Journey to the Cross and Beyond Day 6 – Like a Criminal
Children will need a loving adult to talk with them about the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. Adults will need time to read one or more of the biographies of martyrs provided at the end of this file.
Children’s Version ~Station 6 Like a Criminal
As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate…So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. Mark 15:1, 15 – 20
The Roman soldiers made fun of Jesus. They beat him and crucified him. They didn’t do it because Jesus had done anything wrong.
They did these things because they were afraid of Jesus. They were afraid that Jesus would change the world and they wouldn’t be in charge anymore. They wouldn’t be able to take things away from the poor. They wouldn’t be able to frighten people with their swords.
Jesus isn’t the only person who has been killed because people were afraid of him.
Look at this picture above. It’s of someone you probably already know.
Martin Luther King, Jr. also died because people were afraid he would change their world.
What did MLK try to change?
What would you like to change in our world today?
Adult Version - Station Like a Criminal As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate…So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. Mark 15:1, 15 – 20
Jesus went to Jerusalem to demonstrate God’s love in a dangerous time. He faced civil and religious authorities with the power and will to destroy him. He went anyway.
Throughout the ages, there have been people for whom justice, freedom, peace, humanity, compassion, or simply faith were more valuable even than their lives. Throughout the ages there have been others who were willing to end their lives.
Scroll through the brief biographies in the pages below. Look at the pictures and read about these remarkable martrys. Some of them will be familiar. Some will not be. Some are Christian. Some are not.
All of them found a cause more valuable than everything they possessed on earth More precious than life itself.
For what cause would you be willing to speak truth to power? For what cause would you be willing to risk everything? For what cause might you take up your cross and follow?
Stephen Bantu Biko
His Background:
Steve Biko was born in 1946 under the apartheid regime in South Africa. He was educated in medical school and worked on setting up legal and medical clinics for blacks. He was actively involved in politics.
His Causes:
Empowerment of blacks in South Africa and the abolition of apartheid.
His Actions: Mainly he led organizations which worked against apartheid and its consequences, helping black people in South Africa to improve their lives as much as possible. One group he led brought together roughly 70 different black consciousness groups in Durban. Another supported black workers whose unions were not recognized under the Apartheid regime.
The Consequences: Between August 1975 and September 1977 the South African government detained and interrogated Biko four times. On 21 August 1977, as part of an “interrogation” Biko was beaten, sustaining severe head injuries. The doctors who were called to examine him found him lying naked, shackled to iron bars. He was left in the cell until September 11 when he was finally transferred to a hospital. He died of his injuries on September 12.
Maura Clarke Ita Ford Dorothy Kazel
Their Background: Maura, Ita and Dorothy were American nuns, working for the Catholic Church in poor villages in El Salvador in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Their Cause: Democratic reform and land reform in Latin America.
Their Actions: They worked among the peasants, raising concern for their well-being. Some of those they assisted had ties to people working against the oppressive government. They were perceived as “aiding and abetting” rebel groups.
The Consequences: In December 1980, they were abducted by government soldiers, raped and shot to death. Their van was burned and their bodies were left lying in a field. The soldiers, convicted of the crime in 1997, claimed that they had been ordered to “liquidate” the women.
Kudirat Abiola
Her Background: Mrs. Abiola was a business woman in Nigeria, whose husband ran a successful opposition party campaign for president in 1993, but the military annulled the elections and arrested him. Mrs. Abiola had worked on several social causes in her country, including educational initiatives. She began working on democratic reform and justice along with oil field laborers.
Her Cause: Free and open elections, more equitable distribution of oil revenues, education for the poor.
Her Actions: Outspoken criticism of the military junta and a general strike to protest her husband’s arrest.
The Consequences: She was arrested for “making false statements.” Released pending trial, on June 5, 1995, her car was attacked in the street by unknown assailants. She and her driver were killed. She was 44.
