When members of the Shouwang church in Beijing showed up for Easter Sunday services, the government arrested them. The reason they only locked up thirty or so was that they had already slapped an additional five hundred under house arrest to prevent them from attending in the first place. At last report no one had heard from pastor Jin Tianming and the authorities had eighty-sixed the church’s website.
It wasn’t as if the congregants didn’t see it coming.
The Communist state has persecuted them steadily because Shouwang is an unregulated house church that refuses to submit to official control. In his last sermon before he disappeared, Pastor Jin told his flock, “For everything that we have faced, we offer our thanks to God. Compared with what you faced on the cross, what we face now is truly insignificant.”
For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.
Example translates a Greek word that referred to the outlines of a sketch that another fills in. Calvary sets fort the cruciform paradigm of the Christian life; each congregation adds the details of its own expression of suffering. One thing, though: in this case, it is not acceptable to color outside the lines.
The cross lays down the contours of Christian action. “Christ also suffered for you.” Usually we read the preposition as meaning “instead of,” and that is true; but Peter clearly means that Christ also suffered as our model, to give us a demonstration of what life ought to look like.
So when we find ourselves seeking Scriptural excuses to slide off the blood-soaked wood of Calvary, we should remember a Chinese church whose members saw more in Christ than a get-out-of-jail-free card, who dared to take 1 Peter 2.21 at face value: “For everything that we have faced, we offer our thanks to God. Compared with what you faced on the cross, what we face now is truly insignificant.”
Collect
Crucified and risen Lord, you suffered on Calvary both to give us life and to show us how to live. Grant now that we may find in you not only our escape but our example, not only our substitute but our guide, so that by showing our world crucified Christians we might point them to the crucified Christ in whose name we pray, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Benediction
The Lord calls you to submission,
That your suffering might find God’s favor.
The Lord calls you to suffering,
That you might truly be made like your Savior.
The Lord calls you to salvation
Through the wounds of the One whose submissive suffering saves you.
In the name of the Father,
And of the Son,
And of the Hoy Spirit,
Amen.
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