AEC2000

President, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, Indiana

It’s a joy to greet you in the name of Jesus, who has lavished love upon us, who loves the world and gives us abundant life. I find encouragement and instruction in the stories of men and women who make costly choices to follow Jesus.

Lately I’ve been examining the story of Marcellus (from The Acts of Marcellus, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, trans. Herbert Musurillo [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972], pp. 250-259).

On the birthday of the Roman emperor, in the year AD 298, in the country we today call Morocco, a certain Roman centurion found himself torn by a test of loyalty.

It was customary in the 3rd century for citizens all over the Roman Empire to swear an oath of allegiance to the emperor and to worship an image of the emperor on his birthday. This especially was required of men in the military, where allegiance was highly valued.

We don’t know who shared the gospel with Marcellus, but we do know that he was not the first centurion to encounter the gospel. Jesus once healed the servant of a Roman centurion (Luke 7; Matt 8); the first Gentile to whom Peter carried the Christian gospel was a Roman centurion (Acts 10). But we don’t know what happened to those men after the encounter with Jesus.

With Centurion Marcellus, in AD 298, however, we know the end of the story. During a banquet to honor and worship the emperor in July, 298, Marcellus threw down his soldier’s belt in front of the "legionary standards" (the closest thing the Romans had to a flag) and spoke in a loud voice: "I am a soldier of Jesus Christ, the eternal king. From now [on] I cease to serve your emperors and I despise the worship of your gods of wood and stone, for they are deaf and dumb images."

Ancient documents report that Marcellus’ fellow soldiers were "amazed" and promptly arrested him, put him into prison, and reported him to the governor.

Marcellus appeared before the governor Anastasius Fortunatus who demanded, "What was your intention in violating military discipline in this way?" Marcellus responded: "I declared clearly and publicly before the standards of this legion that I was a Christian, and said that I could not serve under this military oath, but only for Christ Jesus, the son of God the Father almighty."

On October 30, 298, the case came to trial in front of Aurelius Agricolanus, who demanded of Marcellus: "What madness possessed you to throw down the symbols of your military oath and say the things you did?" Marcellus replied: "No madness possesses those who fear the Lord."

Agricolanus: "You threw down your weapons?"

Marcellus: "Yes, I did. For it is not fitting that a Christian, who fights for Christ his Lord, should fight for the armies of this world."

Agricolanus then read the sentence: "What Marcellus has done merits punishment according to military rules. And so, whereas Marcellus, who held the rank of centurion, first class, has confessed that he has disgraced himself by publicly renouncing his military oath . . . I hereby sentence him to death by the sword."

So Marcellus died by the sword, laying down his life in witness to Jesus Christ.

But that is not the end of the story. The early Christian church was in the habit of keeping the bones of martyrs as a remembrance of their faithfulness. Centuries later the bones of Marcellus ended up in Rome.

When the Catholic Church establishes a new basilica, it is customary to place the bones of a martyr under the altar. When the basilica at Notre Dame in South Bend was founded, they needed the bones of a martyr. Whose bones do you think the church sent from Rome? The bones of Marcellus!

The only Christian from the early church buried in Northern Indiana is a man who had a radical sense of allegiance to Jesus, who left Caesar’s army because of his allegiance to Jesus Christ.

What would make a well-paid, socially and politically secure centurion in the third century give up his position of power to follow a Lord who had been crucified by soldiers of Rome?

Why was it that the early church grew at the rate of 40 percent per decade [Rodney Stark] during the first three centuries of the Christian era? What drew people to the gospel of Jesus Christ in the first centuries, and what can we learn from that?

What was the Roman world like at the time of the New Testament?

Jesus was born during the reign of the first Roman emperor (Caesar Augustus) and the early church was founded at the time when the Roman Empire was approaching its peak of power and wealth. Just like the United States is the undisputed political and military superpower of the world today, Italy was the undisputed master of the world known to early Christians.

There was unimagined wealth being created by a flourishing economy across the Mediterranean; there was a huge increase in travel and communication; there was a plethora of new religions and new belief systems as people from provinces new to the Roman Empire brought their cultures into the Roman melting pot.

But all was not well in the early centuries, and as I name a few failures of the Roman world, I invite you to think of parallels in our own culture:

In Texas the problem has been so big that there now are billboards along the highway that say: "Don’t Abandon Your Baby: Take your child to an emergency medical technician at a fire station or hospital" (where the child will be taken in with no questions asked). All this is done to prevent young mothers from putting their babies into dumpsters.