Mehdi Dibaj
His Background: Mehdi Dibaj was born in 1934 into a Muslim family. As a young man he became a Christian, and later a pastor in Iran.
His Cause: Quite simply, Dibaj wished to live as a Christian in a non-Christian country.
His Actions: When arrested for not being Muslim, Dibaj refused to give up his faith. He stated: 'I am not only satisfied to be in prison for the honor of His Holy Name, but am ready to give my life for the sake of Jesus my Lord.'
The Consequences: In 1983, he was arrested and imprisoned without trial He was systematically tortured and held in solitary confinement in an unlit 3’x3’ cell. After a worldwide outcry, in 1994, he was released. But 3 days later, he was abducted and killed. His body was found in a park in west Tehran.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
His Background: Gandhi was born in colonial India (part of Great Britain) in 1869, and educated as a lawyer at Oxford. He was an active Hindu. He worked for two years as a lawyer in South Africa and then moved back to India.
His Causes: Institutionalized racism in South Africa, home rule for India, religious tolerance in India. His Actions: He organized passive resistance campaigns in South Africa against racial discrimination and in India working toward its independence from Great Britain. The campaigns were extensive but non-violent on the part of the participants. Often those participating were beaten, jailed or killed by the governments being protested. After independence he worked extensively to build tolerance between Muslims and Hindus, once fasting until violence between the religious groups stopped.
The Consequences: He was beaten and imprisoned many times in South Africa. He was occasionally arrested by authorities during his campaigns for home rule, serving time from 1922- 24. On January 30, 1948, a Hindu fanatic upset over Gandhi’s religious views, shot him to death on his way to an evening prayer meeting.
Jan Hus
His Background:
Jan Hus was born about 1390 in what is now the Czech Republic. He became a Roman Catholic priest and professor at the University of Prague.
His Causes: The end to the practice of indulgences, the translation of the Bible into languages common people could understand, opening Holy Communion to the laity and reliance on the Bible as the central authority for Christian life.
His Actions: He preached, wrote and translated the Bible into Czech. He painted the words to hymns in Czech on the University Chapel walls so common people knew what was happening in worship. He loudly advocated the end of the sale of indulgences.
The Consequences: In 1415, at the Council of Constance, the Church authorities tried him for heresy – mainly for translating the Bible. He was imprisoned, catching pneumonia in his dank cell; he was defrocked; his books were burned; then on July 6, 1415, he was burned alive.
David Kato Kisule
His Background:
David Kato was born in 1964 in Uganda. He was a teacher, but also a strong advocate for LGBT rights in sub-Saharan Africa. He lived and taught for a while in South Africa, but returned to his homeland.
His Cause: He fought for gay rights in Uganda, strongly advocating the legalization of homosexuality under that country’s repressive government. He served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) – an underground movement.
His Actions: Despite understanding the consequences, he announced on television in 1998 that he was gay. He was immediately imprisoned. After he was released, he continued to work for gay rights in Uganda.
The Consequences: Kato along with 100 others were named in a tabloid newspaper article October 2010 which called for their execution as homosexuals. The photos were published under a headline of "Hang them." Kato and two other SMUG members who were also listed in the article sued the newspaper to force it to stop publishing and won. But on January 26, 2011 Kato was assaulted in his home by at least one unknown male assailant who hit him twice in the head with a hammer before fleeing on foot; Kato later died en route to the Kawolo Hospital.
Martin Luther King Jr.
His Background: Martin King, born in 1929, was a Baptist Pastor. He excelled in school and came to lead many institutions. In 1964 he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
His Causes: King worked on every aspect of Civil rights. Later he worked to end the Vietnam war.
His Actions: King was know for powerful speaking, forceful non-violent protests, and large and meaningful organizing and demonstrating. Using the media effectively, he spear- headed a strong movement to push racial equality to the front of American political consciousness.
The Consequences: He was arrested several times and spent time in jail. On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.
Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg
His Background: Bernhard Lichtenberg, born in 1875 in Ohlau, Germany, studied Christian theology in Innsbruck, Austria. and was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1899. Lichtenberg was provost of the main cathedral in Berlin in 1938.
His Cause: He spoke out in Nazi Germany against Jewish oppression under the regime of Adolf Hitler.
His Actions: He organized demonstrations against Concentration Camps right outside them. During periods of officially sanctioned anti-Jewish violence, he prayed regularly and publicly for Jews at Evening prayer.
The Consequences: He was arrested in 1939 and again in 1942 by the Nazi regime. The second time, he was deemed incorrigible. The Nazis sent him to the Dachau concentration camp. On the way to the camp, he collapsed and died in a crowded cattle car.
Viola Liuzzo
Her Background: Born in 1925, Liuzzo was born in the Coal mining areas of western Pennsylvania. Her family moved several times as her father had several different working-class jobs. Although she had two failed marriages (her first when she was 16), her third marriage, to James Liuzzo in 1951 led to a loving family. She went back to college that same year, at age 36. She also left the Catholic Church to become a Unitarian. She had a wide variety of interests and great compassion for the poor in America.
Her Cause: The end of systematic racism and the promotion of civil rights in America.
Her Actions: She worked on protest demonstrations and voter registration in Alabama in 1963.
The Consequences: As Liuzzo drove a black teenager back from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery following a protest, a carload of Klansmen spotted them at a traffic light. They chased her car for 20 miles before catching up and pulling alongside her car. As Liuzzo sang "We Shall Overcome," a gunman shot her in the head.
Chico Mendes
His Background: Chico Mendes was born in 1944 and lived in forested areas of Brazil. He was a rubber tapper and a trade union leader.
His Cause: He fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest He fought to protect the animals, plants and people of the Amazon. Quote: “At first I thought I was fighting to save rubber trees, then I thought I was fighting to save the Amazon rainforest. Now I realize I am fighting for humanity.”
His Actions: He worked with environmental groups in Brazil and elsewhere (receiving awards for work he did in India). He labored extensively to stop rancher Darly Alves da Silva from logging an area that was planned as a reserve. Mendes not only managed to stop the planned deforestation and create the reserve, but also gained a warrant for Darly's arrest, for a murder committed in another state.
The Consequences: On the evening of Thursday, December 22, 1988, exactly one week after his 44th birthday, Chico Mendes was assassinated by gunshot at his Xapuri home. His death is the subject of the song “Ambush” by Sepultura.
Their Background: Perpetua was a fairly young (22) woman with an infant son. Felicitas was her servant. They lived as Roman citizens in the late second century (181 – 203 are Perpetua’s traditional dates). They converted to Christianity at a time when the Emperor had made it explicitly illegal for anyone to become Christian.
Their Cause: Religious freedom and their belief in Jesus Christ.
Their Actions: They refused to renounce their faith.
The Consequences: They were imprisoned and then placed in a stadium with wild beasts before a crowd. After the women were mauled, Roman soldiers killed them with swords.
Oscar Romero
His Background: Oscar Romero was a Roman Catholic priest, working for the Catholic Church in poor villages in El Salvador in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He had become the eighth Bishop and fourth Archbishop of San Salvador. Until he was Archbishop, he promoted the status quo party line of the Church, ignoring the oppression of the government. After becoming Archbishop, he took up the cause of the poor, advocating for them with a loud and outspoken voice.
His Cause: Democratic reform and land reform in Latin America.
His Actions: He visited poor villages, pointed out oppressions and often preached against the rich and powerful who ruled El Salvador. He often pointed out the connections of the government with U.S. military interests. In his last sermon, he tried to convince the men in the military that they did not have to obey orders to oppress people if they felt the orders were illegal and unjust.
The Consequences: While celebrating holy Mass on March 24, 1980, he was shot to death by members of Salvadoran death squads, including two graduates of the U.S.-run School of the Americas. The man who ordered the killing was Major Roberto D'Aubuisson who later founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a political party which came to power in 1989 and ruled until 2009.
