Today, in the story of the stoning of Stephen, we have received what is arguably either the best or the worst sermon ever recorded. It is the best in the sense that he spoke truth to power and in that his words moved people to action. It is the worst in that the actions they were moved to had nothing to do with the truth he proclaimed!
Of course, Jesus met with the same reaction in Luke 4 when he told those in Nazareth that God had a pretty solid track record of helping those who were outside of the covenant. You may recall that they moved pretty quickly from calling him the hometown hero to trying to throw him off a cliff.
It’s understandable that Jesus slipped away because it was not time yet. He had just begun his ministry and his death would’ve been pretty meaningless if it was from being shoved off a cliff by bullies. What about Stephen, then? Why do we keep this story, and why do we tell this story? Sure, he was the first Christian Martyr on record, but there were so many others!
In fact, Paul had to caution believers against it in his first letter to the church in Corinth (13:3), “If I give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Again to the church in Rome he said in Romans 12:1 “give your bodies over as living sacrifices.”
We don’t necessarily have records of Christians lining up to be martyred, but we do know that the early Christians were oppressed, often without hope, and the idea of eternal reward often looked a lot better than anything they were experiencing in the world they lived in.
That takes us back to Stephen. What’s going on with Stephen? Clancy gave you a little synopsis of the background in chapter 6, but I want to add a little more to the context. The book of Acts starts off as a letter, and it’s written by and to the same people as Luke’s Gospel. Some have said that Luke’s Gospel is the story of the good news about Jesus, and the Acts of the Apostles is the story of the good news of the Holy Spirit and the church as the Body of Christ.
At this point in the story, Jesus has been crucified and has appeared to the disciples. He has promised the gift of the Holy Spirit and ascended into heaven, then the Holy Spirit came and formed the church at Pentecost. Now, you liturgical church nerds out there may be thinking, “but we celebrate Pentecost 50 days after Easter!” This is true, but also irrelevant, because we are the church of Jesus Christ, and we are formed and re-formed over and over by the Spirit of God 24/7, every day of the week!
In the case of the early church, it wasn’t actually a church yet when Stephen stood up to preach. So far they were just a collection of followers of what was called “the Way of Jesus.” Scripture tells us that this “way of being in the world” included sharing their possessions and, in particular, caring for the poor and disenfranchised.
As the disciples tried to balance the needs of the community with the tasks of preaching and teaching this new way of being in the world, they found the need to elect Deacons to help serve those in need. According to the Women’s Bible Commentary, “this is the only place where the [word] diakonein is used [in scripture] with respect to the distribution of food to the poor. [More commonly] the [word] diakonos was ‘a person who functioned as an agent of a higher-ranking person,...as a messenger or diplomat’ (Women’s Bible Commentary p. 540)
Now, why does this matter? According to Willie James Jennings in his commentary on Acts, it matters because those who followed the way of Jesus were turning honor systems upside down and “freeing people from their caste-making power… criminality and slavery were being collapsed onto God and those who preach Jesus the Christ, freeing people from their identity-constituting power. The apostles follow a God who has broken the binaries of honorable and dishonorable people, criminal and good citizen, master and slave…. A new way of understanding and living life was emerging around these apostles.” (Willie James Jennings, Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible: Acts)
OK. It was a time of radical change. God was revealing God’s self in new ways that challenged unfaithful and unjust systems of power, and Stephen was elected to make sure that the elderly who spoke Greek were as equally cared for as the elderly who spoke Hebrew. Why was he preaching? Who was he preaching to? Wouldn’t things have gone better if he had kept his mouth shut?
I couldn’t say anything about that last one, but I can tell you this. Witness and service can’t be separated, especially when rooted in justice. Let me unpack that a bit. Chapter 6:2-3 says, “And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task…”
What’s the first thing the Spirit does when it fills the disciples in Acts 2? It moves them to preach! You can’t be full of the Spirit and sitting on your hands. We all have different gifts and ways of proclaiming the gospel, but we know that the Spirit moved Stephen to preach.
Really it wasn’t uncommon in the Synagogues for someone to read a scripture and then the rest of them would discuss it, even arguing when they disagreed. Stephen – appointed to care for Hellenistic speakers (6:1-3)– was meeting with some Hellenistic believers who have freed slaves (6:9), and he argued with them over the presence of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Hardly a stonable offense you might say, but I want you to imagine how it might have felt if someone argued a revelation of God that made you fear the loss of your faith, or at least your faith traditions, and maybe even the holy places that have given your life meaning.
I say that knowing that is exactly how many are feeling after a year of challenge like we’ve never experienced before, and I’m awfully glad that no one has come after me with a rock or two, and frankly I would not be surprised if you haven’t thought of it.
