Persecution, Perseverance, and the Key to Sustaining Faith

Karen Ellis: So I’ve been tasked with talking to you this afternoon about what are the ingredients that make up this thing we call “sustaining faith.” And what is the power in this sort of thing?

My brother mentioned that my husband and I are part of an educational center that is done out of the Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, and it’s called the Edmiston Center. At the Edmiston Center we study how Christians in history and in the contemporary world live with different levels of restricted religious freedom.

You might have gotten this in your welcome bag. The Edmiston Center helps Christians, pastors, leaders, lay people understand how Christians persevere under hard circumstances. And that can be anything from soft marginalization all the way to outright persecution.

We’re trying to move from advocacy to education because there’s a really amazing thing happening in and through the Church right now. The Church is beginning to speak to herself across geographic and linguistic lines.

I’m a small cog in the process, but I’ve been blessed to facilitate letters from the Church in China to the Church in Afghanistan. There are actually some churches now in the restricted world who are beginning to write to the Church in Ukraine. And there’s folks that are now starting to write from the Church in the Middle East to us here in the West. And, they’re publishing. This is really exciting.

Now, I’m not saying that this is the continuation of any kind of the book of Acts. I’m not saying that these are epistles that should be included in the Canon of Scripture. We all agree that the Canon is closed. Right? It’s efficient for everything that we need to do and need to live. Right?

But this is really significant because now the Church is once again starting to speak to herself across all these lines. That’s really exciting. I feel like that’s a really important moment in Church history because we need those good Jason Bourne skills that they have.

We’re going beyond just sharing the stories of those who live under persecution and under hostility and in restrictive circumstances. Now we’re moving into how do you do what you do? How do you disciple in your context? Why does your church look like the Church in the New Testament? 

A lot of this kind of same movement is starting to happen in churches in our rural areas, churches in urban areas. The players who are the persecutors may take different forms and different faces, but they’re still hostile against a truly transformative Christianity, where the people change their affections and their loyalties.

This is a really exciting time to be a Christian. The darker it gets, the more bright the light shines.

After working alongside organizations that serve the persecuted Church, the people I serve are really the ones doing the hard work. I just come alongside and say, “What ya’all doing?” But the people I serve understand how important it is to persevere and to present themselves as a people deeply rooted in and yet set apart from all the other communities that surround them.

A lot of people talk today about Christians being countercultural. You ever heard that? But these persevering Christians are not just countercultural. That is, they aren’t existing solely to overthrow their surrounding cultures. What they’re trying to do is nudge their cultures closer to the kingdom of God.

They’re also not a political. They’re not withdrawn from the political system. They’re not against politics. But what I like to say is they are actually not countercultural and not apolitical, they’re actually other cultural and other political. They’re formed by a different culture and a different set of politics.

A political and cultural system based on the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus Christ, on whose shoulders the government will sit one day and will have no end. So they live in places, and they express being other cultural in places where it’s socially difficult, physically dangerous, and, at times, even lethal to be a Christian, whether you’re a Christian in heart or just in name.

Now, before we start to think how hard that must be and how bleak it must be, at the same time, it’s actually the place where your anxiety turns into adventure. I always joke that’s going to be my t-shirt. We’ve got to get that merch going . . . anxiety to adventure. Right?

Where is the place where our anxiety over how our culture is rapidly shifting around us, where is that place where our anxiety becomes adventure? It’s in the place of sustaining faith. And we see the wisdom and the creativity that they regularly display through persevering faith.

A lot of people would think, I think, that in their situation, surviving or maybe even gaining power would be their goal. Right? Because they’re completely powerless. Also interesting is how in the powerless position, the Church doesn’t have the weapons. They don’t have the political power. They don’t have the cultural clout. And yet, so much political power and weaponry is used to keep them down. It’s, like, what weapon do we have?

We’ve got the Word of God. The enemy knows that that is way more powerful than any weapon, any arsenal, anything, because that is what changes hearts.

So, surviving doesn’t become the goal. For the Christian, faithfulness becomes the goal. And out of faithfulness, we thrive. There is a power in powerlessness that emanates from the cross to the margins of our societies.

