May 5, 2024, The White Robed Army, John 15:9-17 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ May 5, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to the sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

“No one has greater love than this,” Jesus said, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” When we hear this verse, we think, first of all, of the love of Jesus, who gave himself up to the death on the cross on our behalf. There is no greater love than that. And we also think of the martyrs of the faith, throughout the history of the Church, who have followed the way of the cross to the very end, giving up even their lives. Martyrs have always held a special place of honor in the Church. In the Te Deum, the martyrs hold a special place, along with the prophets and apostles we say, “The white-robed army of martyrs praise you.” In the Church calendar, many of the holy men and women that we honor were martyred for their faith. The martyrs were put to death in order to silence them, but their witness continues. In the book of Revelation, the martyrs are seen under the altar, still crying out for justice.

The first martyr recorded in the Bible was Stephen, who was one of the seven Deacons ordained along with Philip. Stephen was a powerful preacher, and was stoned to death in Jerusalem as he proclaimed the Lordship of Christ.

It is tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church that the Samaritan woman Jesus met at the well is honored as a saint and became a martyr. As John writes, after meeting Jesus she spread the news and many people came to believe in him through her witness. She is even described as “equal to the apostles,” because of the power and faithfulness of her witness. When she came to the attention of the Emeror Nero, she was brought before him to answer for her faith, and he had her tortured and put to death.

Early Church tradition says that Peter died by crucifixion (with arms outstretched) at the time of the Great Fire the destroyed the city of Rome in the year 64, also at the hands of Nero, who was seeking to convince people that it was the Christians who were responsible for the fire.

In the third century, a Christian noblewoman, Perpetua, kept a diary of her imprisonment at the hands of another emperor. She was a young woman, just 22 years old, and had an infant son. She was offered a chance to save herself by offering sacrifices to the Emperor, and her father, who was a pagan, begged her to agree, but she said to him, “‘Do you see this vessel—water pot or whatever it may be? Can it be called by any other name than what it is?’ ‘No,’ he replied. ‘So also I cannot call myself by any other name than what I am—a Christian.’”

And the witness of the martyrs has continued throughout history. As the writer to the Hebrews says, “We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, that time would fail me to tell all of their stories.” Jonathan Myrick Daniels is a martyr from more modern times. He was an Episcopal seminarian who answered the call of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to take part in the march on Montgomery. He went to Alabama with the intention of staying for the weekend, but he ended up staying and working as a civil rights activist. Daniels was killed by a man named Tom Coleman, who was a highway worker and part-time deputy sheriff, in Hayneville, Alabama. Coleman was threatening a 17-year-old girl, Ruby Sales, with a gun. Daniels was shot and killed when he put himself in the line of fire to protect her.

A man named Aaron Bushnell became one of the most recent and troubling martyrs. He was 25 years old, a senior airman in the US Air Force. On February 25^th, he set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington DC, to protest US involvement in what he believed was the genocide of the Palestinian people.

The word “martyr” means “witness”. Martyrs proclaim a witness to their faith in God; they proclaim a witness to injustice; they proclaim a witness to the worth of human lives, even the last and the least. We generally think of martyrs as people who are the victims of violence, but martyrdom is not victimhood. Martyrdom is an act of power, a public, intentional, and sacrificial act of love – an act of love for God, for our brothers and sisters, and for the helpless and oppressed, who are specially beloved by God. Jesus spoke as a martyr when he said, “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” Martyrdom is an authoritative act of love that proclaims a witness to what is true and right and good.

We honor the martyrs who have died for their faith. But laying down our lives, that greatest act of love that Jesus is talking about in our reading today, that isn’t always the same as giving up our lives. Martyrdom is not always about dying for your faith, or for another person. Sometimes laying down our lives for someone can also be about living for them instead.

The height of the Covid epidemic is not really very far behind us yet, and I think often of pictures I saw on the news of nurses who worked around the clock to care for people in hospitals overflowing with the sick and the dying and the dead. They were exhausted. Their faces were marked with rashes and sores from the irritation of continually wearing masks. Some of them couldn’t go home to their families for a long, long time, because of the risk of infection. Many of those nurses were the only ones present to hold the hands of the dying, or to speak the last words of comfort to someone whose family wasn’t able to be present. Those nurses witnessed to the value of those lives and to the dignity of those deaths. Some of them even lost their own lives. But they all laid down their lives as a living act of love.

I think we might also speak of the martyrdom of teachers. No one becomes a teacher expecting a fat paycheck or a carefree life. I know this, because my daughter Emily teaches special ed in a fourth grade class in a city school. Some of her children come from broken homes; some of them come from families that don’t speak English; all of them have parents who struggle to make ends meet. School funding is such that the teachers often have to pay for basic supplies out of their own pockets. Teachers witness to the infinite worth of each of their children; by their faithful service, they proclaim the injustice of a system that works for rich kids and not for poor kids; they lay down many, many years of their lives for love of their students.

Jesus says that the greatest possible act of love is to follow his example in laying down our lives for one another. That’s what we call martyrdom, but martyrdom is about much more than a glorified death. It’s about a life lived in service, giving of ourselves: our time, our comfort, our wealth, our privilege, and sometimes, even our lives. And what that means is that martyrdom isn’t something for super-Christians whose lives end in a blaze of glory. Because we are all called to be servants of one another, and there are countless martyrs among us, and all around us, who lay down their lives every single day out of love for others. Whenever we serve another person, we are witnessing to their infinite value in the sight of God, and their immense worth among the children of mankind. When we sacrifice ourselves in service to one another, we are proclaiming the self-giving love we have received from Jesus Christ.

“No one has greater love than this,” Jesus said, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” There may come a day for any of us, or for all of us, when we are called to join the white-robed army of martyrs – like Stephen, like Peter, like Perpetua, like Jonathan Daniels. We may some day be called to sacrifice our lives for love of God, and for love of our fellow human beings. We can’t know that for sure; only time will tell. But we can know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that whether we are called to die for our faith or not, we are certainly called to live for it, every single day. We are all called to love – not only our brothers and sisters, but even our enemies – with the great love we have seen and known in Jesus. We are all called to lay down our lives, our time, our comfort, our security, in loving service. We are all called to be witnesses, every day, to the goodness and faithfulness of God, witnesses to justice and mercy and compassion, witnesses to the value of every life. We are all, each and every one of us, called to be members of the company of martyrs, as God leads us.