I wonder whether other people from my church also come home today with a sense that something was not quite right in the message proclaimed. Don’t get me wrong. The doctrine was wholly biblical. The problem was something subtle and insidious. Let me explain.

The “lectionary” of our church contains now readings about the seven churches in Revelation. Today we read the text about the church in Smyrna. The speakers stuck to the text and attempted to explain it in light of the historical context. Because the historical context refers to persecution, they too ended speaking a lot about persecution. So far so good. Historically, persecution has often been the lot of the Church, so you are bound to speak constantly about it, if you want to be faithful to the heritage of the previous centuries.

To state things plainly, my objection (the first and foremost) is that the perspective of the speakers on history was seriously warped. The audience was given the impression that they were (or should be) in direct continuity with the first-century church or with Polycarp of Smyrna. Now, if this means looking back to the beginnings, in order to learn a point or two, it’s fine. It does no injury to be inspired by the history of the Early Church. But then other examples were brought to bear: today’s martyrs in China or in other countries from afar.

As the sermons deploy more and more examples, one begins to see one thing emerging clearly: we seek to evade our own space and history. We look either to Polycarp (evasion of our own present) or to Watchman Nee (evasion of our own place). Why?

The most honest answer I can come up with at present is this: because we (and I am speaking here of Pentecostals in particular) don’t seem to be interested in our own martyrs. If we were, we would feel ashamed of the great discrepancy between their lives and ours. I know very well that communism has taken a serious toll on the Romanian Evangelical martyrs. But we feel comfortable spealing rather of R. Wurmbrand (Lutheran) and T. Dorz (Lord’s Army). We pay homage to their memory or to the memory of other people from another time and another place. While doing this, we fail to ask one basic question: who were the martyrs from among us?

My feeling is that recent history glares to us and means to tell us so much that is uncomfortable, but we don’t want to give heed to it.

P.S. My second objection has to do with the looseness of the details inserted in the sermons. If you claim that Diocletian said “You have conquered, Nazarene”, I will not dispute the validity of the example (perhaps Diocletian in the end realized that what he had tried to do was not going to be accomplished), but I will dispute its accuracy. The saying was attributed to Julian the Apostate (and only by 10 or 11-12 century Byzantine chroniclers, namely Symeon Logothetes, Joannes Zonaras and Georgius Cedrenus). But then, though inaccurate, this misattribution fares better then the one according to which the vanquished emperor addressing the Nazarene on his deathbed was none other than… Alexander the Great! :)

Update 25 nov: A friend of mine (better acquainted with history) tells me that the phrase “nenikas Galilaie” occurs already in Theodoretus (A.D. 4-5). Upon looking into the matter more closely, I discovered that, under one form or another,  the saying occurs also in Philostorgius (A.D. 4-5, Cappadox), John of Damascus (A.D. 8 ) and Georgius Monachus. In all cases, it is attributed to emperor Julian.