Wouldn’t it be nice to be descended from someone famous? My mom used to say we were descended from the great King of Ireland, Brian Boru. But, she said, “Everyone who is Irish thinks they are descended from him.”
Maybe you are related to someone famous. But even if you are not, if you are a follower of Jesus, you have amazing ancestors of faith. You are part of the saints (remember last week? You’re a saint!) The Christians from the first few centuries were impressive even to the non-believers.
They lived in difficult times. Some of the Christian leaders like Paul and James were killed for their faith. For the remaining Christians, these tragedies didn’t seem to faze them. It would be understandable if they said, “This being a Christian is too hard. And what’s up with God? Why doesn’t God keep bad things from happening?” But they didn’t think that way. They looked to God for comfort, and they didn’t spend time trying to figure out what God was up to. Instead, they focused on what they should be up to, what they should do. In hard times they focused on what Jesus wanted them to do, which was to love others.
For instance, there was a famine in Judea. Acts 11:29-30 says: “29 So the disciples, each in accordance with his financial ability, decided to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. 30 They did so, sending their financial aid to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.
You may think their generosity is not a big deal. We send money to help hungry people around the world! But back then, there had never been a group who felt responsible for another group of people from a different cultural background. These were Gentile Christians caring about Jewish Christians. They collected money for people they had never met, in a part of the world they never visited and never would visit, whose culture was nothing like theirs! This was new: not just thinking about your nation and people of your religion. They were helping people who could not return the favor.
We do that today, and that’s wonderful. It all started with our amazing ancestors of faith: the early Christians.
They had great faith. Natural disasters, political upheaval, religious persecution was all just another day in their not paradise. They wondered why bad stuff happened, but they kept believing, kept praying, kept hoping, even when they didn’t have explanations. Why did that keep hoping? Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1: 3, he says, “In God’s great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.” Because they knew they had salvation through Christ’s resurrection: they had a hope that never fades.
And in verse 6 Peter says: “6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” So, they rejoice about their salvation, even when they suffer.
Nothing kept them down. They focused on doing what Jesus asked his followers to do: Love. They went out of their way to take care of people others would not take care of.
The Christians would not sacrifice to the Roman gods. This was really against the rest of society. Non-Christians felt that everyone should sacrifice to the gods, or else bad things would happen. The Roman gods were not nice: they wouldn’t do good things for people. But people believed the gods would punish them if they did not worship them. They blamed the Christians for every disaster: earthquakes and floods. It is human nature to blame someone else for bad things that happen in the world. Christians were the scapegoats.
Tertullian was a Christian writer in the 2nd century. He explained how the Christians were treated like this: “If the Tiber river rises too high (and causes flooding), or the Nile too low and there’s not enough water), the remedy is always feeding Christians to the lions.” It was rough to be a Christian!
Peters says in 1 Peter 1:7 “7 These trials you suffer have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
Peter says when you suffer, but keep going, keep giving, keep loving, others can see you have a genuine, inspirational faith.
Jesus said, “So let your light shine before all, that they may see your good deeds and give glory to God in heaven!” (Matthew 5:16)
In John 13:34-35, Jesus also said, 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
In hard times, rather than wondering what God was up to, the Christians got busy showing love. And in the darkness of hard times and persecution, their light shone through. In the darkness, that’s when our light matters most and shines the brightest.
There were plagues in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Sometimes I think we are the only ones to ever experience something like the coronavirus, so I am surprised to look back and see throughout history people had pandemics. And they had no toilet paper! During the Plague of Cyprian in the third century, at one point, there were over 5000 deaths a day in Rome from an epidemic. People who had enough means: pagan priests, civic leaders, the wealthy: they all fled to the countryside to escape the pandemic. What did the Christians do during the plague? Many of them chose to stay. They had lost their fear of death, because they knew they would live in Christ. And they cared for one another. The Christian communities did better than their pagan neighbors, because the Christians would nurse those who were sick back to health.
But Christians did more than care for each other during the plague. They cared for their pagan neighbors whose families abandoned them. These pagan neighbors, who didn’t like the Christians and refused to have anything to do with them because they didn’t worship pagan jobs.
Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria said of the Christians, “most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them they departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease.” The Christians were the pandemic sheroes and heroes!
These Christians did not die for what they believed. They died because of how they acted; how they loved.
These Christians were different for their time, they were extraordinary in their love for others. They loved, not in order to win, not to become the religion of the Roman Empire. As far as the Christians knew, they were under the thumb of the Roman Empire, and things would never get better. People would always misunderstand and persecute them. They didn’t think the Roman empire would ever fall, or Christianity would ever become a national religion. No. They loved because they believed they had already won. They had already won! They had an inheritance that would never pass away in Christ Jesus. They were free to forgive and love as God loves.
When the world gets dark, it’s easy to be consumed or distracted by the darkness. That’s when I’m most tempted to just think about me and my family. It’s human nature to circle the wagons and close our hearts to others.
But there is nothing Christ-like about letting uncertainty and instability close our hearts and hands to others.
In the darkness, that’s when our light matters most and shines the brightest.
So church, let’s not withdraw. Let’s look for ways to shine brighter and love more. When the only thing that’s certain is uncertainty, that’s our opportunity. And if we get this right, people may roll their eyes at what we believe: the resurrection of Jesus, really?
But they should be envious of how well we treat each other, and they should be amazed at how well we treat them.
My challenge for you this week is to ask yourself: “Who can serve this week? How can I turn my light on and shine through the darkness?”
Jesus said that others will know we follow him by how we show love. In dark times, Christians don’t worry about what God is up to. We don’t ask, “Why me?” We focus on what we need to be up to, and that is to love. Let your light shine through the darkness. Your love will give hope to a weary world and point to the love of our Father in heaven. Amen.
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