And we get these questions that come up. In the midst of all of today’s conversations about earthly justice, we start to form questions like:

• How do you live when there is no justice?
• How does the Body of Christ do more than just survive?
• When there is no justice, how does the Body thrive despite her circumstance?
• How can we develop the faith to help those people around us flourish in hard circumstances so that our flourishing becomes a witness to the transformative power of Jesus Christ?

Now, I think that some of you already in this room possibly know very well what it is to live under anti-Christian hostility. You know that it’s not glamorous. In its worst manifestation:

• It can be torture.
• It can be forced marriage or slavery. 
• It can be imprisonment, unjust imprisonment where you’re now a criminal because you believe. 
• It can be homelessness.
• It can be chronic displacement in a less volatile environment.
• It’s job instability.
• It’s isolation.
• It’s being ostracizing.
• It’s being put out of your family.
• It is at best being the shame of the culture around you.

But God . . . You see, this is from the perspective of the outsider looking in.

From the perspective of the insider looking out, it’s a very different picture because on the flip side of our persecution lies our faith-filled perseverance. It’s filled with the hope of Christ and His promises in the Word that drives out the fear of man that causes the shame.

It’s love so consuming that we would abandon everything to keep it. It doesn’t boast of itself.

And it doesn’t wear suffering as a badge of honor, but rather than saying, “Look at me! Look at how I’m suffering.” It says, “Look at Christ who suffered for me.”

One thing we can learn about persevering Christians is that persecution becomes perseverance in community. And that community exists even when we’re isolated and alone because if God is always with us, as He promised us before He went up to the right hand of the Father, He said, “I will be with you to the very end of the age.” We are never truly alone.

So it’s communal always, whether with other believers or with God Himself.

It’s creativity because it’s pain mixed with hope. Human rights organizations acknowledge that 75 percent of the world’s Christians are living under some form of anti-Christian hostility. That makes us the other 25 percent in the freer world. 250 million Christians persevering under biblical persecution with a wide range of responses and coping methods and strategies.

A lot of talk today about listening to the marginalized voices of the world, when we listen to these voices, this is them. This is a very large marginalized population, globally.

And if we want to understand what informs a persevering faith, for the purpose of this seminar, we’re going to think about three things, at least.

First question is, “Who are the people of God?” Why are we different? What makes us different? What makes us that other culture?

Second question, “What’s our responsibility to each other?”

And the third question is, “How can we develop, not just the faith to endure, but the skills of endurance that go with that faith?”

So, question one, “Who are the people of God?”

Now, come on back with me for a minute. One time my husband was listening to an old-school preacher, country preacher, and he said, “Come with me back to the days before David.”

And the congregation was, like, “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Come on! Preach it!”

And then he said, “Come with me back to the days before Noah.”

And they were, like, “Yeah! Come on! Come on, somebody! Come to the days before Noah.”

And the preacher said, “Come back with me to the days before Adam.”

And they’re, like, “Yeah! Yes, the days before Adam!”

And then the preacher said, “Come back with me to the days before God.”

And somebody in the back said, “That’s too far back.” (laughter)

So, come back with me to the days before all this got messed up. I want to reflect for just a moment on where hostility comes from and why it’s so persistent around the world and throughout history. So let’s go back to what we know. We all know this. Right? Just a quick review.

God created everything in the Garden for the man and woman to flourish. Every created thing was dependent on the thing that came before it to survive. You couldn’t have the beasts of the field until there was a field for them to eat. Right? So everything was created in an order so that the thing that comes after it can survive and thrive.

By the time Adam and woman arrive, everything that they need, not just to survive, but to flourish, is there for them. He didn’t need to make anything else for them. This was their sanctuary. This was their safe space.

And God’s intention for them was for them to flourish and to know shalom. They represented not only the first marriage, and not just the first family. They represent the first people of God, worshiping, living in communion with and under the authority of the One who created them. And we can see them in this kind of double role, representing all of humanity. They’re the first two humans but also representing the first people of God.

Why the first people of God? Because God makes them a promise they can't refuse—not an offer they can’t refuse, like The Godfather—a promise they can’t refuse, a promise that lays claim to their belonging.

If you were to sum up the Bible in one glorious sentence, it would be this: I will be your God, and you will be My people.

