Blessed Are the Ones Who Suffer for Doing Good

Truth be told: none of us want to suffer. I am the daughter of a pharmacist and so I learned early on that we do all we can to avoid any kind of pain in life. We had a three-tiered rotating medicine cabinet in the house growing up with different bins labeled based on whatever your particular ailment is. When I was in Italy, I bought more Band-Aids than gelato just because I couldn’t stand having any blisters on my feet. I Similarly, I like to be liked. I don’t know my enneagram number but my friends tell me I’m a 2 which is supposed to mean I care way too much what people think of me. Thus, I am not fond of the idea of being reviled or slandered. I don’t like pain or rejection. Maybe you don’t either. And so at first, the words of Jesus can jolt our systems.

Blessed are the persecuted? That seems backwards. No thanks. What is flourishing and blessed about poverty and grief and persecution? That just seems cruel.

But Jesus isn’t blessing suffering and persecution just for the sake of it or in an of itself, but those who have already been persecuted for righteousness’ sake or for living out their faith in Christ. Rebekah Eklund says “nobody argues that it’s good simply to be persecuted or hated. Instead, the question becomes for what are you being reviled or attacked?”

Growing up in the Bible belt in the Western world, I don’t have first-hand experience of this kind of persecution on account of my faith. I remember my first seminary professor was from South Korea and how she shared about the underground church movement. I wondered to myself “what would it feel like to have to hide my faith, to meet in secret?

While I do not know persecution, I acknowledge the history of saints before me who have. Jesus’s audience and the early Church certainly did. It is believed that 10 of the 12 disciples died as martyrs. There was a period of time in the early Church in which professing your faith in Christ often led to torture and even death.I remember reading stories of early martyrs such as Felicitas and Perpetua, and Polycarp (who was 86 years old when he was killed saying “for eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no evil. How could I curse my king, who saved me?” I remember reading of more modern martyrs such as Oscar Romero who was killed in 1980 while serving Communion for his widespread advocacy for the poor in El Salvador. Romero said “martyrdom is a great gift from God, that I do not believe I have earned. But if God accepts the sacrifice of my life, then may my blood be the seed of liberty and a sign of the hope that will soon become a reality…a bishop will die, but the church of God, the people, will never die.”

Martyrdom or dying for your faith was held in high esteem by these followers and even sought after by some. The Greek word for martyr means “witness.”

How might we look at this beatitude in light of our witness? The Good News translation says “happy are those who are persecuted for they do what God requires.” Micha says “blessed are those who suffer for doing good.” I say blessed are those who are pursued because of their witness, who are chased because of their faithfulness, who are slandered because of who they speak up for, who are cast out for who they welcome in, who are put down for standing up for what is right. Blessed are those who get into what some have come to call “good trouble.”

Most of us today don’t live with the reality of our faith costing us a whole lot. Paul Metzger said he once had a seminary student who was born and raised in Romania share that the concept of free salvation was a Western idea. This student said “During communism Christians lived under the threat of humiliation, intimidation, joblessness, beatings, torture, interrogation, jail, forced labor, and execution. There was little emphasis on salvation being “free” because there was no way to hide the cost. And although it was hard and many compromised under pressure betraying their brothers, the church as a whole was used to paying a high price for following Christ.”

Friends, “do we live the kind of faith that costs us something?” Paul Metzer says all too often we treat our lives like some sort of spiritual Monopoly, rolling the dice and hoping we land on Free Parking or get that prized Get Out of Jail Free card. We don’t want to have to owe anything, but we would sure like to win. Friends, grace is freely given to us, but if it doesn’t lead us to respond and follow the sacrificial love of God, then our faith is nothing more than mere convenience.

Right after the Beatitudes Jesus says we are to be salt and light. What if the Beatitudes both bless us and call us forward into a way of life that blesses others, flavoring the world with the kingdom of God.

In 2018 Pope Francis shared in a homily that “Persecution is rather like the ‘air’ that Christians breathe even today. Because even today there are many martyrs, many people who are persecuted for their love of Christ.”

Mary Lou Redding says “Other persecution, however, does exist. Reputable businesses want honorable employees, but I've known men who lost their jobs because they could not in Christian conscience do what their employers required. Some women have lost promotions because they wouldn't compromise their sexual integrity. Some people are dropped from the social scene because of their Christian convictions. I'm quite sure there are organizations whose members would hesitate to elect a convinced Christian to their presidency for fear he or she might complicate the style of operation within the organization.”

Has your faith ever cost you something?

One pastor Stan Mitchell once talked about what it means to be an ally of someone. He said he once heard the quote “If you claim to be an ally to a group of people but are not getting hit by the stones thrown at them, you are not standing close enough.” In thinking more on this, he said “Oh the stones have hit me for sure…but, make no mistake, they have hit me only after they have hit my friends.

The plain truth is, allies bear these unjust, hateful stones only in deflection, only in rebound…we endure them only after the majority of their force has been absorbed by these precious people we love, these precious souls who have changed our lives, these we know we are so privileged to love and come alongside. These who deserve peace but have been given pain, these who for their loveliness and love have cruelly been given shame, these who have asked of their families and friends and churches only for bread but instead have been given stones and stonings.

Yes, it is true…allies do get hit by the stones thrown at those they are standing with. And real allies deem this pain an awful privilege. But again, make no mistake…the pain of the ally, the wound of the one who comes alongside, does not even remotely resemble the suffering of those we try so desperately to defend…and we would never pretend otherwise…and, every single day, we wish we could do more, so much more.”

Too many times in life my faith didn’t cost me anything. Too many times I didn’t say much because I was more worried about how the arrow of others would hit me, failing to consider how much harder it hit my friends.

Blessed are those who suffer for love’s sake, who stand in the way of the stones.

Micah Barton says “persecution means suffering because of truth.” It is a suffering born out of love. Barton says “blessed are the ones who suffer for the sake of doing right, of loving justice, of living the truth. Their dreams will become like God’s.”

Maybe, in the end, that is the hope of the Beatitudes, that God’s dream would become our dream. Rebekah Eklund after writing a book on them said that “the Beatitudes can be known most fully not by reading about them but through seeing what they look like in human lives. Perhaps it’s better to say not that the Beatitudes mean something but that they hope to transform someone, they aim to transform us.”

So blessed are the uncool, the broken-hearted, the weak ones, the ones starved for justice, the ones who lend mercy and serve peace, and the ones who take the arrows for the sake of love.

May we be transformed by the dream of God.