Marked For Death So That We May Live

I went with a friend to a Christmas Extravaganza! (I don’t think you can write Extravaganza! without an exclamation point, can you?) It was a fund-raiser to help evacuate Christians in the way of ISIS. While the beginning was alternately touching and hilarious, the end had me breathless.

There was nothing on stage but a door. I don’t know if it was a prop that had been manufactured in a tech shop for the event, or if it had once been the front door of someone’s home, but it had the look and feel of authenticity. The layers of paint were peeling at the top and bottom, the white giving way to beige and then a soft butter yellow. The brass doorknob was still there, worn and tarnished from use and age. But it took me a moment to notice what it really looked like. All I could see was the symbol for “Nazarene” painted on it.

It was the red-brown of blood and a good foot or more across. Pronounced “noon,” it is the mark of Christianity painted on the property of those few Christians who still remain in ISIS controlled territories.

It is the mark of death.

As the speaker began to tell about the people he’d encountered on his recent trip to Iraq, I kept staring at the door and trying to imagine the people who had once lived behind it. They were a middle class family, he told us. They’d had good jobs, two cars, and a child in college. They’d lived a life not too different from my own, and then war and death came upon them. That simple door, which had been painted and repainted in happier times, had not been strong enough to keep evil outside.

He told the story of a Christian family he had met, who he had helped to resettle in Slovakia just last week. They had been captured by ISIS and given the chance to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ and embrace Islam. When they refused to do so, their teenage son was tied to a cot in the room where they were. His eyes were open and he watched as they brought out a power drill and asked him and then his parents to deny Christ. They refused.

The torturers went to work, beginning at his ankles and working their way up his body, drilling holes through his flesh and deep into his bones. With every new hole, he screamed and writhed and was given the opportunity to make it stop if only he would convert to Islam. He would not.

His parents witnessed the mutilation of their beloved son’s body, and were told they could end it by embracing Islam and encouraging him to do the same. They did not.

It went on, working ever upwards, until at last they reached his skull. Would they turn from Christianity and save their boy? They said no, and the man from ISIS drilled into the skull and brain of the boy they loved.

He did not die, but he is no longer the boy they knew. This brave and heroic man is now profoundly impaired, and his family is as scarred as he is.

And I looked at the door and its symbol of death, and wondered if my family could be as heroic as his had been. I wondered if I would have the courage to watch my own son embrace his martyrdom and not do everything in my power to protect him and to turn him from that path. I wondered if we would be able to pick up our own crosses and walk in their footsteps. I wondered if we had even a mustard seed of their faith.

Because we may need it.

That mark of the Nazarene is one that we all bear as believers in Christ. It doesn’t have to be painted on our door frames, it was imprinted upon our souls at our Baptisms. We have been marked with the His sign in His blood. Marked for death so that we may live.