It’s to people who sensed the emptiness of empire and the moral failure of the Roman system that Paul the apostle said: "You were at one time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." (Eph. 2:12)

I believe the first thing to draw early believers to the gospel was the magnificent hope that Christians exuded. 1 Peter 3:15 alerts believers that they will always have to be prepared to "give a defense for the hope that is in you." Rome had been fabulously successful in uniting the whole world, giving opportunity for upward mobility, suppressing enemies of the state, but millions of people found it all to be empty.

God remained distant to most people of the empire, accessed through professional pagan priests. The gods of Rome and pagan gods in general were spiritual forces to be feared, appeased, not spiritual realities to be loved.

Rome claimed to be the culmination of history, the pinnacle of human potential, but it was a violent and greedy power. In addition to this spiritual void and hunger, there was the reality that a large percentage of people in the Empire did not have citizenship and did not enjoy prosperity or security.

In legal terms, these people were known as "resident aliens," living in a given country, but having none of the rights of citizenship (the right to legal defense at trial, the right to inherit property, the right to marry whomever they wished . . .)

For these people without belonging and without a place of security, the gospel brought magnificent hope: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God" (Eph. 2:19).

The "household" (oikos) was the basic unit of belonging in the ancient world. Headed by a "paterfamilias," the authority figure and provider, it included spouse, children, grandchildren and slaves and could extend beyond the physical building where the family lived (cf. Christians who belonged to the "household of Caesar" in Phil. 4:22), a reminder that not all Christians were marginalized/impoverished. (Jesus even had wealthy society women among his band of disciples. Luke 8:3)

The power of the Holy Spirit was available to transform lives: forgiveness of sin—"You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived" (Eph. 2:1). The numbing, dehumanizing, toxic effects of sin were now lifted off the backs of believers. Through Christ, God came down among mortals to suffer with us the dire effects of our sinful behavior.

And through the resurrection, God showed that sin and death do not have the last word, but God will absorb the pain of human disobedience and overcome the ghastly results of sin and empower those who confess Jesus as Lord to live holy lives as God intended us to do (Eph. 2:10). We are God’s poiema (workmanship–the Greek word from which English derives "poem").

The source of our hope and joy is that God loves humanity; God yearns to restore us to wholeness and life.

This week on TV I saw a program about homosexuality, including the response of the church. Pictures were shown of a few strident Christians carrying posters "God hates fags," and worse. Then the camera went to Jerry Falwell’s offices, where Falwell hosted a group of gay and lesbian people. Falwell said: "I do not accept the gay lifestyle, but I like you, and God loves you." (I never thought I’d say "amen" to anything Jerry Falwell said. But that time he got it right: God loves and yearns to bring every man and women into right relationship with himself.)

And what God does to restore humanity on an individual level is simply a microcosm of what someday God will do for all of creation. History is headed somewhere, a deeply rooted eschatology.

Oikos (believers) now belonged to a household, a literal place of belonging. Minucius Felix, a Christian lawyer from Rome early in the 3rd century, records some of the accusations brought against Christians by pagan society: "[Christians] recognize each other by secret marks and signs; hardly have they met when they love each other; they indiscriminately call each other brother and sister . . ."

There were widespread rumors that the close sense of family among Christians was an immoral sexual union, so Christians were poorly understood. But pagans saw the radical new sense of belonging and realized that Christians fostered a new corporate identity that made all other allegiances, all other citizenship, all other households, secondary.

This new identity was so powerful that it transcended and destroyed the boundaries that Romans thought were essential to survival of the empire. In Eph. 2:14 Paul tells how in the new household of God, Christ Jesus has "broken down the dividing wall of hostility" between Jew and Gentile, "creating in himself one new humanity in place of two."

This perhaps is a reference to the temple in Jerusalem, where walls divided worshippers: Court of the Gentiles, Court of Women, Court of Jewish Men. But the Christian community encompassed slave and free (Onesimus and Philemon as brothers) men and women (Priscilla and Aquila in shared evangelistic endeavor).

In the earliest letter from a Roman official, Pliny the Younger, AD 112, described the trial of Christians, saying he tortured two "deaconesses" to determine the nature of the Christian meetings. From the Pentecost experience (Acts), we learn that the gospel, now claimed by people of all nations and ethnic backgrounds, transcended these boundaries, thus creating a new humanity that displaced other loyalties.

Right from the start Jesus had said his followers must be ready to leave father and mother and sister and brother. Believers have a new family: Christ is "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come . . ." (Eph. 1:21).

