A martyr's death

A sad story came out of my home state of Arkansas on Christmas eve. Philip Wise, a major in the Salvation Army, was shot and killed in the act of delivering donations to a local Salvation Army donation center. The two assailants were attempting to rob Wise of the Christmas donations he had collected when they fatally shot him. His wife and children were present at the center and waiting for him to arrive when the murder occurred.

The story was reported by Today's THV Channel 11, a local television station in Little Rock (and was later picked up by CNN). The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette quoted Major Harvey Johnson, the commander of the Salvation Army in central Arkansas, as saying, "We serve places that aren't often safe. We do our best to do the things that would protect ourselves. But we go to the places to bring the light to dark places, to offer hope to those who might be hopeless."

Fred Hokes, who works at same Watershed Human and Community Development Agency where Wise worked, added, "When workers who help the poor go into rough neighborhoods, many times the only thing they can do is hope their kindness will deter violence."

"You just depend on the grace of God, that's all you can do. You're always vulnerable. There's never a guarantee. You just do the best you can."

Wise's death is deeply wrong, and it is devastating for those he leaves behind. My own prayers will be lifted up for the widow, children, and congregation that he leaves behind. But his death is not tragic, in the strict sense of that term. It conforms to the finest logic of Christian martyrdom, which offers a witness more powerful than 1000 sermons preached from a pulpit.

The calling that Philip Wise pursued with his life was a calling to spread the good news of Jesus Christ in a place where good news was hard to come by. And the manner of his death will echo unto eternity - where I believe he is even now in the presence of God, rejoicing with angels and archangels.

There are really two senses of martyrdom. The first - a more narrow definition - relates to a person losing his life in the act of Christian witness, because of that Christian witness. Killing a Christian because he is a Christian fits this strict sense of martyrdom.

The wider understanding of martyrdom is that suffered by those who are killed while in the act of Christian service or ministry - perhaps not because they are Christian, but nevertheless because of the implications of what their Christian service entails. That is probably the way to think about the death of Archbishop Oscar Romero. I think it's also the way to think about Philip Wise's death. His Christian faith was not the reason he was killed, but the ministry to which it compelled him nevertheless led to his death.

In my own understanding, that makes him a martyr of Christ.

"I forgive, I forgive"

There is a great irony contained in the more violent Muslim responses to Pope Benedict XVI's speech a few days ago, in which he quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor's comment about Islam spreading its faith through the sword. The bombing of Christian churches in the West Bank and Gaza strip, the call for the pope's assassination by radical Muslim leaders, and the execution of an Italian nun in the Somali capital of Mogadishu would seem to confirm the emperor's observation.

The fact that the pope's remarks were not intended to criticize Islam per se, but were rather part of a larger academic speech on faith and reason delivered to an audience at the University of Regensburg in Germany, does not seem to matter. Such nuances are lost on a wing of Islam that seeks to impose its will, not by the sword, but by the death squad and the suicide bomb. Regardless of the way Christians and the Christian faith might be villified with impunity in the Muslim world, even obscure academic references that may appear critical of Islam apparently deserve to be met with violence and intimidation. And therein lies the irony in the whole story.

Charles Krauthammer's most recent column in the Washington Post is insightful. I don't typically share Krauthammer's politics, but I think he's right on when he says, "'How dare you say Islam is a violent religion? I'll kill you for it,' is not exactly the best way to go about refuting the charge."

But here's the most compelling part of the whole saga to me. It's about that Italian nun who was executed as payback for the pope's comments in Mogadishu. Apparently, after she had been shot and as she lay dying on the street, she repeated over and over, "I forgive, I forgive." Her last thoughts and last words were of grace and forgiveness. One cannot help but see her imitation of Christ, who said from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer decided to leave the safety of refuge in the United States to return to Nazi Germany in 1939, he made a decision that helped to seal his fate on the gallows of the Flossenburg Concentration Camp. Reinhold Niebuhr would later say that his action belonged to the "finest logic of Christian martyrdom." We might say the same for Sister Leonella, who must have known that carrying out her ministry in a city controlled by radical Islamists might eventually make her a target for violence.

Christians are not sinless, and as soon as we start to play the 'moral superiority' card, we immediately slip into that most pernicious of sins - pride. But contained within the larger story of our own violence and rebellion against the will of God is a narrative that embodies the truth of Jesus' message. It is a narrative of love, of forgiveness, of redemption, and of hope. That narrative has been lived out by the early apostles, the early martyrs, the medieval mendicants, latter-day saints like Bonhoeffer, and now by Sister Leonella on a dusty street in Mogadishu.

I hope I would have the same faith that she did if I were put in her situation. I don't know that I would. But I draw strength from the witness she has given the world.