The Holy Spirit and Fire

Baby chicks are among the cutest of God's creatures. Have you ever tried to tell one fluffy, yellow baby chick from another? Newly hatched these little balls of down are intentionally designed to be as alike as possible. Their identical sizes, uniform pigmentation, round shape; and quickly imprinted behaviors make a joke of the notion of "cloning" -- what would be the point?

Every now and again, however, some baby chick has the misfortune to "stand out" in some way. Perhaps it has a distinct dark or light spot in its feathers. Perhaps it is smaller than the rest. Perhaps a run-in with a sharp stick or a bit of fencing gives it a red scratch or a slight limp. Whatever the distinguishing mark may be, it is almost certainly a mark of death. The other chicks, despite their adorable, cuddly appearance, are programmed pitilessly to peck and persecute any chick in their midst who appears to be somehow different. A tiny scratch will become a beacon attracting the savage pecks of all the others in the flock. The off-colored feathers will be plucked out, then the bald spot itself attacked. The small will be shoved, beaten back, and driven away at every opportunity. The flock mentality of these "birdbrains" declares that anyone different must be driven out or destroyed.

Although Americans tend to romanticize the notion and time of childhood into an age of innocence, it would probably take each one of us about 10 seconds to recall a time when we felt like one of those blighted, berated baby chicks. Children can be magnificently cruel and vicious to anyone in their midst or their "flock" who is different.

Which one were you? The "fat" kid, the "slow" kid, the "dumb" kid, the "gimp" kid, the "poor" kid, the "ugly" kid, the "short" kid, the "smelly" kid the "brace-face" kid, the "overdeveloped" kid, or the "bad" kid? Whatever the weakest, most indefensible spot in your spirit, there was always at least one strutting chick who could find it and start up the pecking by all the others.

As adults, we like to think of ourselves as mature, tolerant, sophisticated. We are comfortable with accepting all of the quirks and differences that make up our pluralistic, multi cultural society. Despite racial bigotry, gender bias, economic oppression and a host of more subtle discriminations of all sorts, we still believe that ours is at the core, a civilized, "politically correct" world, where undisguised persecution cannot, could not and would not happen.

As Christians in America, perhaps we find it doubly hard to hear a shocking, scandalous message that is slowly reaching out to the church. We pride ourselves on a purposeful heritage of religious freedom and toleration. We feel secure in the knowledge that much of our nation's history was written by Christian men and women whose personal faith influenced our national character.

But we should remember that we declare that our salvation is found in the utter rejection, the malicious torture, the gruesome crucifixion and the agonizing death of the one who was the "Anointed One," the Messiah, the "Son," the "Beloved." Our identity comes from the one who suffered persecution to the point of death, despite the fact that he enjoyed the fullest measure of God's pleasure.

If death on the cross was the experience of God's Son with whom God was "well pleased," it seems reasonable to expect that both persecution and pain may be a part of our Christian experience as well. To experience "God's pleasure" doesn't mean one will experience a life that is all pleasure. As ones who share with Jesus in his baptism a common anointing with the Holy Spirit, we may still be persecuted.

When you are baptized and become a member of the family of God, you become marked like that chick in the flock. You become vulnerable to those who would like to hurt you because you take a stand for God.

Indeed, wearing this stamp of God's pleasure is often the distinguishing mark that signals to other members of the human flock: "Attack -- this one is different." Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, an American Jew, received the 1997 Wilberforce Award. His dedication to spreading the message that worldwide acts of violence and targeted persecution against Christians are escalating at alarming rates is a signal flare to all of us who feel snug in our suburban safety. When asked why a Jew should work so long and hard on behalf of Christians, Horowitz suggests that "No man, not me, or any of us, can honorably sit out more than one holocaust per lifetime. You get a grace period for just one, and after that you are on the hook. And thus we are all on the hook for this one".

Horowitz has seen Christians targeted for persecution and populations targeted for persecution and driven to near extinction by regimes that proudly duplicate the tactics of the Nazi regime. Just as the Nazi party blamed all of Germany's economic and political failures on the "foreign" presence of the Jews, government policies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are now officially targeting the Christian members of their societies as the scapegoats of choice.

Even more alarming, perhaps, is that Horowitz also claims that the response of the educated elite of the world is also much the same as it was 50 years ago as the Jewish holocaust began to gain momentum. Horowitz notes with agony the apparent indifference of these elites to those who are "not like them." And even among those of us who should be united by the web of faith, there is still an unbelieving silence. In general, the Western Christian Community has been slow to respond, seemingly unswayed by the systematic atrocities being visited upon Christian brothers and sisters worldwide.

-- How can we stand unmoved when, in Sudan, an open-air slave market sells 6-year-old Christian children for the price of a cow?

-- How can we stand unmoved when the radical Muslim regime of the Sudan targets its own Christian villages for carpet-bombing runs and siege tactics, finally confronting the Christian survivors with the ultimatum, "convert or starve"?

– How can we stand unmoved when in Saudi Arabia the government pays bounties for identifying Bible-study groups, in order to arrest and torture those who attend?

– How can we stand unmoved when the official line of the Chinese government sanctions the imprisonment and physical torture of all Christians – from any active lay member to Catholic bishops and Protestant clergy?

– How can we stand unmoved when our own ambassador to China responds to a question about the systematic persecution of Chinese house-church Christians by saying: "What's a house-church?"

As Jesus discovered throughout his life, being participants in "God's pleasure" doesn't guarantee any of us safe passage, unscathed passports and unscarred portals through this life. What we are guaranteed, however, is God's unswerving love, steadfast faithfulness and poured- out presence throughout all of our days. We were never promised a rose garden, or promised that everything would go along smoothly. But we were promised that God would be with us to the end.

We are ultimately destined for the safe haven of the granary. But the fires that consume the chaff may scorch us along the way.

H. P. Ehrenberg, in his autobiography of a German, tells how it happened that his church was instrumental in establishing the "Confessing Church," the group that refused to accept Hitler. Ehrenberg himself was dispatched to a concentration camp.

Ehrenberg reports that, every Thursday evening, people from his church met to immerse themselves in the tradition and in the classic creeds and Reformation confessions of faith. He calls these meetings a "rehearsal" for whatever might be coming: "We came to realize that instruction itself already contains the seeds of fellowship, of true community. In our case it was as important as the final rehearsal of the orchestra: a sort of 'performance before the performance.'"

He describes something that took place at a summer camp for teenage girls that says it all. A "united service" for Catholics and Protestants was held in a room dominated by a large picture of Hitler set up on a table. A young Lutheran girl, recently confirmed, could take it no more and tore down the picture and smashed it against the wall, shouting these words, "Thou shalt have no other gods but me."

The remarkable thing was not that she smashed Hitler's picture, nor even that she had the courage to confess the First Commandment, but that she was prepared beforehand to do both.

What was it that made her "prepared beforehand"? The church! It is the only community on Earth that can confront the Evil One. For it is the only community on Earth to whom the keys of the kingdom were given. The gates of hell can prevail against anything and everything -- but the church.	Amen.