Keeping the Faith: Twentieth Century Martyrs
Every transition has an end, a middle, and a beginning. The Church Year ends with the feast of Christ the King, the Reign of Christ, a feast instituted by Pope Pius X during the rise of Fascism in Italy in the 1920s. The feast spread to many other church bodies; we celebrate it now as a reminder that God reigns, not us. (The Church Year begins anew four Sundays before Christmas Day (whether it occurs on a Sunday or a week day). And so as we approach the end of the season that culminates in the feast of Christ the King, we find the story of Jesus about to loop around itself from the end back to the beginning: from the consummation of time to the birth of a baby. "Come thou long expected Jesus" we soon will sing. And he arrives twice! First he comes to us as the infant terrorizing Herod and again as the one before whose throne all will gather. Same person. Herod the Great, ruler of Palestine under Roman sponsorship -- who built the great buildings whose ruin Jesus prophesies -- got the message early and he did not like it. That earthbound despot wanted no rivals, especially legitimate ones. Some more recent sovereigns have had similar inclinations. But God prevails. And that is part of the good news that we hear today : Christ forewarns his followers of the difficulties ahead of them and yet reassures them of their ultimate vindication. And so it is when we face hard times, adversity, or mortality: we are not alone. That is why the one who comes is called "Emmanuel" - God with us.
This good news comforts the comfortable and the afflicted, the desperate and the sorrowful and the joyous alike. Since sometimes that can be all of us or any of us this is good news indeed.
That reminder that God reigns came home with force within a decade or two after the feast was first proclaimed. Among those who made it stick in hearts and minds was Kaj Munk, a Danish playwright and pastor, who wrote an impolitic play during the second World War. What was the point, and what was the problem, was that he uniquely compared Herod to Hitler. And this did not make the occupying army happy: indeed he was soon a martyr, murdered by the Gestapo, his body found in a ditch the morning after a midnight abduction.
Call it an arrest or call it an abduction: it was the prelude to murder. He was not the last. Not certainly the last. There have been many martyrs and prophets since his death who have stood in front of evil and proclaimed God’s reign. Later in the 20th century it was Janani Luwum, Archbishop in Uganda, who confronted an evil regime with the power of love. He paid with his life. One night he was summoned to the presidential palace, and he stood right in front of his country’s ruler, Idi Amin, and refused to renounce the truth. For that he was shot and killed.
These are among the known martyrs; others are known but to God. But their work continues; their truth persists; and the culmination of this year and all years is still this: God reigns. That means that whatever claims on our allegiance are offered to us, none is as important as the integrity of the faith that God keeps with us. And that we, faltering and failing and forgiven, attempt to keep with God. [JRL+ 2021 11/15]
https://www.episcopalcommonprayer.org/uploads/1/2/3/0/123026473/lesser_feasts_and_fasts_2006.pdf
An earlier version of this essay was published as "God keeps faith with us" in the Arizona Daily Star in the Keeping the Faith feature of the Home + Life section, November 28th 2021 page E3.
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