The good news is that God has been active and present in our midst, just as God was active and present with Stephen. More than that, the good news that today’s reading and the stories around it proclaim is that the Spirit of God is constantly moving the church toward something greater than even our sacred traditions and spaces can describe.
That’s not to say that they do not matter. It is to say that there is always more to the story of God’s amazing love and the role of the church than we can imagine. Right now, we have people worshiping with us in Atlanta, Washington D.C, Montana, Colorado, and probably some other places, too. Right now, we have partners in our community serving the elderly through Meals on Wheels just as Stephen did in the early church.
Right now, we have some of the worst conflicts facing us than we’ve ever had before as we begin returning to in-person services and navigate all the questions that cannot be answered to everyone’s satisfaction, and some can’t be answered to anyone.
The question before us, as we read and remember the story of Stephen, is whether we are going to pick up a rock or look to the heavens. Once again, I refer to Willie Jennings who wrote in his commentary on Acts, “[The church was] born in the tight space between faith and fear and [will] forever live in that space. Only the Holy Spirit keeps that space from collapsing us in.”
That’s not to say that the Holy Spirit is hanging out for the sake of keeping church doors open. It is to say that the only way they stay open is when God’s people live as God’s people. It’s kind of like those “Give A Mouse A Cookie” books. If we live as God’s people, we will be filled with God’s Spirit. If the Spirit of God abides in us, we will be moved toward acknowledging injustice. When we acknowledge injustice, we will be moved to serve those in need. When we are moved to serve those in need, we will proclaim the good news, and when we proclaim the good news, it is because we are full of the spirit of God!
There’s one last thing I want to say about all of this. Stephen’s last words were essentially the same as Jesus’s: “Lord, don’t hold this against them.” Even as his life ended, he was concerned about the salvation of those who were ending it.
Not only that, but some would argue that his death became the tipping point that moved the church out into the world. As you think on that, I want to remind you that if God did that for Stephen and for the early church, God can still do it for you and for me and even this congregation as we seek to be a part of what God is doing in the world.
God is at work – even in, and maybe especially in, our suffering.
There is a way forward together.
It doesn’t matter what we bless or curse or think we have control over.
What matters is our faithfulness.
We can’t be everything to everyone, but we can be faithful, hopeful, and expectant.
The movement of the Spirit starts with a commitment to justice, moves us toward confession, is demonstrated in compassion, and has no end – only new beginnings with every moment and every chance encounter…
Of course, Jesus met with the same reaction in Luke 4 when he told those in Nazareth that God had a pretty solid track record of helping those who were outside of the covenant. You may recall that they moved pretty quickly from calling him the hometown hero to trying to throw him off a cliff.
It’s understandable that Jesus slipped away because it was not time yet. He had just begun his ministry and his death would’ve been pretty meaningless if it was from being shoved off a cliff by bullies. What about Stephen, then? Why do we keep this story, and why do we tell this story? Sure, he was the first Christian Martyr on record, but there were so many others!
In fact, Paul had to caution believers against it in his first letter to the church in Corinth (13:3), “If I give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Again to the church in Rome he said in Romans 12:1 “give your bodies over as living sacrifices.”
We don’t necessarily have records of Christians lining up to be martyred, but we do know that the early Christians were oppressed, often without hope, and the idea of eternal reward often looked a lot better than anything they were experiencing in the world they lived in.
That takes us back to Stephen. What’s going on with Stephen? Clancy gave you a little synopsis of the background in chapter 6, but I want to add a little more to the context. The book of Acts starts off as a letter, and it’s written by and to the same people as Luke’s Gospel. Some have said that Luke’s Gospel is the story of the good news about Jesus, and the Acts of the Apostles is the story of the good news of the Holy Spirit and the church as the Body of Christ.
At this point in the story, Jesus has been crucified and has appeared to the disciples. He has promised the gift of the Holy Spirit and ascended into heaven, then the Holy Spirit came and formed the church at Pentecost. Now, you liturgical church nerds out there may be thinking, “but we celebrate Pentecost 50 days after Easter!” This is true, but also irrelevant, because we are the church of Jesus Christ, and we are formed and re-formed over and over by the Spirit of God 24/7, every day of the week!
In the case of the early church, it wasn’t actually a church yet when Stephen stood up to preach. So far they were just a collection of followers of what was called “the Way of Jesus.” Scripture tells us that this “way of being in the world” included sharing their possessions and, in particular, caring for the poor and disenfranchised.
