed: "O Father of Thy beloved and blessed son, Jesus Christ,
through whom we have come to know Thee, the God of angels and
powers and all creation, and of the whole family of the righteous
who live in Thy presence, I bless Thee for counting me worthy of
this day and hour, that in the number of the martyrs, I may
partake of Christ's cup, to the resurrection of eternal life of
both soul and body in the imperishability that is the gift of the
Holy Spirit..." When he had completed his prayer, the man in
charge lit the fire, and a great flame shot up. Polycarp was
dead. His followers gathered up his charred bones from the arena
and gave them a Christian burial. A soldier of the cross who had
made the supreme sacrifice in defense of his Lord.
Polycarp's grave is only one of many in this hallowed
ground. Over here is another...the tomb of an Englishman named
John Wycliffe, the man who came to be called "the Morningstar of
the Reformation."(2)
Wycliffe was born in Yorkshire, England sometime around
1324. Apparently he came from a cultured family, but little is
really known about his upbringing. He entered college at Oxford
and eventually became a part of its faculty with records
indicating that he was regarded as one of its most able members.
He was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1361 and soon was
appointed as one of the King's chaplains. So far, a relatively
uneventful existence.
But, as time went along, Wycliffe became offended at the
wealth and power of the established church hierarchy and preached
against it. He criticized the monks who roamed the countryside
begging for alms and denounced them as being like "women in their
idleness." (These days, he would have gotten in more trouble for
THAT than he had ever bargained.) He criticized those who lived
their lives cloistered in monasteries, as he said "choosing their
own contemplation and rest while suffering other men to go to
hell." He complained about the lack of real Biblical preaching
in his day saying that sermons should not be developed out of
church tradition but rather be based on "the naked text." He was
concerned that the Latin Bible which was used by the church had
no meaning for the common people, and so began the first English
translation of the entire Old and New Testaments that had NOT
been authorized by the church.
Needless to say, all that opposition to accepted church
practice kept John Wycliffe in constant hot water. Fortunately,
he had some powerful friends and was never given anything more
than a reprimand by the church authorities of his time. In fact,
the church was in such disarray at that moment that one man was
claiming to be Pope in Rome and another claiming the same thing
in France - no one knew who had authority to do anything anyway.
At any rate, all Wycliffe's activity took its toll and he died in
1384 after a stroke at his home in Lutterworth.
Even though Wycliffe was not martyred for the faith, he had
most certainly given his life to it...the dedication expected of
a loyal soldier. His efforts greatly influenced those who came
in the two centuries after him, those who would harvest the seeds
of reformation which he had planted. To his undying credit, he
was insistent that good soldiers have their orders written in a
language they could understand, and thus today, ALL Christians,
no matter what their church affiliation, support that effort.
That "Morningstar of the Reformation" has a LIVING epitaph in the
name of a wonderful evangelistic outreach, the Wycliffe Bible
Translators. With those thousands who came to Jerusalem on that
birthday of the church, Pentecost, we too can be amazed that we
hear the Gospel in our own language. For that, we can thank John
Wycliffe.
Both Polycarp and Wycliffe were soldiers of the cross on the
home front, defending the faith in their native soil. But over
here is another grave, this one belonging to a man who was
willing to give up even his home to take up "the sword of the
Spirit." His name is William Carey.
Carey was another Englishman, born in 1761, the son of the
local schoolmaster.(3) He was converted at the age of eighteen
through the witness of one of his fellow workers. He was an
apprentice shoemaker, but felt called to preach, eventually
becoming pastor of Moulton Baptist Chapel and supporting himself
as a schoolteacher and maker of shoes.
But Carey had a burden. He was convinced that Christ's
Great Commission to "preach the Gospel to every creature" still
applied to Christians and he was afraid that commission was not
being carried out. In 1792 he published a tract called An
Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the
Conversion of the Heathen, hardly the kind of title which would
excite book buyers on Amazon.com today but in the days before
television it did all right. In that same year in a sermon in
Nottingham, Carey coined a sentence which has been a rallying cry
for the church from that day to this: "Attempt great things FOR
God; expect great things FROM God."
Carey was not one to be content with simply talk - he was a
man of action. And so, the following year, he and his family
sailed to India to begin a work that would last the rest of his
life. Once in India, he became foreman of an indigo factory in
Bengal, a job which only required his attention for three months
out of the year, leaving him free to study the language, to
preach and to teach during the rest of the time. A few years
later, he was joined by two other English Baptists, and for the
next quarter century, the three labored together to build a
growing network of mission stations there. They initiated
mission schools, conceived the idea of Serampore College, founded
the Agricultural Society of India and took a leading part in the
campaign for the abolition of widow-burning, the practice of
throwing the wife of a deceased man onto the flames of his
funeral pyre, a campaign which was successful by 1829.
Carey was one of the first to recognize the need for
developing native pastors and evangelists to spread the Gospel to
their own people, an effort that, in our day, has seen a
tremendous growth of Christianity in the third world. He said,
"It is only by means of native preachers we can hope for the
universal spread of the Gospel through this immense continent."
William Carey was a soldier...in the truest sense a "veteran
of foreign wars." He died in 1834 and left a living legacy:
"Attempt great things FOR God; expect great things FROM God."