Now, He doesn’t say it to them literally, but He infers it. Genesis 3:15 He says, “You cannot mess this up. I will keep you because you cannot keep yourself.”

And He swears by Himself to keep us throughout history. This people that He created for Himself to worship Him. He’s a covenant-keeping God. . .come on. So as people worshiping the one true God in the sanctuary that He prepares for Him.

They’re the people of God. They’re the people of the promise. And they’re the first people of humanity, carrying both promise and disappointment in their loins.

And God swears by Himself no matter what happens, this flourishing that we’re experiencing, this shalom, this peace, and this communion will be not just kept for us, but made even better at the end of all things. There’s a declaration, “It was very good.” It is quite different from, “Behold, I’m making all things new.” It’s quite different from, “Now the dwelling of God is with man.”

You know that song . . . I don’t know if you guys remember this gospel song that was, (singing) “Let’s get back to Eden, sit on top of the world.” I’m, like, I don’t want to go back there! I don’t want to go back to Eden. There’s sin back there. The trajectory of the Bible is always forward.

Do you ever wonder what that snake was doing there if it was very good? It might have been very good, but it wasn’t perfect. Perfect comes with Christ in glory. So, the trajectory of the Bible is always forward, always towards God’s intent for our flourishing.

So, okay, back to the Garden. Enter Satan. (singing Da, Da, Da, Da!) Here he comes. “Let me holler at you. Come here. Did God really say . . .?”

And so the first people of God end up being deceived by the entity that does not want them to flourish. It does not want them to do well. It wants them to be thrown in the Lake of Fire, which was what was supposed to happen, but God had mercy. Right?

• Ultimately, it wants to oppress them.
• It wants to destroy their trust.
• It wants to confuse their worship.
• It wants to thwart their wisdom.
• It wants to destroy their relationships.
• It wants to distort their way of thinking.
• It wants their children.
• It wants to frustrate their housing opportunities–you know, that’s the day man lost his property. He got kicked out of the Garden. 
• It wants to eliminate their ability to work.
• It wants them and everything that was set up for their flourishing to be destroyed.

So by the time we get to Revelation, that serpent is a full-blown dragon. No longer troubling the first two people of God, but troubling all of God’s people. 

So much so that this is the moment when John the revelator sees the Lamb open the fifth seal. He sees under the altar all the souls of the faithful who’ve been slain for the Word of God and the word of their testimony. They cry out with this loud void, “How long do we have to suffer? How long do we have to suffer?”

Just one generation after our first parents, things escalate very quickly. And after that, the argument over who we will worship and how we will worship goes bananas. We get the first murder.

The division sown between the people of God and the people hostile toward those who want to worship rightly and those who don’t. Brother murders brother. We go straight from disobedience to outright murder.

Was this just a battle between two brothers? I say no. This was a spiritual battle. Let’s call this the religion of Cain vs. the worship of Abel. Or, the religion of self vs. the worship of God. Worshiping my way vs. worshiping God’s way. And out of the religion of Cain grows this destructive hatred toward the people of God because they want to worship rightly.

What happened in and outside of the Garden, because we’re out now. Once we get to Cain and Abel, we’ve been booted out. What happened in the Garden was an all-out tactical assault against those to whom God had made the promise, “I will be your God, and you will be My people.”

Cain vs. Abel. Cain takes the way of his mother and father. Abel takes the way of the cross.

Cain says, “Abel, if you’re gone, if you’re wiped off the face of the earth, my worship will be acceptable. I’ll remove the competition.”

Cain seeks dominance. Abel seeks faithfulness.

And here’s something curious. Oh, praise Thee, God! I’m so glad they didn’t make me be God. I wouldn’t have done it this way. Here’s something amazing: even in this, God is merciful to Cain.

We’re all Cains. God is merciful to Cain, the persecutor. His ways are not our ways.

Our ultimate enemy is not people. It’s the one who has been the enemy of Christ and Christ’s people from the beginning. But this underscores the major and basic pattern of the world today. The difference is only in how it gets carried out. And so the beat of oppression continues on and on and on.

Throughout the line of history, Satan attacks the people of God in the Garden and deceives them.

The first child, Cain, persecutes his brother in the first act of persecution—violent persecution against the people of God.

And so it is today.

