Faithful Courage

At the church that I pastor, we celebrate the Gifts of Women Sunday on Mother''s Day. This celebration includes all women, not just those who are mothers. This year, we celebrated the courage of women that arises from their faith. In particular, we remembered an early Christian martyr named Perpetua. She faced accusations that we do today! Maybe you'll see yourself as you read about her experience.

Getting old isn’t for sissies! Some of you may have heard that; and many of you know that it is true. Getting old isn’t for sissies. I like that quip. It tells me that, as I get older, instead of fading quietly away, I will need to be even braver than I am now! There will be challenges that I will have to meet, and courageous decisions that I will have to make. No, indeed, getting old isn’t for sissies! Being a Christian isn’t for sissies, either. In fact, being a Christian takes great courage! That may come as a surprise to some of you. After all, in the United States of the 21^st century, we Christians are a privileged people. Oh, we may whine about laws that allow a Jewish menorah to sit next to the Nativity scene on the Post Office lawn; but, in general, we Christians play the tune that everyone else must dance to. But things aren’t that way everywhere. Even as we gather here to worship in safety, Christians in the Middle East are being slaughtered by ISIS because of their faith. What courage it must take for them to confess that they are followers of Jesus Christ!

Christians have displayed that kind of courage ever since the Christian church began. You’ve all heard about Christians in the early Church who were martyrs for the faith. They were nailed to a cross, or burned alive, or thrown to wild animals in the arena to be torn apart. Imagine how much courage it must have taken to admit that they were followers of Jesus! And many of those martyrs were women. In fact, down through the ages, women have shown exceptional courage in circumstances that were difficult at best, and life-threatening at worst. The scripture that we heard this morning (II Maccabees 7:1-2, 20-23) is a model of that kind of faithful courage: a mother who watched seven sons martyred in one day and who was herself killed in the end, but who never gave up her faith in God! And I’ll bet if you thought about it, you could come up with many more examples of courageous women. But this morning, I want to remember one that you may never even have heard of! Her name is Perpetua; and she was an early Christian woman who showed great courage in the face of persecution.

Perpetua lived at the end of the second century in the North African city of Carthage. At that time, Christianity was spreading rapidly into North Africa, and into Carthage in particular. The Roman emperor Septimius was threatened by the rapid growth of Christianity. He called it “the empire within the Empire.” In fact, he was so threatened that he ordered Christians arrested and put to death. Perpetua, like many of the women who are here today, was a daughter, a wife, and a mother. She came from a wealthy family and, was married to a man who was up-and-coming in Roman society. She had just given birth to her first child. According to stories about her, she was only about 22 years old. And she was a Christian.

Perpetua was arrested and thrown into prison. All that would be difficult enough for anyone to endure. But Perpetua’s courage was tested three more times, by accusations that are especially difficult for women. In fact, they are still used today. I’ll bet that you’ll recognize them yourself, even if you’re not a woman! When her father visited her in prison, he ordered her to deny her Christian faith. After all, he was the head of the household, and he thought that he knew what was best for everyone involved. “Quit running around with these Christian weirdos!” he told her. “Come home and behave the way that a proper woman should behave!” We’ve heard that one, haven’t we, ladies? We’ve all had people tell us that they know what’s best for us, especially when they don’t agree with what we’re doing. If they don’t like it when we march off once a week to serve the homeless at the local soup kitchen, they glare at us and chide, “Those people aren’t fit company for you! Why, you might catch a disease from one of them. They’re dirty and smelly! Why do you insist on going down there?” And when we answer, “Because Jesus wants me to,” they don’t like it at all. It takes courage to stand up to someone who is insisting that you should be something other than what you are. Perpetua’s answer was a model for all of us: “I cannot be called anything else than what I am: a Christian.”

Then, Perpetua’s father upped the ante. He accused her of not caring about them. You know that line, I’m sure. “Do you realize that you’re making us all unhappy? You’re bringing shame on our whole family! Just come home, and we’ll forget that this whole thing ever happened.” That’s a tougher one to answer. None of us want to cause pain to other people, certainly not to those we love. It takes courage to follow Christ in the name of a greater good, especially when our family doesn’t understand our actions. If a woman goes to a protest carrying a sign that says “Build schools, not bombers,” we might admire her. But if her husband is the CEO of an aircraft corporation, his reaction won’t be very admiring at all. “What will people think?” he’ll ask. “You have humiliated me! You get back home right now!” Yes, it takes nerve to say to your family, “I’m sorry, but I’m not responsible for your feelings. I must follow Jesus Christ, regardless of how that makes you feel.”

But the final accusation was the worst one of all. Perpetua’s father accused her of being a bad mother. Every mother has heard that accusation at one time or another. Sometimes mothers even say it to other mothers. Every mother in the workforce carries a load of guilt as heavy as a bag of rocks on her back because people accuse her of being selfish. Every stay-at-home mom carries the same load of guilt because people have told her that she could provide for her children better if she would only go back to work. That guilt is why stores sell so many luxury items like baby wipe warmers. If women hear over and over that they are bad mothers, they will purchase all kinds of things to make themselves feel better. It’s a lose-lose situation for mothers of today, and it was a lose-lose situation for Perpetua. But she had the courage to persevere through even this accusation; and because of her courage, some of the guards who held her in prison were eventually converted to faith in Jesus Christ.

Perpetua was martyred, thrown to wild beasts in the arena together with several of her fellow Christians. We admire her courage, and we wonder how in the world she was able to persevere to the end. The answer is the faith that I talked about in last week’s sermon. Faith is the certainty that God has our back; and faith allows us to take one step at a time with absolute confidence that God is walking with us, guiding us and strengthening us. And that’s just what Perpetua did. She took one step at a time as she followed Jesus Christ, knowing that God would give her courage to follow wherever that road would lead her. And that’s what millions of courageous women have done as they followed Jesus Christ as his resurrected people. Joan of Arc did it by wearing men’s armor and going to war as she helped to free the people of France. Harriet Tubman did it by guiding scores of runaway slaves to freedom in the north. Dorothy Stang did it by advocating for the rights of South American peasants who were losing their land. Step by step, one day at a time, with faithful courage, they not only fought enemies, but also well-meaning people who believed that they should be doing something else.

We need to be courageous, too, whether we are women or men, mothers or fathers, married or single, young or old. We all need to be courageous because at one time or another, we will face the very same accusations that Perpetua did. Are we stepping out of the role that someone else thinks we should be playing? Jesus sometimes wants us to rock the boat! Are we making our family happy? Maybe the better question is whether we’re making God happy. Are we caring for those who are our responsibility? Sometimes we can care for them best by working for the good of all God’s children!

May we have the faithful courage to follow Jesus Christ wherever he may lead us, walking step by step, and listening not to the accusations of our fellows, but to the voice of God as he calls us to move courageously into the future.