Sermon manuscript:
It’s a little jarring, the day after Christmas, to celebrate
the martyrdom of St. Stephen. Talking about a fiery man, who wouldn’t shut up,
to the point where people pelted him with stones until he died—that stands in
stark contrast with a certain view of the Christmas spirit. For many Christmas
is a celebration of celebrating. Here we might ask, “What happened to the
party?” Now we are talking about somebody who said such stark and stringent
things that those who heard them screamed at the top of their lungs, dragging
him outside of the city, bludgeoning him with rocks. Merry Christmas, right?
But people’s popular conception of Christmas is quite
lacking when it comes to the real content of Christmas. Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, is different than Santa Claus. Jesus is the king of righteousness.
Santa Claus, contrary to what you have been told, doesn’t keep track of who is
naughty and who is nice. What gets Stephen into trouble is not that he’s been
telling everyone he comes across that they are all jolly good fellows. He’s
told them that they’ve been naughty. This has ticked them off. They don’t
repent. They get even.
It is easy for us to forget how fundamental this kind of
thing is to life. In our Gospel reading Jesus mentions the blood of righteous
Abel. Abel was the second son of Adam and Eve. His older brother, Cain, killed
him. Cain was the first human being conceived and born in the natural way. What
is this first-born of the whole human race? He’s a murderer. Why does he
murder? Because he is corrupt. He wants the good reputation of piety, but he’s
not actually pious. God, who knows all things, knew this, and was not deceived
by his sacrifice. God had regard for Abel and his honest sacrifice, but he did
not have regard for Cain’s sacrifice. Abel was a living, breathing reminder of
Cain’s inadequacy, corruption, unwillingness to do what is right. So Cain got
rid of him.
This kind of thing is archetypical for life on this
sin-infested planet. It happens all over the place. There is shady practice
after shady practice. We become conditioned to it so that we hardly notice it.
If we do notice it and do something about it, we’ll pay dearly for it, so it’s
in people’s best interest to ignore it.
Let me try to explain the kind of thing I’m talking about.
It’s a little hard to explain because it’s easy to think I’m just talking about
one isolated thing here and another isolated thing there, when what I’m trying
to get across to you is that this is thoroughly enmeshed into lives. But let me
give you some examples of what I’m talking about.
Let’s say there’s a business that bills by the hour. They
start working for you a quarter to the hour until half past the hour. You get
billed for two hours because time was spent during each of the hours of the
day.
Another example: You buy something at Kohls. You use it for
what you need, careful not to damage it. Then you return it and get your money
back.
Another example: Mom or dad tell you to do something. You
know what they mean, but you don’t do one iota more than what was literally
said, because not each individual step was specifically laid out. Then you can
plead innocence, “because you didn’t know.”
Another example: Your friends say terrible things. Perhaps
they say blasphemous things, but you keep your mouth shut because you don’t
want to hurt the relationship.
I could go on and on and on with these little things. I’ll
spare you that, but let me point out one more thing: whatever your calling,
your line of work might be, there is bound to be countless little tricks and
lies and manipulations that happen day in and day out. Tiny dishonesties, even.
They are assumed to be just the way that stuff gets done, so it probably
doesn’t weigh heavily at all on anybody’s conscience. But it is crooked,
corrupt, and when the light of truth shines upon it, people can see it unless
they’ve become blind.
Jesus says that we are to be salt and light in the world. We
are to let our yes be yes and our no be no. We are not to try to manipulate
anyone. Paul says that we should not be conformed or schematized to this age—to
the way that things normally get done. Instead we are to be metamorphosized,
transformed in our thinking, to know what the will of God is. We should learn
what is good and pleasing to God.
This requires active work on our part. What is natural is to
always look out for yourself and not give a hoot what is good for others or
pleasing to God. That is especially the case if the situation calls for us to
be inconvenienced in order to do what is good and acceptable to God. And if we
were called upon to suffer—like getting fired, or losing your social status, or
being frowned—you can just forget it! It’s not going to happen.
But this is precisely what we as God’s children have been
called upon to do in this life. We are to be straight, true, forthright, honest
in this world. Without a doubt we are surrounded by crookedness and corruption,
meanness and envy on every side. But we are to live according to a different
set of rules—God’s rules.
And that means that we are going to clash with the world
around us. We are going to have conflict in work and business. We are going to
have conflict with friends and family. We are going to have conflict in a
congregation. In all areas of life there is crookedness and corruption. But we
are to be true, living sacrifices, commending ourselves to God who judges
justly.
This is what St. Stephen did. He plainly interpreted the
Scriptures in the synagogue of Freedmen. That might have been his own synagogue
as well as Saul’s synagogue, who later is known as the apostle Paul. When
Stephen interprets the Scriptures as pointing to and culminating in Christ, his
compatriots are confounded. God also did signs through Stephen, which God did
more often in those apostolic days. Stephen was not making a name for himself.
