The Park Road Pulpit

They were both beautiful. Dark eyes. Straight, black hair. Olive skin. High school beauties with a lifetime to live and love.

Rachel Levy lived in her family’s small apartment in southern Jerusalem, and lived like most teenagers. She listened to Pink Floyd and Christina Aguilera. She loved “Pretty Woman” and “Titanic.” She spent her free time hanging out at the local mall.

Ayat al-Akhras lived with her family in a crowded and dirty refugee camp called Dehaishe, just outside of Bethlehem. But despite the difficult conditions, she too lived a teenager’s life. Having recently been engaged, she was planning to study journalism at Bethlehem University in the fall.

In some other world, they could have been best of friends – spending hours on the phone talking about last night’s date or the weekend sale at the mall. But their worlds know a thousand generations of mistrust, and a jealous, demanding God. So they lived within a few miles of each other, but worlds apart.

The occupation by Israel is constant and humiliating to Palestinians. It is the only life that Ayat had ever known. A 1987 uprising made the Dehaishe camp a “hotbed of militancy.”[1] One of her brothers was shot in their home in an attack by Israelis, and after the politically and religiously conservative Ariel Sharon was elected to lead Israel, matters only worsened. His visit in September of 2000 to the El Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount sent an unmistakable message to Arabs around the world – Israel’s aggression will only continue until Sharon has taken all that can be taken.

So on the eve of Passover, at the entrance to a crowded Jewish market, Ayat al-Akhras brought the pain and despair of her world to that of Rachel Levy. The Jewish teen passed through the entrance of the store just as a security guard yelled, “Wait!” At that moment, the dark-eyed and resolute Palestinian, the teenager who might have one day become a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, calmly depressed a hand-held detonator.

In that instance, Ayat al-Akhras became the youngest female suicide bomber in this maddening war. In that instance, two girls -- the hopes and dreams of proud parents -- became only grief-filled memories. In that instance, one teenager, filled with tomorrow’s life became yet another headline of today’s death. In that instance, 18-year-old Ayat al-Akhras, Palestinian daughter, Muslim sister, Child of God… became a martyr.

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of [God’s] faithful ones (Psalm 116.15).[2]

Those words are spoken confidently by the Psalmist. But today, as we witness an almost daily assault of Muslims seeking martyrdom, we must ask: Is it really so? How precious in the sight of God, was the death of Ayat al-Akhras? How pleased was Allah with the blood of one more sacrifice?

Jim and Shelley Douglass write, “To die a martyr is a blessing. That un-American sentiment is the Good News in [the reading of] the stoning of Stephen in Acts. Martyrdom for a Christian is a joy because it corresponds to Jesus’ death, our way of life.”[3] And Scott Bader-Saye suggests, “Luke uses this incident to display the cruciform pattern (in the shape of the cross) of discipleship. Those who follow Jesus bear witness to him by imitating his own peaceful self-sacrifice.”[4]

In the tragic massacre at Columbine, Colorado, then high school senior Cassie Bernall became a martyr for her alleged response to one of the gunmen. “Do you believe in God?” he asked. “Yes,” she said. And she died for her faith. Whether her story is true or apocryphal, she has become a legend for Christian youth around the country. Contemporary Christian music pays tribute to her ultimate commitment.[5] Her witness is doubtless part of the reason for the rise in “popularity” of martyrdom. “I would like to be a martyr…” said Joanna Dobbe, a fifteen year-old quoted by the Baptist paper in Alabama.[6]

Today, as we re-read of the stoning of Stephen, and as Christians around the globe celebrate his calling, his integrity, his witness unto death, we must ask ourselves what kind of world is this in which our young people, whether Muslim or Christian, are willing, even eager, to explode themselves for God’s pleasure? And we need to implore honestly what kind of God it is whose justice is pleased with such gory devotion?

In a twenty-first century world which has developed the scientific tools necessary to put an end to nearly all of our superstitions, the rise in religious fanaticism, which began in the middle of the last century and accelerates even today, makes it clear that our fearful planet is still, Dying to Please God.[7]

Of course, we must say “thanks be to God” for martyrs. For men and women, for children of all ages, of every race and every time who have witnessed the power of faith in a living God by facing death without looking back. Their voices testify to the truth that we cannot know what is truly worth living for, until we have discovered what is worth dying for. Their deeds remind us that “faithful suffering has always been part of the calling for God’s people.”[8] Their faith witnesses the power of the cross in action. Sometimes following Jesus’ way will lead us to Jesus’ death.

Mark Danner writes of a brutal 1981 massacre in El Salvador in which most of the executed were evangelical Christians. The story of a young girl was still being told years later by the soldiers who had perpetrated her horrific crime.

There was one in particular the soldiers talked about… a girl on La Cruz whom they had raped many times… and through it all … this girl had sung hymns, strange evangelical songs, and she had kept right on singing even after they had done what had to be done, and shot her… She had lain there… and had kept on singing -- a bit weaker than before, but still singing. And the soldiers, stupefied, had watched and pointed. Then they had grown tired of the game and shot her again, and she sang still, and their wonder began to turn to fear -- until finally they had unsheathed their machetes… and at last the singing stopped.

Sometimes it takes a death to make us see the obvious. Sometimes it is a fierce little girl who is hard to kill, who gives witness to a mystery beyond our understanding and control. And in the wild center of that young girl’s heart, we glimpse love stronger than death, a love that shames us all.[9]

We need the lives of the martyrs to remind us of the frailty of our own faith. The weakness of our own witness. The limitation of our own commitment.