Sophie Scholl
Her Background: Scholl was a 20 year old college student in Nazi Germany in 1940. She was the fourth of five children of a mayor of a small town in Germany. She finished her secondary school and went to study at the University of Munich. She had a strong interest in philosophy and theology.
Her Cause: The end of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany and end of the war.
Her Actions: She along with friends produced and distributed flyers critical of the Nazi government and Adolf Hitler which made strong arguments for resistance to the government and the war.
The Consequences: She was arrested on February 21, 1942, tried the next day for treason and executed within hours.
John and Betty Stam
Their Background: John Cornelius Stam, born 1907 in New Jersey and Elisabeth Alden Scott Stam, born February 22, 1906 in Michigan. They met at Moody Bible Institute and went as Christian missionaries to China in the early 1930s. While they were in China, their daughter, Helen Priscilla, was born. A civil war broke out, which extended into the town where their station was located, a city called Jingde.
Their Cause: The Stams sought to bear witness to the Christian faith in China.
Their Actions: They preached, taught and led Christian lives.
The Consequences: Communist soldiers captured them in 1934, took their possessions, threatened their daughter and imprisoned them. After deciding that no ransom could be expected for their lives, the soldiers beheaded John and killed Betty, along with some of their friends. Their daughter, Helen, was rescued by a Chinese Methodist pastor and brought back to the US where she was raised by her aunt and uncle.
Dorothy Mae Stang
Her Background: Dorothy Mae Stang Was born in Dayton, Ohio on July 7, 1931. In high school she felt a religious calling and became a Catholic nun from the order of Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur.
Her Cause: The cause of the Sisters of Notre dame is to “take our stand with poor people especially women and children, in the most abandoned places".
Her Actions: Sister Stang worked with the rural poor in the rainforests of Para, Brazil to help them farm and live sustainably. She worked to raise worldwide awareness of the need to protect the poor of her region from criminal gangs who stole land in order to sell trees to powerful logging companies.
The Consequences: On February 12, 2005, two men, hired by a powerful man with logging interests, stopped her. They asked her if she was armed, to which she replied that her only weapon would be her Bible. She then quoted a passage from the Beatitudes and went on her way. The gunmen shot her six times, killing her.
Tahirih
Her Background:
Tahirih, born in 1817 in Iran, was a scholar and mystic-poet. Though celebrated in Iran, India, and Pakistan, her work has seldom been translated into English. She was a member of the Bah’ai faith and the mother of four children.
Her Cause: The freedom and equality of women.
Her Actions: She traveled through the middle east of her day, frequently engaging in debates with religious scholars of different Islamic sects. After being placed under house arrest, she stopped wearing her Islamic veil on to demonstrate her freedom.
The Consequences: From time to time, men would throw stones at her to stop her from teaching and to chase her from their villages. Later the authorities placed her under house arrest. In 1852, at age 35, she was executed by strangling with her veil and her body was thrown down the well in her garden.
Wang Zhiming
His Background:
Wang Zhiming was born in 1907 in Yunnan, China. He was from a small ethnic group called the “Miao.” Protestant missionaries had begun working in that area of China in 1906 and Wang grew up Christian. Wang was educated in Christian schools and later taught in one for ten years. In 1944 he was elected chairman of the church council in Wuding, and he was ordained in 1951 at the age of 44.
His Cause: Wang, like most Christians in communist China of the 1950s, simply wished to pursue a peaceful Christian life. He tried to maintain Christ-like values.
His Actions: He refused to participate in the government’s systematic oppression of people it deemed “counter-revolutionary.” Among others, he refused to bow to a portrait of Chairman Mao, and received a severe beating.
The Consequences: During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), many Christian leaders from his province were imprisoned, denounced and beaten. In 1969, Wang Zhiming and his wife and sons were arrested. On December 29, 1973, Wang was executed in a stadium in front of more than 10,000 people.