Over here is one more grave, a relatively new one.
Actually, it is not a grave at all...just a marker. There is
nothing buried beneath it. The inscription on it is hardly
blurred at all by the passage of time - after all, it was carved
just over fifty years ago. It belongs to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.(4)
Bonhoeffer would be in his ninety's today if he had lived.
He was born into a well-to-do German family in Breslau in 1906,
one of eight children. He became interested in the ministry as a
vocation as a boy, making the decision to become a pastor at the
age of 14. He studied at several universities and received his
theological degree at age 21.
Needless to say, all was not roses in the Germany of the
young Bonhoeffer: there was growing resentment to the peace of
Versailles which had been forced on the nation after World War I;
there was considerable social distress as a result of economic
conditions; there was enough political unrest to allow Hitler to
come to power. Bonhoeffer realized early on the dangers that the
Nazis posed and publically denounced them, the beginning of what
would become a short lifetime of resistance.
In 1939 he was invited to give a series of lectures here in
America and, for his own safety, was encouraged to remain in the
United States by friends both here and in his homeland. But in a
letter to Reinhold Niebuhr he wrote, "I have come to the
conclusion that I have made a mistake in coming to America. I
must live through this period of our national history with the
Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate
in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war
if I do not share the trials of this time with my people." So
Bonhoeffer went back.
Within a year, he was prohibited from preaching. The
following year, he was prohibited from publishing. He became
active in the resistance movement and was arrested in April,
1943. Like the apostle Paul, Bonhoeffer did some of his most
memorable work from prison, calling attention in his letters and
papers to the necessity for a "worldly Christianity," the kind of
faith that is willing to get involved in the great struggles of
humanity. He complained that most modern preaching of
justification by faith was a kind of "cheap grace." Grace, he
insisted, comes only when people step out and follow Christ in
costly discipleship. Bonhoeffer had been particularly influenced
by the Sermon on the Mount, and in his book on that passage, The
Cost of Discipleship,(5) he wrote, "When Christ calls a man, he
bids him come and die."
Bonhoeffer was to heed that summons. On April 9, 1945, in
the concentration camp at Flossenburg, just a few days before it
was liberated by the Allies, he was tried for treason and hanged.
His body was burned and his ashes spread to the winds. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, just 29 years old, a soldier of the cross who was
willing to give up his life for the Master who gave his OWN life
for us all.
Wait. There is one more. Standing back there. He looks
very official with the long beard and flowing robes. He is
Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church. It was he
who had pressed Jesse Jackson and other US religious leaders to
come to Yugoslavia a few weeks ago, emphasizing the importance of
such a visit for all people caught in the conflict over Kosovo -
Albanians and Serbs as well as members of the many ethnic,
cultural and religious minorities in Yugoslavia. Patriarch
Pavle, together with the bishops of his church, has been calling
and calling for the cessation of violence in Kosovo, the
protection and safety of all who live in Kosovo - Serb and
Albanian alike--the end of the bombing in Yugoslavia and the
release of the three captured U.S. soldiers.(7)
The witness for peace and justice given by Patriarch Pavle,
a man of prayer, spiritual integrity and moral vision, is a
profile in spiritual courage. His witness against violence has
been consistent from the beginning of the violent dissolution of
Yugoslavia, through the war in Bosnia, and now in conjunction
with the conflict over Kosovo. Could Pavle pay for his stand
with his life in a nation ruled by Slobodan Milosevic? What do
you think?
Polycarp, Wycliffe, Carey, Bonhoeffer, Pavle...men who were
and are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of their
Savior, men whose lives fairly DEMAND a Christian Memorial Day to
celebrate their accomplishments, men whom we do well to remember
for the challenge they present to us.
How will YOU be remembered on Christian Memorial Days in
years to come? What kind of Christian soldier will people think
of when they think of you? Will it be one like Polycarp...
fearless in your confession of faith? Or will you be remembered
like Wycliffe...willing to take positions that might be
unpopular? Or will you perhaps be thought of as William Carey...
one who took seriously the Lord's Great Commission to spread the
Gospel everywhere? Will you be remembered as Bonhoeffer (and
perhaps Pavle)...one who was even willing to "come and die?"
Yes, this is a big weekend for America as we unofficially
celebrate the beginning of summer and especially as we remember
our heroes who have given their all in defense of the nation.
May God grant that this be an even BIGGER weekend for us as we
take the challenges of the great defenders of the faith and use
them to rededicate ourselves as faithful soldiers of the Kingdom.
Amen!
1. Historical information from Eerdmans' Handbook to the History of Christianity, Tim
Dowley, Ed., (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1978), p. 81 2. Clyde Fant & William Pinson, eds, Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching, Vol. I (Waco,
TX, Word, 1971), pp. 227-238 3. Eerdmans' Handbook, p. 548, and Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language,
(Waco, TX: Word Books, 1982), pp. 393-402 4. Eerdmans' Handbook, p. 602-603 and Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching, Vol. XII,
pp. 93-105 5. New York: Macmillan, 1959 6. Isaac Watts, "Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed" 7. Joan Brown Campbell, "Journey to Belgrade," The Christian Century, May 19-26, 1999,
p. 550
The debt of love I owe;
Here, Lord, I give myself away;
'Tis all that I can do.(6)
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