“The first Christians who were being persecuted by the Roman Empire were not in it for what they could get, because all they were going to get was trouble.” –Thomas Sowell
The first Christians, those “first people who hoped in Christ”. For believers they are what legends are made of. Steven the proto-martyr, Thecla-possibly the first female martyr, Paul of Tarsus, Peter and the other Apostles, all these plus the unnamed and unknown are the stuff of legend in Christian circles. I recently came across the passage in the first chapter of Ephesians, “We are the first people who hoped in Christ, and we were chosen so that we would bring praise to God’s glory” and I was filled with awe. The first Christians, called Jewish Christians by many historians, are my heroes. The “Pioneers of Faith” if you want to get a little weird with it! Everything they did was a first, and so it everything they did was new and groundbreaking. In the 1997 Sci-Fi Comedy “Rocketman”, Harland William’s character begins to document everything he and his fellow astronauts are “the first” to do on Mars.
“Amazing…we’re the first to ever stand on Mars…we’re the first to talk on Mars, hey Julie I’m the first to walk backwards on Mars! First to blow a kiss on Mars! Hey you’re the first to blush on Mars…well you’re the first not to listen to me on Mars…please talk to me, I want to get to know you better for the first time on Mars.” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNTXKCeeuIM)
Being the first to do anything is a big deal-think of it, a baby’s first steps, a baby’s first Christmas, even a baby’s first diaper! You understand though. The first of anything is important because it gives us an idea of what is to come, especially in the case of diapers. And ministry was hard for the first Christians, one reason why believers today-who sometimes have it much easier-admire them so.
“We are the first people who hoped in Christ, and we were chosen so that we would bring praise to God's glory. So it is with you…” Ephesians 1:12-13 NCV
When I read this verse, it struck a bit of a nerve that I was indeed reading what many of the first Christians did, and that I was sharing in their experience across time and space. I remembered that ministry, really Life, is supposed to be difficult. Look at the back of your Bible; it probably has a map detailing the “Ministry of Jesus”. Interesting isn’t how much his “ministry” looks like his life? There is little of the compartmentalization we see today there. True he takes breaks and even hides from the crowds, but even then he seems to be in prayer, or instructing the disciples. His work was his life, which also was his ministry. Work=life=ministry. Work and life are difficult. So we shouldn’t be shocked that ministry, a vocation, something we must be called to do, and that to do as it should be done we must dedicate our life and life’s work to, is difficult. And that it is supposed to be that way. Deliberately engineered to be hard. Like work, like life. This isn’t a truck commercial; this is ministry.
“I will show you what everyone is like who comes to me and hears my words and obeys. That person is like a man building a house who dug deep and laid the foundation on rock…the house was built well.”
“Well folks, it’s a lot like being construction, only you don’t get rainy days off.” I can hear a “modern” Jesus saying. Imagine the shock on all our faces. We chose ministry because it is a desk job, has some prestige with it, and hopefully one day will pay well if we don’t build a new church building. Nope. It’s manual labor.
And there is a reason for it.
“The first Christians who were being persecuted by the Roman Empire were not in it for what they could get, because all they were going to get was trouble. But once Christianity became the state religion, it became a very lucrative career for some people. They you get an entirely different kind of person coming in at that point, and we have an entirely different kind of movement.” –Thomas Sowell
It was not acceptable to be a Christian in the early years. The world was pagan, and while there were some similarities, the differences were massive. Being a Christian was very costly, it could cost you your life if worst came to worst. So many did not convert for this reason. However, after the Edict of Milan(the edict only took immediate affect in the West, in the East persecutions actually spread. Maximinus decreed in the East, "...to request that the Christians, who have long been disloyal and still persist in the same mischievous intent, should at last be put down and not be suffered by any absurd novelty to offend against the honour due to the gods.") , converts slowly began to stream into the church with increasing speed. Christianity began to be viewed as a way to the top, a sort of initiation to a social networking group that could really propel your career. This is perhaps a gross oversimplification; never the less this sort of thing did occur. And when you join any sort of group for those reasons, the very organization changes over time. From a group built on the very real fact that persecution will happen, you will be persecuted as a believer, as Elizabeth Castelli and Jesus himself illustrate,
"Christianity itself is founded upon an archetype of religio-political persecution, the execution of Jesus by the Romans…The earliest Christians routinely equated Christian identity with suffering persecution" -Elizabeth Castelli
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5.10-11). –Jesus as recorded by the writer of Matthew
Imagine hearing about how some fellow believers were torn apart and smashed when smashed by vehicles at a monster truck rally. Think of the effect it would have, how sobering; “that could happen to me.” You don’t have the ability to stand before eternity and wonder if your socks match -in other words your decision to believe or to disbelieve becomes the most important decision in your life, if it wasn’t already then it is definitely highlighted all the more by the immediate threat to life and limb. Few posers will join when the stakes are so high. This is why ministry is hard. I do not mean to say that only ordained ministers have it hard or that their lives are especially difficult - every Christian is a minister in one form or another. Preachers are merely ministers to ministers. What I mean to say is that ministry, the Christian life, is purposefully difficult. What else could take your cross and follow me mean besides embracing difficulty and finding beauty in things deemed ugly? Most leaders instruct their followers to pick their swords and then follow them. Instruments for the death of others and the empowerment of self; our leader also bids us to pick up weapons of death, except this weapon is for our death, no one else’s. This is why ministry, or the Christian life is difficult. It demands our death- definitely spiritually, quite possibly physically. We lose sight of this; when was the last time you were threatened with martyrdom? It has a way of keeping everything in perspective. Maybe that is why the church always seems to grow during periods of persecution, what’s truly valuable is more readily seen and pursued in the valley of the shadow of death. Perhaps this is another reason why we die.
“Unless we are ready and willing to die in conformity with His passion, His life is not in us.” –Ignatius to the Magnesians, on his way to be thrown to wild beasts in the Coliseum at Rome.
That is ministry. That is life and work. All are related to the other. Our life’s work is, or should be our ministry. This begs the question, “what is the ministry, the work of my life?” I work at Sports Authority, but that isn’t my vocation, it isn’t my work.
“It is eighteen hundred years and more since Jesus Christ walked here on earth. But this is not an event like other events which, only when they are bygone, pass over into history, and then as events long bygone, pass over into forgetfulness. No, his presence here on earth never becomes more and more bygone-in case faith is to be found on earth. And if not, then indeed at the very instant it is a long, long time since He lived. But so long as there is a believer, such a one must, in order to become such, have been, and as a believer must continue to be, just as contemporary with His presence on earth as were those first contemporaries. This contemporaneousness is the condition of faith, and more closely defined it is faith.” -Soren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity
“So it is with you.”
Do these words not ring in your ears? So it is with you. We are contemporaries with Christ; we are pioneers, we are missionaries, and we are ministers. Dispersing of the church, the apostles stayed put, the missionaries were the “normal” Christians. No hard line between laymen and clergy here there are ministers and those who minister to the ministers. One of the points of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is that it was all lived, it was all life; the truly Christian life cannot but help but to be one of ministry. Not behind a pulpit, but behind our skulls. Ministry is hard so that we will be soft; perhaps if it were soft we would be hard. The essence of this is captured by my late cousin Shiloh Foster, who said when he was 16 or so, “If you live for God hard it’s easy; if you live for God easy, it’s hard.”
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