Blessed Are You When People Revile and Persecute You

You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Matthew 5:11-12 CSB

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God,” Corrie ten Boom’s quote exemplifies her life. Corrie and her devout Christian family are best known for their courageous acts of hiding and assisting Jews to escape the brutal terror of the Nazi regime in The Netherlands. Through their effort, over 800 lives were saved from the Holocaust in World War II. The family’s effort to help others resulted in all the family being arrested and imprisoned with Corrie’s father and sister dying in the concentration camps.

Betsie could not survive the horrors of Ravensbruck but left a message with Corrie to share with the world. “Tell everyone who will listen that Jesus is a reality and that he is stronger than the powers of darkness. Tell them He is our greatest friend, our hiding place. Only prisoners can know how desperate this life is. We can tell from experience that no pit is too deep, because God’s everlasting arms always sustain us. Even in Ravensbruck, God’s love still stands when all else has fallen.”

Betsie and the generations of Christians who have been martyrs for their faith would understand what Jonathan Pennington wrote. “If you are slandered for the name of Christ you are flourishing, because the glorious and divine Spirit rests upon you.”

John Foxe died in 1587 but his monumental work, “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs” has endured as a legacy of inspiration for the persecuted church to remain faithful and as a challenge to all the church to remain steadfast in the face of persecution. Sabina Wurmbrand, co-founder of The Voice of the Martyrs, is quoted in an updated version of this classic book. “Leprosy is a disease without pain. No remedy is found because the nerves don’t work. Lepers lose their fingers and toes in accidents because they cannot feel any pain. When the Church does not feel pain with those that are part of them, the Church’s nerves also become dead. Then the Church loses parts of its body. It loses power to touch souls. The Church loses its credibility before the world. On the other side, the suffering church gives the whole Church strength to fight for Christ. Suffering makes the soul to cry out and look for help, to draw strength from the source of help—Jesus Christ.”

Jesus concluded his introductory remarks before launching into his transforming teachings commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount. Biblical scholars differ on whether verses 11 and 12 constitute a stand-alone 9th Beatitude or a continuation of the Beatitude in verse 10, “Blessed are those who are persecuted.” Regardless of whether 8 or 9, each Beatitude serves as a powerful bridge to Jesus’ teachings that followed on how his followers were to live life.

Jesus uses the Beatitudes in much the same way a caring hostess prepares for her guests. The table is meticulously set, each dish and cutlery item placed in its proper place and each detail of the table arranged correctly. Yet the table setting is not the main focus, it serves only as the container for the delicious food that is about to be served.

Servais Pinckaers writes, “We can compare the work of the beatitudes to that of a plow in the field. Drawn along with determination, it drives the sharp edge of the plowshare into the earth and carves out, as the poets say, a deep wound, a broad furrow…In the same way the word of the Beatitudes penetrates us with the power of the Holy Spirit in order to break up our interior soil. It cuts through us with the sharp edge of trials and with the struggles it provokes. It overturns our ideas and projects, reverses the obvious, thwarts our desires, and bewilders us, leaving us poor and naked before God. All this, in order to prepare a place within us for the seed of new life. “(from Pursuit of Happiness}

You are more familiar with Corrie ten Boom and her family’s effort on behalf of those persecuted and for their own imprisonment. What is not generally known about the Ten Boom family is their 100-year prayer legacy. Corrie’s grandfather, Willem gathered his family around the dining room table to pray on behalf of the Jewish people and “for the peace of Jerusalem” from 1844 to 1944 until the Nazis arrested the family and sent them to concentration camps. She saw a connection between the prayer century for the Jews and the role her family played in World War II.

“In a divine way which is beyond our understanding, God answered those prayers. One hundred years after Willem began his prayer meetings, his son, four grandchildren, and a great-grandchild were arrested in the same house where the prayer meetings started, because they had saved Jewish people from Adolph Hitler’s plans to kill them.” (from an article by Mark Ellis)

I can’t remember a time when Jesus wasn’t a central part of my life yet as I began writing on each Beatitude over these last nine weeks I came away with a fresh perspective of a flourishing and blessed life. Yet these last Beatitudes challenged me in so many ways. How do I respond to Jesus’ words, “Blessed are you when they insult you”? Am I able to “be glad and rejoice”? John Stott powerfully gave words to some of what I was thinking. “Since all the beatitudes describe what every Christian disciple is intended to be, we conclude that the condition of being despised and rejected, slandered and persecuted, is as much a normal mark of Christian discipleship as being pure in heart or merciful.”

Together we can pray for the persecuted church, for each other, and the church’s impact on our culture. “He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” 2 Cor 1:10-11 (NRSV)

God is great!