Jesus said to his followers:

18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’? If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But all these things will they do to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me.”

John 15:18-21 - World English Bible

Why were early Christians persecuted? There were many reasons. In a culture that honored tradition, it distrusted a new movement like the Church. Such a culture hated self-appointed leaders (like the Lord) and their followers. But, most of all, it held differences in disdain, especially values and activities that marked it as unique. Christianity was a new movement devoted to a charismatic leader who died a shameful death; it claimed their leader rose from the dead and celebrated that event with strange rites (eating the Body of its leader in Communion) and activities (gifts of the Spirit like speaking in tongues); it lived out its message in a lifestyle of charity, a concern for others when common culture had a hard, self-centered edge. Pagans and Jews held the followers of Jesus at arms length, not only because they were new and different, but because they were strange and even subversive.

Jesus spoke of persecution in blunter terms. People would hate the disciples because they hated the Master. They hated because the didn’t understand where the Lord came from. If they did understand, they would have kept the Lord’s word, just as his followers did.

One of the unintended consequences of persecution was an increase in conversions. Why would a “hater” become a Christian? On one level, the strangeness of the movement had a certain allude, the notion of an afterlife and the way the followers treated each other, with love. But, if a neophyte was asked why he or she converted, the answer might be, “Because the Lord chose me.”

Do you feel Jesus chose you to be a follower? How has that “election” changed your life? How has it helped you face an indifferent, even hostile world?