Just days before Gethsemane and Calvary, as Jesus dined with his followers, a woman came and broke open a costly flask of fragrant ointment and poured it without reservation upon the head of our Lord (Matthew 26:6–13). He knew that in just a few days his head would be pierced with thorns; the hair that now glistened with fragrant oil would soon be matted with blood and spit. Somehow, perhaps because she had been listening, the woman also knew.

To their shame, it was the disciples who shook their heads and said, “Why this waste?” (Matthew 26:8). Sometimes, the strongest and most hurtful voices of opposition to such extravagant love, such risk-taking abandonment, come from other Christians. But Jesus said, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me” (Matthew 26:10). As I read these words against the backdrop of missionary sacrifice — whether in violent death or in the day-to-day risks of living on mission — I hear them speak peace and purpose.

The risk-taking, cross-bearing, gospel-proclaiming path before us is well-worn — first by our Savior and then by saints without number. The way is marked by blood, sweat, tears, and untimely graves. Long-past accounts of Christian martyrdom have entered the land of legend — heroic and distant. But newer accounts of missionary death and danger are fresher, the color more vivid and — to many modern minds — more puzzling. We expect unbelievers to scoff at such sacrifices, but questions of motive and accusations of carelessness also arise from a routine-loving, risk-averse Christianity that sometimes seems embarrassed by such lavish love.

So, how should believers answer when violence comes against Christians?

Suffering Advances the Gospel

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” Tertullian’s oft-quoted line was really a well-placed taunt. Writing around the year 200, he told Roman persecutors, “The more you mow us down, the more we grow. The blood of Christians is seed.” He went on to say that, despite violent opposition from the very beginning of its history, Christianity had spread across the empire: “We have filled all the places that have belonged to you — cities, islands, forts, towns, exchanges; the military camps themselves, tribes, town councils, the palace, the senate, the marketplace; we have left you nothing but your temples” (Apology 37).

The gospel did indeed go to the boundaries of the empire and beyond — and so did the persecution. Opposition to the gospel has a long, violent history from the first to the twenty-first century. But the path of suffering — even death for the sake of the gospel — is not a path that God merely permits; it’s a path he blazed, and we are following him. Chinese house-church pastor Wang Yi, currently in the middle of a nine-year prison sentence for his gospel work, writes of this with Tertullianesque courage:

We are determined to follow in the footsteps of the saints before us. . . . On one hand we obey the government’s legitimate and common governance, respecting the power of the sword; on the other hand, through nonviolent civil disobedience, we will preach the word whether in season or out of season (2 Timothy 4:2). People can be chained, but the gospel cannot be chained (2 Timothy 2:9); the servants may be killed, but our Lord has already risen. (Faithful Disobedience, 28)

In fact, sufferings and setbacks are often the very way Christ builds his church. Samuel Zwemer, writing more than a century ago from Arabia, said,

When you read in reports of troubles and opposition, of burning up books, imprisoning colporteurs, and expelling workers, you must not think that the Gospel is being defeated. It is conquering. What we see under such circumstances is only the dust in the wake of the ploughman. God is turning the world upside down that it may be right side up when Jesus comes. He that plougheth should plough in hope. We may not be able to see a harvest yet in this country, but furrow after furrow, the soil is getting ready for the seed. (Topsy-Turvy Land, 116)

Security Is an Illusion

There’s no question that some places — such as war zones or places of extreme anarchy or tyranny — are more dangerous than others. The nature of media and the way we are wired for fear, however, make it easy to overrate, generalize, and sensationalize danger. We need to be reminded that security is an illusion — whether “over there” or “over here.” For example, the number one cause of non-health-related deaths for expats living overseas (which would include all missionaries) is car accidents. And the number one cause of all non-health-related deaths in America is also car accidents. Statistically speaking, it’s just as dangerous living on the other side of the world as it is driving to work each day. The reality is that most missionaries will live to a ripe old age.

“The path of suffering is not a path that God merely permits; it’s a path he blazed.”

But statistics, of course, are not the final word. God is. He rules. We should neither panic nor play it safe in our living and dying for Jesus because we know we are always in the hands of our strong and good Shepherd. Those who are called to venture out for Christ — to scramble after their Captain as he leads them on the front lines of gospel advance — are content to leave the timing and circumstance of their departure in his hands. In the meantime, there’s work to be done. They would agree with Edith Searell, a missionary to China, who wrote in a letter to a friend shortly before being martyred in the Boxer Rebellion,

You speak in your letter of the possibility of one place being safer than another; I think, dear Eva, from the human standpoint all are equally unsafe, from the point of view of those whose lives are hid with Christ in God all are equally safe! . . . “A mighty fortress is our God,” and in Him we are safe for time and for eternity. Shall we murmur if we have less of time than we expected? (Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission, 29)

Jesus Is Worth It

A few years ago, I was traveling through Turkey near the Syrian border and came upon a derelict graveyard where some of the first missionaries to that region of the Ottoman Empire were buried. It is a neglected half-acre, and I felt the loneliness of the place. And yet, there was also quiet beauty. Hidden among the moss-etched grave markers was resurrection hope and echoes of Christ. One, the centuries-old epitaph of James Perry of Camden, Maine, read,

He was killed
By those he came to serve
They knew not what they did

James never made it back to Maine; his parents never saw him again on this side. It is right to mourn with them, even from this distance. I think sometimes, in our rush to turn martyrs’ stories into satisfying sermon illustrations, we neglect to pray for and enter into the suffering of our brothers and sisters who feel the loss most keenly. When Stephen was stoned to death for his witness, we are told, “Devout men buried Stephen and made great lamentation over him” (Acts 8:2).

While we have unshakable hope for them and for ourselves because Christ has risen, on this side, there is still pain and grief, body bags and empty places at the table. Sometimes we scour their last messages for clues that would make sense of the loss, to find the heroic line or the word of comfort, like I did when my friend Cheryl was killed in Afghanistan. In one of her last monthly updates, she wrote about being amused by an ice-cream vendor in the street playing “My Heart Will Go On,” the theme song from Titanic. At the time, it was just Cheryl telling us to smile with her in a dangerous place, but she could not have imagined it was something that would be played at her funeral before the year was out.

Cheryl also shared a prayer request for an upcoming opportunity to travel with a medical team to a remote region of Afghanistan — a request that appears ominous only in retrospect. Her prayer request was answered in a way that no one asked for: Cheryl and the medical team were ambushed and killed by Islamic militants. While on this side there was shock and sorrow, on the other was glory beyond imagining.

Cheryl closed out her last update letter to her prayer team with lines that are remarkably unremarkable: “I don’t feel like I have anything profound to say this month. But my cup runs over all the same. Thank you for continuing to pour.” It’s a winsome reminder that risk-taking gospel work isn’t done in a moment or in acts of well-considered heroism. Instead, it takes place in the ordinary day-by-day duties of a faithful servant who counted the cost long before and broke the alabaster flask because Jesus is more than worth it.