But on this particular day of celebrating the devotion of Stephen, the faithful witness of Cassie Bernall, the gruesome testimony of a nameless El Salvadorian child, and the suicidal terror of Ayat al-Akhras, another word is needed. Preachers obviously do not need to exhort their followers to prepare for the fight, to prepare to meet their God -- that message has been trumpeted loud and clear. Another word is needed today.

It is enough because the kind of world in which our children are ever-more willing to explode themselves for God is this dangerous world which we have made our home. They have learned by our violence. And they have learned well. The world we have made for our children is a dangerous world because of the knowledge we have given to them. While we have given them the knowledge to sustain life beyond all that former generations could have imagined, the knowledge to fill tomorrow with hope and promise untold, we have also shown them how we have chosen to use that knowledge -- to build bigger bombs, not better bridges.

In a world such as theirs, we need to challenge our children to live for God, not to die for God. We need to challenge our children to find new ways to prove their love. We, who follow in the way of Jesus, especially, need to challenge our children to solve the age-old conflicts, not by ever-increasing campaigns of terror, but by waging his campaing of love and of peace. We need to teach our children that the enemy is not all the other, “false religions.” And that we are not the defenders of all that is true and good and right. We need to teach our children to see God even in the eyes of the “infidels.”

It is enough because the world is “now too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love.”[10] So we must incite in our children a resolute commitment to live for God.

In one commentary, after praising Stephen’s act of commitment, but in order to short-circuit the logic that would send an increasing flow of blood into the streets, the writer asks, “… Isn’t it true that only God chooses martyrs?”[11]

I hope so. The world is too dangerous and too confusing for God’s children to make this choice of their own accord.

It is enough because I believe the God whom we seek to worship today, whether by the name Lord, Yahweh, or Allah, has seen enough. The twentieth century witnessed the most advancement of any century in our history, and yet it was also the bloodiest of all. If martyrdom is needed, surely the blood of millions upon millions of innocent children has satisfied God’s thirst by now. But I believe that a world bent on its own destruction continues to misunderstand this God.

In one of the Bible’s most poignant passages, the so-called “blood-thirsty” God of our Old Testament cries out against violence, even against justice to an unjust people. Hear God’s words from the prophet Hosea, written nearly three thousand years ago:

How can I give you up, [O children]? How can I hand you over? My heart explodes within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy… (Hosea 11.8-9)

Christian faith, like its Jewish ancestor, is radical faith. We still have not heard its message. In a world where the gods still demand obedience, sacrifice, even blood, the God of Jesus Christ declared long ago, it is enough.

The word “martyr” has two roots. It comes to us meaning both “mindfulness” and “witness” -- “When we are no longer mindful of a martyr, we lose her witness, we render [his] suffering meaningless.” [12] Today we must be mindful of the witness of the untold thousands who have given their lives for following God. We must not let their deaths be in vain. But Kathleen Norris suggests, “a martyr is not a model to be imitated, but a witness, one who testifies to a new reality.”[13]

What is that new reality? It is called resurrection, and it is not a call to die, but a challenge to be so transformed by God’s love in this life, that even death, when it comes, will continue to speak our witness for Truth.

God said to our ancestor Moses, “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live…” That choice is still before us.

Are you Dying to Please a demanding God, or are you living abundantly the life that God freely gives? Choose life.

[1] The story of these two girls is taken from “How Two Lives Met In Death,” Newsweek, April 15, 2002, Joshua Hammer.

[2] These words are used, in proper context, as consolation in times of death. They are not to be used as a cry for martyrdom, certainly not the murderous suicides of the recent Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Using the passage here was meant as a subtle reminder of how easy it is to misuse the scriptures for our own, misguided agendas. To highlight this, the next time I quote the verse it is phrased as a question (see below).

[3] Jim and Shelley Douglass, “Sojourners,” May-June, 1996 (emphasis added).

[4] “The Christian Century,” April 10-17, 2002, p.16.

[5] One song is by Stephen Curtis Chapman, and was popular at Caswell Youth Camp last summer. I do not know the name of the song. Though I do not have any references to document this, there are varying reports as to the veracity of the whole “Do you believe in God?” story.

[6] “If you ask many teens, a bunch would say they’d be willing to die for God. Personally, I would like to be a martyr. You would be blessed, because Jesus said, ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’” Fifteen year-old Joanna Dobbe, following the shooting in a Fort Worth Church as reported by the Alabama Baptist, October 14, 1999.

[7] The tension of the sermon is the double entendre in the title – why are we so “dying” to please God? Are we so fearful of a God who will “get us” if we don’t give enough, that we are willing to become sacrifices? Or is our violence our determination to take matters into our own hands, and then ascribe our actions to God? The sermon operates from the premise that neither approach is appropriate to the God of Jesus Christ, whose only “power” is love.

[8] “The Christian Century,” April 10-17, 2002, p.16.

[9] Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk, p.204.

[10] “May the Lord Bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May God give you grace never to sell yourself short; grace to risk something big for something good grace to remember that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love. So may God take your minds and think through them, may God take your lips and speak through them; may God take your hearts and set them on fire. Through Jesus the Savior. Amen.” Used by H. Stephen Shoemaker, Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC. Shoemaker adapted this from a benediction by William Sloane Coffin.

[11] Jim and Shelley Douglass, “Sojourners,” May-June, 1996.

[12] From Kathleen Norris: The Cloister Walk, p. 198. She is citing a work by Eric Partridge, Origins.

[13] Norris, p.191.