Because the emperor claimed to be divine and claimed the title of "Lord," Christians could not give allegiance to Rome. Marcellus paid for that with his life. All of this seemed incomprehensible to many pagans: "[Christians] have collected from the lowest possible dregs of society the more ignorant fools together with gullible women . . . they have thus formed a rabble of blasphemous conspirators . . . they are a crowd that furtively lurks in hiding places, shunning the light . . . they despise our temples as being no more than sepulchers, they spit after our gods, they sneer at our rites . . ." [Minucius Felix 8]

In a letter to Diognetus at the end of 2nd century, it was noted that "Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some unusual dialect . . . They live in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens, and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and every fatherland is foreign . . . They live on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven . . .

In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world."

Marcellus stands up boldly in front of his own soldiers and says "I belong to Jesus," establishing a powerful eschatology: "With all wisdom and insight God has made known to us the mystery of his will . . . as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth" (Eph. 1:8).

As the year 2000 approached, there was a crescendo of Christian voices preaching about the last days, the return of Christ, the eschaton. Not all of this was good news. Some sounded like God is an angry tyrant waiting to smash his own creation.

The New Testament view of the end times is restoration of "a new heaven, a new earth, a restored humanity" and the church becomes a harbinger of that future: "so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places . . ." (Eph. 3:10).

In an interview recently with Stephanus Haryono, an AMBS student who is the assistant to the general secretary of an Indonesian Mennonite synod of about 38 churches from which more than 100 "branches" or church plants are happening, he had this to say:

Christians are a small minority among a Muslim majority in Indonesia. There is tension in the relationship between the two groups. When I was in grade school, my Islamic teachers said Christianity was not true.

They even said it was untrue that Jesus ever was crucified. Between 1967 and 1999 hundreds of churches across Indonesia were destroyed by mob violence (some of it perhaps instigated by the Muslim majority); robbery and sexual assault as well. The typical response was that on the Sunday after their buildings were destroyed, Christians gathered at the site to worship while standing among the ruins.

The Christians were not afraid of what would happen during their worship.

How do Christians build and maintain identity in a hostile environment? We worship daily from 5:30-6:00. We have scripture and prayer-centered activities.

Christians also are known by service activities: some of the best hospitals, schools, universities are Christian. Lectio Divina (scripture and commentary) are very common at work and family worship.

On "Mennonite Day" (January 25) we sing about the true evangelical faith and the faith of the martyrs. At retreats we teach history of Mennonites, sing "Faith of our Fathers," watch the film "The Radicals" (translated into Indonesian). We know the stories of Anabaptists.

When our churches were burned we took pictures of Martyrs Mirror and put them in all Mennonite churches in my synod. Mennonites help Presbyterians, e.g., build a church. There is strong solidarity (from another island). Evangelism is very strong: it’s a mission church.

Suffering strengthens the church. But not all Christian witness is positive. For 350 years Indonesia was colony of a European power. For many people Christianity is the same as colonialism; there was injustice perpetrated by Christians that Indonesia still remembers. (cf. Walk of Reconciliation from western Europe to Jerusalem).

In 1998 there was a rash of church burnings in Indonesia. That was portrayed among western evangelical Christians as simple persecution. Some of the anger of Muslims was motivated by jealousy. Christians tend to have money in Indonesia, and build big, beautiful churches when there are needy people nearby. It’s not a good witness.

Does Stephanus have a challenge to North American Mennonites? "Why do you hide your identity?" he asks.

I go into Christian homes and see no Christian symbols, no cross, no Christian pictures, nothing that would suggest this is a Christian home. Why don’t you speak the gospel when you have opportunity?

I’ve gone to two birthday parties since I came to America. I could not believe that Christians would have a birthday party and not pray. All you do is eat! In Indonesia we expect there will be people at a birthday party who don’t know Jesus; it’s a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel, at least by praying for the person who has the birthday. In Indonesia, we have a sermon!

And speaking of sermons, in Indonesia we preach from the heart, in America you preach from the head.

According to Alle Hoekema, Dutch Christians (and Mennonites) became divided between social action (peace justice) and personal salvation. The former gave a lot of good witness, but were not able to pass on the faith even to their own children.

In our Mennonite witness today we hesitate to put words to deeds (and hence end up making ourselves look benevolent rather than calling others to know Jesus as Lord).

Our peace work sometimes has made us so determined to be diplomatic and sensitive to other convictions that we lose the clarity of confessing that Jesus is Lord, that something unparalleled and irreplaceable happened in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

It was Paul’s passion of a lifetime to share the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ.

"This is the reason that I Paul am a prisoner for Christ Jesus" (Eph 3:1). "Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains" (Eph 6:19).

Taken from A New Humanity: Anabaptist Ministry Among Many Peoples (© 2000 New Life Ministries). Permission to reproduce for local church use only is granted. Provided by New Life Ministries, 6404 S Calhoun St, Fort Wayne, IN 46807, through its web site at www.NewLifeMinistries-NLM.org

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