TENANTSHIP

We had a missionary yesterday who prepares teachers and ministers around the world.  By his accent, I think he is an Aussie. He recently attended a pastors conference in Orissa state in India. There were at least 1000 indigenous pastors there, most of whom had been beaten or tortured because of their ministry. One man was there whose face was disfigured by acid and had one hand cut off by his tormentors.  Orissa in the past has been called the "graveyard of missionaries" because of the constant and hyper-militant response of its people.  The government basically looks the other way, so these pastors have to rely on God and God alone.

And yet 1000 attended! Methinks the volk protest too much!

These persecutions, which are increasingly intense in the northern part of India right now, do not make the papers or the slick magazines and websites.  No news, for instance, about the pastor recently executed by the government of Iran.  And of the Copts in Egypt?  The so-called "Arab Spring" has unleashed a new tide of terrorism, church bombings, village burnings, and general mayhem, some of it done by the governments themselves; probably to satisfy the bloodthirsty ambitions of huge factions of fundamentalists poised to recreate their country into a copy of Iran.

Which brings me to my son, Mark Schuler, whom I wholly and full-heartedly support of course. He is soon to be married (1/1/13) and he and Allison will be returning to Burma right after that.  The changes in Burma may or may not be in their favor...but it is a known fact that the Burmese government has committed genocide against the Karin people of northern Burma for decades, primarily because this is a pretty much wholly Christian tribe going back many centuries.  (The story of Adoniram Judson, a Harvard grad who was the first foreign missionary to anywhere from out of America, is a fascinating--and horrifying- reading.)

The dangers to an American missionary couple in an urban setting are certainly much less than that of a native pastor in an isolated area. But many atrocities do occur in urban settings, esp. in the Arab world. I am very much encouraged by the gentle victories of The Lady--may she be another Mandela, now that her long imprisonment has been ended.  But can she handle the prejudices of centuries? Will the new freedoms be abused to create a backlash against Christians and other minorities, as we have seen elsewhere?

There have been some exceptional ends to atrocites, such as in Rwanda--but no one lacks for critics from the "West."  I have begun to think that forgiveness has become a foreign substance in my own land and culture, a trickle-down effect from our intellignesia to our "volk" by means of pop culture and the ever-unapologetic "material girls."  This of course has been our contribution world-wide, eclipsing by far any missionary efforts our culture has enabled--which isn't saying much--whatever Christianizing our culture has experienced, it is only borrowed. Cultures aren't Christians-individuals are.

I say all that to reference back to today's Scripture, in Mark 12, the parable of the tenants. "He sent still another, and that one they also killed. He sent many others ;some of them they beat, others they killed." 

"He had one left to send, a son, whom He loved.  He sent him last of all, saying, 'They will respect my son."

"But the tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come. let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' So they killed him and threw his body outside the vineyard."

Not exactly the fruit that the owner was looking for! Talk about sour grapes!

Life comes with risk and almost certain death--with a few exceptions such as Elijah--but I myself am not risking much personally, and remain very much in the background; even my prayers for my own son are very weak, in comparison with the need.  But I trust that the Power of the Heir and His Father will be more than enough to compensate for the feebleness of spirituality in myself and in USA Today. Lord ha' mercy on us all.