As the disciples tried to balance the needs of the community with the tasks of preaching and teaching this new way of being in the world, they found the need to elect Deacons to help serve those in need. According to the Women’s Bible Commentary, “this is the only place where the [word] diakonein is used [in scripture] with respect to the distribution of food to the poor. [More commonly] the [word] diakonos was ‘a person who functioned as an agent of a higher-ranking person,...as a messenger or diplomat’ (Women’s Bible Commentary p. 540)
Now, why does this matter? According to Willie James Jennings in his commentary on Acts, it matters because those who followed the way of Jesus were turning honor systems upside down and “freeing people from their caste-making power… criminality and slavery were being collapsed onto God and those who preach Jesus the Christ, freeing people from their identity-constituting power. The apostles follow a God who has broken the binaries of honorable and dishonorable people, criminal and good citizen, master and slave…. A new way of understanding and living life was emerging around these apostles.” (Willie James Jennings, Belief, A Theological Commentary on the Bible: Acts)
OK. It was a time of radical change. God was revealing God’s self in new ways that challenged unfaithful and unjust systems of power, and Stephen was elected to make sure that the elderly who spoke Greek were as equally cared for as the elderly who spoke Hebrew. Why was he preaching? Who was he preaching to? Wouldn’t things have gone better if he had kept his mouth shut?
I couldn’t say anything about that last one, but I can tell you this. Witness and service can’t be separated, especially when rooted in justice. Let me unpack that a bit. Chapter 6:2-3 says, “And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task…”
What’s the first thing the Spirit does when it fills the disciples in Acts 2? It moves them to preach! You can’t be full of the Spirit and sitting on your hands. We all have different gifts and ways of proclaiming the gospel, but we know that the Spirit moved Stephen to preach.
Really it wasn’t uncommon in the Synagogues for someone to read a scripture and then the rest of them would discuss it, even arguing when they disagreed. Stephen – appointed to care for Hellenistic speakers (6:1-3)– was meeting with some Hellenistic believers who have freed slaves (6:9), and he argued with them over the presence of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Hardly a stonable offense you might say, but I want you to imagine how it might have felt if someone argued a revelation of God that made you fear the loss of your faith, or at least your faith traditions, and maybe even the holy places that have given your life meaning.
I say that knowing that is exactly how many are feeling after a year of challenge like we’ve never experienced before, and I’m awfully glad that no one has come after me with a rock or two, and frankly I would not be surprised if you haven’t thought of it.
The good news is that God has been active and present in our midst, just as God was active and present with Stephen. More than that, the good news that today’s reading and the stories around it proclaim is that the Spirit of God is constantly moving the church toward something greater than even our sacred traditions and spaces can describe.
That’s not to say that they do not matter. It is to say that there is always more to the story of God’s amazing love and the role of the church than we can imagine. Right now, we have people worshiping with us in Atlanta, Washington D.C, Montana, Colorado, and probably some other places, too. Right now, we have partners in our community serving the elderly through Meals on Wheels just as Stephen did in the early church.
Right now, we have some of the worst conflicts facing us than we’ve ever had before as we begin returning to in-person services and navigate all the questions that cannot be answered to everyone’s satisfaction, and some can’t be answered to anyone.
The question before us, as we read and remember the story of Stephen, is whether we are going to pick up a rock or look to the heavens. Once again, I refer to Willie Jennings who wrote in his commentary on Acts, “[The church was] born in the tight space between faith and fear and [will] forever live in that space. Only the Holy Spirit keeps that space from collapsing us in.”
That’s not to say that the Holy Spirit is hanging out for the sake of keeping church doors open. It is to say that the only way they stay open is when God’s people live as God’s people. It’s kind of like those “Give A Mouse A Cookie” books. If we live as God’s people, we will be filled with God’s Spirit. If the Spirit of God abides in us, we will be moved toward acknowledging injustice. When we acknowledge injustice, we will be moved to serve those in need. When we are moved to serve those in need, we will proclaim the good news, and when we proclaim the good news, it is because we are full of the spirit of God!
There’s one last thing I want to say about all of this. Stephen’s last words were essentially the same as Jesus’s: “Lord, don’t hold this against them.” Even as his life ended, he was concerned about the salvation of those who were ending it.
Not only that, but some would argue that his death became the tipping point that moved the church out into the world. As you think on that, I want to remind you that if God did that for Stephen and for the early church, God can still do it for you and for me and even this congregation as we seek to be a part of what God is doing in the world.
God is at work – even in, and maybe especially in, our suffering.
There is a way forward together.
It doesn’t matter what we bless or curse or think we have control over.
What matters is our faithfulness.
We can’t be everything to everyone, but we can be faithful, hopeful, and expectant.
The movement of the Spirit starts with a commitment to justice, moves us toward confession, is demonstrated in compassion, and has no end – only new beginnings with every moment and every chance encounter…
At least I pray it may be so with me, and that it may be so with you, and to God be the glory, now and always. Amen!
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