Epiphany XXI: Martyrs

Good Thursday morning, good pilgrims of the Remains of The Epiphany. The Martyrs of Japan are on the calendar of the Lesser Feasts and Fasts today, providing us with yet another example of what happens when religion is perceived as a vehicle of Western imperialism.

The story goes that Jesuits brought Christianity to Japan as a byproduct of trade relations. The movement was led by Saint Francis Xavier, who introduced Christianity to Japan in 1549. Xavier was a founding member of the Society of Jesus.

Initially, many of the warring feudal lords embraced Christianity, viewing it as a way of undermining those in power. At its peak, Christianity in Japan boasted some 500,000 adherents, the majority of them clustered in Nagasaki.

“Oppressed peasants” were attracted to Christianity by the promise of salvation, while merchants and “trade-conscious daimyos” were more concerned with the economic opportunities afforded by the new religion.

However, powerful leaders and warlords in Japan grew skeptical of a belief system with such close ties to foreign powers, especially Portugal and Rome. Suspicions were raised about Western intentions of conquest, particularly on the part of the Spanish, with their nearby presence in the Philippines.

There was a strong reaction against the proliferation of all things "foreign" - people, their culture, their values, and their religion - on Japanese soil, especially by the warlords. Suspicion and mistrust of anything not native to their soil fed a strong movement of isolationism.

(History has so many lessons. Are we paying attention, here?)

In 1587 Christian missionaries were expelled, accused of committing “the illegal act of destroying the teachings of Buddha”—the dominant faith in Japan at the time.

A decade later, on February 5, 1597, the first victims were persecuted. They were twenty-six Christians: six European Franciscan missionaries, three Japanese Jesuits (including Paul Miki), and seventeen Japanese laity, three of whom were young boys. They were executed at Nagasaki in a form of crucifixion by being elevated on crosses and then pierced with spears.

They were martyred for their faith, yes, but that is only one part of the story. They were crucified because their religion was seen as a powerful vehicle of Western imperialism. It seems ever thus when Christianity becomes "the state religion".

The Roman Catholic Church remembers these martyrs on the day of their deaths. The Anglican and Episcopal Churches remember them today, February 6th, to keep remembrance of St. Agatha on the 5th.

Today in Black History Month, we remember one Ms. Audre Lorde a writer and poet known for her radical honesty and fight against racism and sexism. Lorde described herself as a "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet." She wrote about intersectionality long before The Academy recognized the powerful, dynamic interplay at the intersection of our various identities.

In the 1970s she worked as a poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi and began publishing poetry collections. Her works were informed by the intersections of race, class, and gender, and became increasingly more political.

In "Sister Outsider," she wrote,

“Your silence will not protect you," which became the foundation of the spirituality of People with AIDS, who realized that to save their lives and the lives of others, they needed to take the risk and be public about the privacy of their sexual orientation as well as their diagnosis. There followed incredible acts of bravery and courage that still make my eyes sweat and changed and transformed me."

The full context of that quote is even more powerful, especially for us today:

“What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."

"Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end."

"And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

She also wrote:

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

Most powerfully, she wrote:

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

I think the juxtaposition of the Martyrs of Japan and the life and teachings of Audre Lorde provide an opportunity to reflect on the nature of personal and political, the cost of silence and the cost of speaking up/speaking out, and the martyrdom that happens at the intersection - the cross - of all of our various identities, especially when it behooves the power structure to keep them separate and in a hierarchy of importance to an order dictated by the dominant social and cultural and religious paradigm.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.