Traveling in Place

Through the Eyes of the Persecuted

If you want to know what the last book in the Bible is really about, make yourself read the news reports on the atrocities being committed against Christians in Syria, Iraq and Egypt – Christian men slaughtered; Christian women, children, and elderly taken as hostages; churches burned; homes destroyed.

Tomorrow, I’ll be teaching the last session of a class on the New Testament. We’ll cover the Revelation, a letter to “the seven churches of Asia” written during a time of brutal persecution under the Roman Emperor Domitian in A.D. 95. Unfortunately, the Revelation is not usually read through the eyes of the persecuted. In fact, most Western Christians are so far removed from active persecution that we misunderstand the meaning of many of our sacred texts, chief among them the Revelation. Today, the Bible’s final book is either interpreted as a prophecy of coming tribulation for non-believers and judgment on all those who do not agree with a very narrow interpretation of the Bible, or it is dismissed as a lot of fantastical nonsense with violent overtones that has no place in contemporary Christianity. Both these distortions result from affluence and privilege.

It’s easy to ignore the plight of Arab Christians who are now a target of the so-called Islamic State. The Middle East is so far away and the pictures of violence there are too horrifying to ponder. We’re accustomed to Christianity being a respected religion. We take for granted the freedom to worship however we choose. But if you want to understand the Revelation, then try as best you can to imagine yourself as a Christian in the Middle East. You know that to profess your faith means that you put your life in danger. You know that you or your family may be bombed out of church or home. You know that your loved ones and friends could be beheaded or taken away without warning.

Jesus in a Burst of Winter?

Winter is making up for lost time. Back in January, it seemed that we Central New Yorkers were getting a pass for the season. While our neighbors in New England were being walloped with blizzard conditions, we were dusting off our cars after the occasional light snowfall. I used the snow blower only one time all month. At the end of January, the National Weather Service measured our snowfall as 30 inches below normal for the season.

Then came February. In two weeks, we’ve gotten twice as much snow as in all of January. It has snowed every day, piling high on our roofs and creating ice dams over the eaves that lead to water damage inside. The snow blowers are working fulltime. Maybe more challenging than the snow is the frigid cold (often below 0 degrees) and bitter winds. It’s exhausting just to “hang” with these conditions. Even when we aren’t physically moving snow, our bodies are working hard to generate warmth.

And yet, Christians who observe the church calendar will soon enter the penitential season whose name – “Lent” – comes from an Old English word that means “springtime.” We likely won’t see our lawns for a month or more. Our hardwood trees won’t produce buds until after Easter. But, alas, it’s nearly spring on the Christian calendar. Well, not really. The season leading up to Easter is no more about the climate than the resurrection is about butterflies and daffodils. But that’s a subject for another time.

On the Sunday before Lent begins, the lectionary bids us to join Peter, James, and John on their hike up a mountain with Jesus. The story of Jesus’ transfiguration at the top of that mountain is about the only event in our Savior’s earthly ministry that bears any connection to Central New York winters. The traditional site of the Transfiguration is Mt. Tabor, located in southern Galilee near Nazareth. But this tradition is almost certainly wrong. Like a lot of other holy sites in Israel, Tabor