The old people used to say, “Say on a match do.” And the resentment against Abel that Cain had was because his ethics, how he obeyed God, and his epistemology, what he knows about God, matched. Say on a match do. 

Statan loves it when our say and our do don’t match. Have great theology, but behave any kind you want.

All the oppressed people on or throughout history are actually types of the original oppression of the people of God. Satan despises those who walk that line where their say matches their do.

Now, not everyone who is oppressed is a part of the people of God. Oftentimes in restricted countries, there are other communities that are just as oppressed as the Christians, but that doesn’t mean their oppression isn’t real. As a matter of fact, that’s what makes Christians robust human rights and civil rights activists, because we all understand we’re made in the image of God and worthy of the protection of life.

Not everyone is made in the image of Christ. It’s biblical to make this distinction because it’s a distinction that God Himself makes. While on the one hand God is patient with us, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance—the imago dei is respected. But the same time, precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. It’s the image of Christ.

A biblical understanding of persecution resists being defined by ethnic groups, tribes, genders, causes, or any human division. It is defined by alignment and identity with the Person of Christ but still maintains the importance of our unique cultures, our ethnicities, our historical placements—why am I alive in 2022 and not 1822? This would be a really different conference if that were the case.

It doesn’t erase those things. I like to say I’m African-American by divine design. We have a rich history that harmonizes with much of the Bible, and our creativity and our resilience. So do many other ethnicities throughout history. God’s ethnic diversity is on full display in the invisible Church, in the underground Church, with all our joy and redeemed pain. The invisible Church and the underground comes alive in vivid technicolor. This is who we are.

All the talk about inclusion today, the Body of Christ is the most radically inclusive community on the face of the earth. And God has made it so. So we who bear the image of Christ and long to worship rightly after the pattern of Abel, we’re different throughout the Bible. We’re different throughout history.

Even in how we address the wrongs against us. We’re another culture all together. Historically, the invisible biblical Church doesn’t seek dominance. She seeks righteousness. She seeks faithfulness. She seeks truth. Her method is God’s method: love unto flourishing and not destruction.

That was a lot for the first question. Here’s the second question, “What’s our responsibility to each other?”

I already talked about how the Church is now feeding us. The global Church is now feeding us. “How I Got Over.” It’s an old song. “How I Got Over.” They’re telling us how they’re getting over. How are they making disciples in the Middle East in one of the fastest disciple-making movements in the world? And they’re not fast and shallow. These are fast, deep disciples who are willing to be made leaders within three years and go to prison for it.

I gave a statistic earlier. 75 percent of the world’s Christians are living under some form of anti-Christian hostility. If you add the number of those living under hostility to the number of us living in the freer world, the 25 percent, for a total of 100 percent. That’s the Church. How many churches are there in the world? I need an exact number. I know I’ve got a good missiologist in here who can give me the exact number of how many churches there are existing in the world today. ONE! (Who said that?) There’s a book waiting for you at the Edmiston Center booth. Please go and pick it up after this session. Sarah will be waiting there for you.

There’s one Church. Can we talk? If we’re going to get through this next season . . . This is not your daddy’s Christianity in America. We must reclaim our understanding of our oneness in Christ in this country and around the world, across denominations.

We must reclaim our understanding of our oneness because our oneness creates a responsibility to the people of our household. “As we have opportunity,” Galatians 6:16, “let us do good to everyone and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

I have to care about the local communities across town from me. As long as they’re being biblical and following the Jesus of the Bible, this is family business.

I have to care if their church has been torched. There’s been a lot of churches burned in the last ten years. You’d be surprised in America. Go Google it.

For the genuine Christian, the most significant number in approaching persecution is one. We give you a lot of statistics talking about persecution. One isn’t just a number for us. It’s a state of being.

We are one because Christ has determined that we should be one. Our union with Christ’s literal body puts us in relationship with each other that is intimate. It’s Christ-centered. It’s physical. Why do you think they chose the language “body”? “This is My body broken for you.” The Body of Christ, our union with Christ—no other earthly relationship, no other family relationship—is bound up in our union with Christ.

So the language Paul uses throughout Romans, his whole body languages that he uses, that’s intentional. “Once we existed dead in the body of Adam, now we’re alive in the body of Christ.” One new man.

