Presentation by Louie Land

In Westminster Abbey, an Anglican church located in Westminster, England, there are ten statues commemorating the “Modern Martyrs,” ten individuals who were martyred to the Christian faith in the twentieth century. Placed in 1998, these statues honor “those who have died because they were Christians or promoted Christian ideals,” in the words of Canon Anthony Harvey. I take this to mean that some of the individuals were killed because they were Christian; others were killed because their Christian faith led them to act against what they saw as injustice.

Some of these figures are well-known to us; others less-so. Their number includes:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and anti-Nazi dissident who spoke out against the Nazi regime and the Holocaust, and who was falsely accused and killed for a failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1945.

Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Russia was a German princess, wife of a Russian Archduke, and founder of the Russian Orthodox convent of Martha and Mary, who cared for Moscow’s poor and who was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

Esther John was a Pakistani Christian nurse and evangelist who was murdered in her home in 1960 for her evangelical work.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights advocate, Baptist preacher, and paragon of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, who was assassinated in 1968.

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish Franciscan Friar who, while interred in German-occupied Poland, willingly volunteered to die in the place of another in the German death camp of Auschwitz in 1941.

Janani Luwum was an Anglican priest, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, and a vocal critic of Ugandan president and military dictator, Idi Amin, who was killed in 1977 for his critiques of the dictatorship.

Manche Masemola was a South African woman who was beaten and killed by her parents in 1928 during her various attempted conversions to Christianity.

Oscar Romero was a Catholic priest and Bishop serving in El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 while celebrating Mass for vocally speaking out against the escalating conflict between the government and left-wing insurgents.

Lucian Tapiedi was an Anglican teacher from Papau New Guinea, who was among eight Anglican clergy, teachers, and medical missionaries killed by the Japanese during their invasion in 1942.

And lastly, Wang Zhiming was a Miao-Chinese Christian pastor who was executed during the 1973 Chinese Cultural Revolution in front of an audience of 10,000 people, who revolted and assaulted his executioners.

Westminster Abbey has an auspicious profile – since 1066 AD, it has served as the burial site of 18 English, Scottish, and British monarchs, and has hosted 16 royal weddings and 40 British or English royal coronations. Naturally, it is visited by tourists, pilgrims, and dignitaries alike. In The Noble Army, a book of essays and sermons celebrating the Modern Martyrs, James Hawkey writes that “each day, as hundreds of people leave choral evensong, many look up and enquire after their stories,” and “when German Pope Benedict XVI came to celebrate evening prayer…in 2010, he was visibly moved as Dean John Hall pointed out the figure of Bonhoeffer.”

Now, I have to confess that, while their stories are inspiring, it is difficult for me to see myself in these remarkable individuals. I grew up in a Christian home, with parents who taught Sunday school, led Bible study, played in the bell choir, and served on Church council. Next Sunday, my grandfather will celebrate 65 years in the ministry as a Lutheran pastor, and my brother has traveled to Peru and Ethiopia on mission trips. The idea of being persecuted as a Christian is difficult to fathom.

The sacrifices, too, are extraordinary. Because I am standing before you, I have obviously never been called to substitute my own life so that another person could live, nor could I fathom the magnitude of violence that one must live in to be killed while celebrating Mass because you spoke out against civil war or injustice or persecution.

Christianity, for me, has always been comfortable and safe.

That may be the problem.

There are churches, mosques, and synagogues across America and the world that are the subject of threats, vandalism, shootings, and bombings. There are places, both across the world and near to here, where only a certain strain of Christianity is welcome, a particular type of faith is promoted, or a specific “faith-informed” political perspective is acceptable. Disagreement is punished with shunning, abuse, exile, or worse.

If we think that our work as Christians has been fulfilled because we can boldly proclaim the time of our gathering on a sign on Market Street or enjoy scripture readings, hymns, the Eucharist, and our after-church coffee hour without fear of violence or discovery, we should look harder for those who, as our Prayers for the People say, are the victims of “hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression.”

One of my favorite sermons by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the figures at Westminster Abbey, quotes the Magnificat, or the Song of Mary, from Luke 1: 46-55. This is typically an Advent Gospel reading, where Mary rejoices at the good news that she will be the mother of Christ. In this reading, the proud are “scattered,” the rich are “sent away empty,” and the powerful are “brought down from their thrones,” while the hungry are “filled with good things” and the lowly are “lifted up.”

On this reading, Bonhoeffer writes:

There are never more than a few very powerful people. But there are many more people with small amounts of power, petty power, who put it into play wherever they can and whose one thought is: keep climbing higher! God, however, thinks differently, namely, keep climbing down lower, down among the lowly and the inconspicuous, in self-forgetfulness, in not seeking to be looked at or well regarded or to be the highest. If we go this way, there we will meet God himself.

This specific call to action is interesting in the context of Advent. Christ is coming! As the famous parable asks, are our lamps lit, or have we run out of oil? This passage makes me think about the importance of the work, that the calling of Christ and the kingdom of God are defined not by the rules we follow, but by the faith which leads us to climb down, as Bonhoeffer says, in service of the lowly and inconspicuous.

The stories of the Modern Martyrs may be remarkable, but they are not unrecognizable. Even if they seem too big for us, there are ways we can mirror their actions in ways both humble and profound. Across our community, the church, and the world, there are likely many who would see themselves in these stories, or their loved ones, or be reminded of memories from a home they’ve left or a life they’ve fled.

In our lifetimes, we may not be called to exchange our lives for another’s, to evangelize to the point of our own deaths. But that does not mean we should allow ourselves to be complacent or to feel too safe.

Christian faith is not always comfortable. It is an act, as Bonhoeffer says, of self-forgetfulness, one in which we are called to keep climbing lower, in service of, again, the victims of hunger, fear, injustice, and oppression. If we are called to great acts or to small ones, let us be wakeful and prepared to answer that call however it finds us, as others have answered it before.

Amen