Remember the days past when, after you had been enlightened,
you endured a great contest of suffering.
For most of us becoming a Christian did not lead to any kind of persecution, much less a great contest of suffering. For many years to be a Christian was more or less considered to be an honorable thing even as fewer and fewer in the culture identified as such. Being baptized and living a normal Christian life wasn't something that was going to raise any eyebrows. And so many of us were able to enjoy years of living as Christians without much or any material sacrifice. If anything, our Christianity seemed to make everything better for us. And praise God that we were never "exposed to abuse and affliction", that we didn't even know anyone who was so treated with whom we might associate ourselves.
Still, we wonder, if the comfortable Church, the Church that endured no contest of suffering, was in a way insufficiently challenged, and now finds itself untrained for a world that is increasingly opposed to its message. We wonder if even in the so-called good times there was time much desire to blend in and not rock the boat, to eschew the radical Gospel living of saints for the conformity of a merely cultural religion.
You even joined in the sufferings of those in prison
and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property,
knowing that you had a better and lasting possession.
Now we are beginning to find ourselves in a world where Christians are again persecuted and even thrown in prison. We think fondly of Cardinal Pell of Australia in this regard, and he was not alone. Fortunately, this level of persecution still seems to be the exception rather than the rule. For those of us for whom persecution still seems distant that it is happening can be all call to be prepared, to resolve that we too would remain faithful to Christ no matter what. If we are able to associate ourselves with those being dishonored for Christ, or to join with the sufferings those imprisoned for him, at least spiritually, we will be less likely to be taken by surprise if we ourselves must take a stand for Jesus.
You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised.
The author of Hebrews wanted to remind his readers that in this present life they were meant to live by faith, to have the endurance to continue to live by that faith in spite of circumstances. It was understood to be normal that those circumstances were not going to be immediately perfected or even perfectible before Jesus returned. Trying to hold on to tightly to a comfortable life in the world was the one sure way to lose it, because from the perspective of the walk of faith, that would mean drawing back and perishing. But the author of Hebrews was confident:
We are not among those who draw back and perish,
but among those who have faith and will possess life.
Having said all of this about enduring faith in the face of persecutions might make many of us feel unprepared. And if it is unsettling we should seek to root ourselves more and more in our union with Christ, giving it greater priority, and even absolute allegiance, rather than privileged our merely temporary lives in the world. But honestly, we aren't meant to be able to anticipate how such theoretical challenges might feel. We are given grace only to deal with the actual situations in which we find ourselves in the present moment. And all the while we can be confident, if we remain faithful, that faith is growing secretly, beneath the soil.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
It is God himself who prepares the harvest. It is he who can make the smallest seeds amount to more than we could have ever guessed. We aren't meant to fear the future or even our own limitations, but rather we are trust in the one alone who is able to give the growth.
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