There’s simply no comparison to any other earthly alliances. The language “household of faith,” that’s family language, the language of a people who dwell literally together in one flesh—the Body of Christ.

We should be able to feel the rest of the body when it rejoices, when it hurts. We should be able to feel each other. If someone came into your home and assaulted three out of the four—that’s 75 percent, right?—three out of the four people in your family, or harassed them or made life difficult for them or stole their economic opportunities or controlled their marriage decisions or caused debilitating mental health issues or limited where they could go or what they could say or dictated when and how and where they could worship or slaughtered them or killed those three in the house and then burnt the house down and made you watch in horror, and you were the only one left to tell the story, would you stay silent?

Politically progressive Christians tend to be dismissive of the plight of marginalized Christians. While, on the other hand, politically conservative Christians tend to kind of romanticize Christian suffering. Both of those approaches miss the mark. We need to be able to feel the Body again and wake up from our spiritual analgesia.

There’s a condition that I often reference, it’s called congenital analgesia. It’s a for-real condition. There’s a community in Europe that actually has a gene that’s passed on. They can’t feel pain. So, literally, all of life becomes a hazard. Like, you could break a bone, and you won’t feel it. You could bleed out, and you won’t know that you’re bleeding.

We have to move from having spiritual analgesia to the rest of the Body, to wake up and feel those synapses connect. I don’t just mean the global Church. I mean our local churches.

Here’s the good news: I mentioned earlier that the Church is once again beginning to talk to herself across linguistic and geographic lines. They are now speaking to us about their sustaining faith in their own words.

I want you to watch out for a book that’s coming out from The Center for House Church Theology. These guys have been publishing the works and the sermons and the letters of the Chinese House Church. They’ve been translating them into English. They’re on their third book. The one that’s coming up this November is Pastor Wang’s sermons that he wrote before he was sentenced to ten years hard labor in China. So keep an eye out for that. It’s called, “Faithful Disobedience,” which I love. I love that title.

So that’s from our friends at The Center for House Church Theology. And there’s another book being published from the Middle East coming out in the next six months or so that tells the story and methods of the folks with sheep among wolves. That’s the fastest-growing disciple-making movement currently. I think it comes out sometime in 2023.

These kinds of writings are not only new to this era of Church history, they keep us grounded in the realities and the endurance methods of the persevering Church. They keep us connected to other members of our Body.

Okay. Last question, “How can we develop not just the faith to endure, but the skills of endurance?”

There is only one way to develop the faith that it takes to endure anti-Christian hostility, whether it’s insults or all the way to physical pain and outright persecution. There’s only one way to develop that kind of faith. Look at the faithful One. There it is. That’s the method. Look at the One who is faithful. Do not take your eyes off of Him. And encourage each other to keep your eyes fixed on the hope of Jesus Christ.

We learn persevering faith by looking at the faithful One who went to the cross, obedient to the Father, who has His eyes on us, yes, but also on His plan for us, who set His face like flint toward the hope of His own resurrection.

Christ is the faith. He is the sustainer. He is the keeper. He is the hope. 

• We learn so much from Christ about hope over despair.
• We learn about the difference between justice and revenge.
• We learn about the many dimensions of forgiveness.
• We learn about caring for the souls of our enemies, the person who’s beating and hurting you. That’s other cultural. That’s other worldly.
• We learn most about balancing the temporal with the eternal.

These are a few things I’ve found among the persevering saints around the world who are literally living the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of Jesus Christ. Our family living under hostility are some of the most resilient, wise, and creative practitioners of the gospel you will find on earth.

We can go beyond studying their survival skills because the methods change according to region and culture and the history of the people. Some people have more freedom to do different things than others. Some people have deep concerns.

But it’s not just their methods that are important. It’s their head space. It’s their priorities that we need to consider. They help us rediscover how to read our Bibles. I hesitate to call it a persecution hermeneutic because I’m not really sure about putting lens on the Bible like that, but it is the context in which the New Testament was written. Even the Old Testament has hostility against the people of God because they’re the people of Yahweh. Maybe we can call it an exilic hermeneutic . . .I don’t know.