He was testifying to Jesus. He was magnifying Jesus. It is obvious that Stephen
does not bear ill will against his fellow men, even though they hate him. You
can tell that by his prayer that God would not hold their murdering of him
against them.
So Stephen suffered and died precisely because he was good.
In this way he followed his master Jesus, who also was someone who was straight
and true in the midst of a crooked generation who put him to death. Suffering for
doing good is a high and holy thing. It is our highest calling as Christians.
Stephen was the first Christian whom God chose to honor in such a way.
Stephen’s life, testimony, and death are a precious gem. Plus it produced
tremendous fruit in the man who would eventually become known as the apostle
Paul.
Towards the end of the reading, you heard how the men who
stoned Stephen put their outer garments at Saul’s feet. (That’s the same man we
know of as Paul.) Saul was a ferocious persecutor of Christians, zealous for
Jewish orthodoxy, but eventually he was converted by none other than the Lord
Jesus when he was on his way to arrest some Christians who were living in
Damascus. But people are not usually converted in a single day. I can’t help
but think that Paul remembered the testimony, the grace, the forgiveness, and
the prayer that came from Stephen.
There was no way for Stephen to know that one of those men
for whom he prayed would become a great apostle. He certainly wasn’t
engineering it in any way. It was natural fruit that grew from the cross that
was laid upon him. His suffering for doing good, rather than for doing evil,
had God’s own design behind it.
But some people might object to calling Stephen good. We
have to note this, because such thinking is very common in our day. Some people
will say that Stephen wasn’t very good because of the way that he talked to his
fellow Jews. He said, “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and
ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit!”
There are many people who would throw a penalty flag here.
He was roughing the hearer. He used unnecessary language. The words were too
harsh. He could have said it in a nicer way. Stephen can end up being put on trial instead of the stiff-necked Jews
who were resisting the Holy Spirit.
Not only can Stephen (and others like him) be put on trial,
he can also be found guilty in the
court of public opinion. I guarantee you that there were some people there who
thought that Stephen got what was coming to him. They were appalled at how he
was insubordinate to all the religious leaders in the room. He was too cheeky
and bold. He needed to have somebody cut him down to size.
It is very important that you realize that when Christians
suffer for doing what is good, they are usually painted as being bad by others.
And that painting that is done by others can be and often is highly plausible.
The apostles and Christians who were put to death were not put to death because
they went around telling everyone they were such jolly good fellows. They
stepped on a lot of toes, just like Jesus stepped on a lot of toes. Some of the
people whose toes got stepped on repented. Others got even.
But ultimately such revenge is no matter. As Christians we
are free. If you fear God, then you will not fear men nearly as much as you
otherwise would. This freedom is a wonderful thing to behold.
Did you notice Stephen’s freedom? Perhaps the main reason
why the crowd became so stark raving mad at him was precisely because of his
freedom. He wasn’t scared of them. He testified to what he saw—Jesus at the
right hand of God—even though he knew, and he knew that they knew, that this
would absolutely enrage them.
When they started to bludgeon him with stones he prayed for
Jesus to receive his spirit. He was not thinking of trying to figure out a way
to save his life. He was thinking of Jesus. If he were begging for his life, or
calculating a way to save his own life, he never would pray a prayer like that.
Such a prayer was offensive to the bullies who were going at him. It just added
fuel to their fury.
It is said of the devil that he is a very proud spirit. The
one thing he can’t stand is being despised or neglected. He wants people to
think that he is really something. People’s evil spirits are like that too.
When they’ve decided that they don’t like a person, the one thing they can’t
stand is for that person to be free and easy. They want that person afraid of
what might happen to them. They want to control and dominate. However, a very
common feature that is seen in a great many of the stories of the early
Christian martyrs is that even though they were staring death right in the
face, they were not afraid. They were free.
But they were also gracious. They were not trying to upset
people with their freedom. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they loved those
who were hurting them. They prayed for those who persecuted them. Their lack of
malice towards the ones who were hurting them is an important sign that makes
Christian suffering different from the suffering of others.
Now let’s talk about you. You are children of God. You are
free. You are to stand up and fight for what is true and right. Then you are to
not lose your courage when you get blowback from it. God knows what is going
on. You aren’t alone. The people who look like they can do terrible things to
you are no match for God. And it might be that God will produce tremendous
fruit from the cross that he lays upon you. You can’t know that. But God
already does. What’s important is that you understand what Peter says in his
first epistle: You should not be ashamed of suffering for doing good. That is a
blessed thing, a following after our master, Jesus.
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