Blessed?

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.  Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. – Matthew 5v10-12

Of all our beatitudes this is the one that would most cause us to stop and scratch our heads the most. ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted. Blessed are you when you are reviles and persecutes. Blessed are you when they say all kinds of evil lies about you. Rejoice, be exceeding glad!’

Huh? Rejoice about all that kind of stuff? That is NOT a popular message. Rejoice when we are being attacked and persecuted and lied about and reviled? Not only rejoice, but be ‘exceeding glad?’ Huh? Can that be right?

There it is though. In black and white (or red and white) the words are clear, blessed are the persecuted and reviled and lied about.

Because of the relative peace that the church in the west has enjoyed for the last couple of centuries we have become accustomed to peace and security. We not only expect freedom from persecution, but many in the western church expect the governments to support and favour them. We have grown to think that because we are God’s people we deserve some kind of special status and protection.

But we forget that for most of our history we have been the unpopular people. We have been reviled and attacked and persecuted and lied about. We forget that for a huge part of the church today persecution and lies and imprisonment and separation from family and harassment and physical punishment and death are the norm. We forget about places like Iran where the church is undercover and meeting in secret and where pastors are sentenced to death for not recounting their faith. We forget about places like Vietnam where Christians sneak through the night to meet in dirty cramped shacks to worship the Lord together.

Christians in the west, especially the 'Wealthy West', have no problems claiming God’s blessing. We claim blessing when we finish our fancy new church buildings or massive worship complexes. We claim God’s blessing when we install fancy new lighting fixtures or grand pianos or expensive organs. We claim God’s blessing for all kinds of material possessions. ‘Look how God is blessing us!’ we say on the day we that open a fancy new building that we may very well have gone into debt to build.

But nowhere in this passage do we read ‘Blessed are the rich, blessed are those who worship in fancy surroundings. Blessed are those who have a Starbucks in their family worship centre. Blessed are those whose choirs wear fancy robes and whose pastors wear expensive suits.’

I wonder which church is truly blessed. We say we are blessed when we have freedom to worship, when the government is on our side, when we have our fancy buildings, and when our bank accounts are full. God says the church is blessed when it is persecuted and lied about and reviled like our brothers and sisters in Christ in places like Iran and Vietnam.

I don’t know, I really don’t, but something seems askew here.

You will note that I left a key element out of the statement. ‘Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness sake…blessed are you when men lie about you for My sake.’ When persecution and lies and reviling do come we had better be sure that it is for righteousness sake and for the name of Christ. Let’s be sure that it doesn’t come just because we are jerks.