What hostile conditions drive the choices that you will make? What were the priorities of the apostles and the earliest followers of Jesus? They’re telling you about Daniel this whole conference. This is so relevant for us. In this country, what does it mean for us to represent a completely different culture living inside of a superpower in the world?

That’s what happened to Daniel. Nehemiah, too. What are the deeper meanings and practices we can learn about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection? The Bible has answers to these things if we see them through a different lens than the lens of comfort.

At the Edmiston Center, we believe the time is right to rediscover perseverance as a Christian virtue. That’s where the power is, in the overcoming power of Christ, to bring life from death, to bring beauty from ashes, peace from despair. I’m constantly surprised by this covenant-keeping God who specializes in making something out of nothing and has promised to keep a people for Himself.

In these last few minutes we have together, I want to share with you three principles. I’m a good Presbyterian, always in threes. Three points and a gripping illustration.

Okay. Three questions. Now, three principles of perseverance from the field that may be useful to us in this uncertain season for Christianity in America.

First principle: build that persevering faith. 

Persecution is determined by a lot of factors, including culture, legislation, the history of the people in the region, the politics. Hostility, no matter which manifestation it takes, historically causes the faithful to build a persevering faith.

What do I mean by persevering faith? Persevering faith is different from saving faith, but one leads to the other. God gives us saving faith that leads us from darkness to light. But He also gives us this operational faith. This is persevering faith. This is the faith that leads to courage, and it, too, is a grace of God just like saving faith.

Christ gives His disciples a window into persevering faith. He says, “When they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested. And for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:9–11 paraphrased).

Persevering faith is not something you realize you’ve been granted until you are standing in the place when you need it.

The world of anti-Christian hostility is a place of ever-changing rules. Oftentimes you cannot plan or predict how you will respond. Sometimes you cannot strategize it. Sometimes you cannot anticipate what the volatile religion of Cain will do. Life comes at you fast.

Sometimes, to show the imago Christi to a hostile culture, we have to speak or act the truth as a part of prophetic confrontation. Sometimes this is the truth unto discomfort. Sometimes it is truth unto death. This is when you need persevering faith.

Second principle: build persevering communities.

Hostility causes the necessity for persevering communities. Christian community expands our concept of family beyond what we can see with our eyes or even with the biologist’s microscope.

I speak from experience when I say I have not had biological children of my own, but to be regarded as “mother,” when one technically and biologically is not, is exquisite. And it’s humbling. In fact, it brings me unspeakable joy.

So in persevering communities, the celebate single or the infertile man or woman can suddenly become parents. The only child can become sister or brother to many. This is redemption of a broken world. Even barren places birth great fulfilment.

Christ Himself didn’t come to Israel at a time of great kings or after a great victory in battle. He was born into Israel when there was no fruit on the fig tree—true of the words of Isaiah—after a lengthy silence from God, like a root out of dry ground. This is the economy of God.

Even in creating our persevering communities, our family, Christ is creating ex nihilo—He’s creating out of nothing. That’s His specialty. How did all this stuff get here? Out of nothing!

So when we think about communities like this, Christ injunction from John 15 to “love one another” becomes enormous. Galatians says, “Do good to all, especially those in the household of faith.” Why? When we read the passages, we see that Christians were not getting much love outside of the household of faith. Lost employment. Beatings. Unjust arrests. No housing. Displaced families. Family rejections. They needed love and support from the inside. This underscores the value of persevering community under hostility.

Third principle: develop persevering creativity.

What is the persecuted Church doing when horrible acts aren’t being perpetrated against her? She’s planting churches. She’s reflecting the kingdom. She’s doing it creatively. Cultural hostility tends to infuse communities with new creative energy that rises to meet the challenges of new cultural circumstances.

There was a group of . . . Anybody here from Texas? Anybody here from Dallas? Okay. In Dallas, Texas, South Dallas, there’s a farm called Bonton Farms. Bonton Farms is huge. It’s about seventeen acres now. It started with a group of Christians who realized that their area, their neighborhood, was a food desert. Nobody could work because people were sick.

So they stole a city lot that wasn’t being used—a vacant lot from the City of Dallas. And from that, they developed a farm. There was a big David and Goliath battle between them and the city. And they were, like, “We just want to plant vegetables. Why are you being so mean to us?”

And so the city of Dallas said, “Well, good luck.”

Some people from West Texas trucked in all this great soil for them. And now they are feeding everybody in their community of God. They’ve got bees. They’ve got goats. They’re making milk and cheese. This is all the folks in this dead urban community . . . coming to life. That’s creativity.

You know, exile for Israel in the Bible was a period of intense creativity as it was for the early Church. Creativity in art. Creativity moving in and through your communities, in your jobs, in your families, in your relationships.

Thinking underground, but also creative underground. How does the Bible express life in the place where I live? You start to see the radical transformation of lives that are powerful silent witnesses.

You know who has the best silent witness in the Bible? Lazarus. Lazarus had the best silent witness in the Bible. I’d like to tell the story of Lazarus as we finish up. I like to tell their story as if they had been living in my neighborhood—Lazarus, Mary, and Martha.

So the undertaker comes, and he comes out to Big Martha’s house. In the south, you go to Big Mama’s house, but this is Big Martha’s house to get the body so they can funeralize him. (Yes, funeralize is a verb.) So the undertaker comes out to get Lazarus, and Mary and Big Martha are trying to decide if he should wear his black usher suit, or should he wear his green suit from the club that he liked to wear.

So at the funeral Mary and Martha are on the front row with their big church hats, and the ushers with the white gloves on the front row, and everybody has their popsicle stick fans. And the open mic happens, and people come up and say, “Yeah, I ran track with Lazarus in high school,” and blah, blah, blah. And somebody is going to get up and try and sing and can’t.

This is black church funeral. Right? Everybody gets in their cars. They put on their hazard lights to drive out to the tomb. And after the repast is over, Big Martha is putting her last serving dish back onto the shelf, and Jesus walks in the door.

And Mary, with all her hurt, turns around at Him and says, “You’re late!”

And Jesus says, “Oh, let Me go and pay my respects.”

And they go on out to the cemetery, and Jesus says, “Lazarus! Come forth!” And Lazarus just, “Dudes, I’m all up and out of here! Bye!” (laughter)

And Mary says, “Whoops, He’s on on-time God!”

And the next Sunday, as per usual, because everybody goes to Big Martha’s house, right? As per usual, everybody comes past after the service for chicken and waffles after lunch, and people walk by, and there’s Lazarus sitting in his brown Lazy Boy with his gold toes socks on and his TV tray and watching the game.

And people walk by, and they’re, like, “Weren’t you just . . .?” And he’s, like, silent witness. Lazarus didn’t have to say a word. The transformation from death to life spoke for itself.

The radical transformation of lives, and the radical transformation of communities toward flourishing, this is the silent witness of the power of Christ. It’s amazing to me that the least of these are often on the forefront of perseverance overseas—the illiterate, those with low literacy, the poor, the elderly, the infirmed, the youngest of the young. They’re planting churches and taking care of war-torn communities.

God loves to surprise our sensibility. But we take that first step, and we get creative, bringing life from death.

Christ has promised that He will build His Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Will He do it? We’ll learn to be a people of faith, living after the pattern of Christ’s life, His death, His resurrection, and His glory, as that other political, other cultural community, that both indicts and brings hope to the other cultures around us just by virtue of being who we are.

That’s worship.

Ask God to remind us constantly that He keeps those He has called. That’s a word for your wayward children.

It’s not our strength that makes us persevere. It’s His. Our obedience is a byproduct of our faith, not the source of it. God is the source.

We don’t need to fear any earthly empire. It can never hate us more than we can love its people.

And as Vance Havner once said, “Christianity always outlives her pallbearers.”

You all see that article that came out a couple days ago that said, “Well, Christianity will be the cultural minority by 2025 . . . or maybe it was 2035, 2045 . . . within twenty years.” And I was, like, “That’s okay. So many people have tried to bury the Church.” I’m, like, “I’m just here for the ride, Lord. Help me to be obedient while You’re doing Your work.” Amen?

All right, Sisters. Allow me to pray over us.

Lord, dear Lord above, God Almighty, Lord of love,
Please look down and see Your people through.
I believe that God is now once and always will be.
With God’s power we will make it through eternity.
Oh Lord, dear Lord above, God of kindness, Lord of love,
Please look down and see Your people through.

Amen. Go with God.