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Stephen |
Acts 7: 55-60
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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THE STORY OF STEPHEN Acts 6: 8 - 8: 3 tells the story of Stephen. Stephen is not an apostle, not a "star," but he will suffer and die for his faith as well as may anyone who is faithful.[1] Stephen is one of the first deacons (Acts 6: 1-8), engaging in ministry among needy followers of the Way, the Jesus movement within Judaism. Stephen is a model of balance in Christian service. Today we hear much of "Great Commission Christians," that is, Christians who stress the Great Commission of Matthew 28, who emphasize evangelism, who quote Acts 1: 8 ("ye shall be witnesses), John 4: 35 ("the fields are white unto the harvest") and Matthew 9: 33 ("the harvest is great, but the laborers are few"). Stephen would agree with these Great Commission Christians, but he would also identify who another group, the "Great Commandment Christians." They take seriously Jesus' command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22: 38-39). They believe that Matthew 25 with its teachings about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison is every bit as "God breathed" as Matthew 28: 19-20. For a Great Commission Christian to get a hearing, he or she had better be acting first like Great Commandment Christians. Stephen kept the two in balance; so should we. Stephen was a recent convert, but unlike so many new to the faith, he was not an overly eager zealot. He was "full of wisdom and of good repute," "full of the faith and of the Holy Spirit and wisdom," "full of grace and power." (Acts 6: 3, 5, 8) The word "full" has connotations of well balanced, beautiful in the symmetry of the Christian life. His faith was winsome, contagious.[2] One scholar has an informed hunch that Stephen was a young man who helped bridge the generational and ethnic splits in the early church. His name is Greek; it means "crown." He probably came with older, prosperous Greek-speaking Jews from the diaspora to Jerusalem.[3] There they may have felt the need to go out of their way to prove their orthodoxy to their Jerusalem-based, Hebrew-speaking co-religionists. Differences in age, ethnic background, economic ability, and religious development have been in the church since day one - Stephen didn't pout about cliques; he built bridges. Stephen makes the longest speech in Acts. In doing so he made use of the honorable and ancient custom of Jewish prophets to use their own scripture as a means of self-criticism, thereby reminding us that this text is never to be used as a basis for anti-Jewish actions, but only as a platform for scrutinizing our own failures to match our behavior with the teachings of our scriptures. The climax of his speech is the exaltation of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah who now rules over all, who is to be obeyed even if at great cost or rejected at great peril. He dies praying a prayer modeled after a short Jewish bedtime prayer from Psalm 31: 5, except for an important change: the prayer is addressed to "Lord Jesus" rather than God. He died with the same attitude as Jesus in Luke 23: 34, forgiving his enemies. "Jesus' followers die like Jesus."[4] FROM BEDLAM TO A RIFT IN THE SKY In England during the early 1400's, a priory for the order of the Star of Bethlehem started receiving patients. Eventually the place got the name of Bethlehem Hospital in London - what folks called in those days a lunatic asylum. As time passed, the locals shortened and slurred the name until Bethlehem became Bedlam, our word for uproar and confusion. From Bethlehem to Bedlam. A splendid Lutheran preacher named Edmund Steimle connect Bethlehem and Bedlam with the story of Stephen: "Right in the middle of the ugly anger of those who would stone him to death, Stephen cries, `Look...there is a rift in the sky. I can see the Son of Man sitting at God's right hand." In this crazy world, this Bedlam of ours, these days when Easter is barely a memory, much less a season we still are celebrating, the trumpets of resurrection are drowned out by the instruments of war, the scent of lilies is replaced by the stench of corpses. But you and I are here today to bear witness to the presence of the living Lord among us, an abiding presence. "He rises victorious over bedlam to give us the hope and courage and faith to live through Bedlam too. Always that `rift in the sky!' But not only in the sky. Right here on earth too....look for the reflection of the rift in the sky' right here on earth, where the vision of the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God is reflecting in delightfully various colors. Like light broken up by a prism."[5] Can you see some contemporary "rifts in the sky," places where God's light breaks through even in the crazy bedlam of our world? Here are two: (1) a school teacher named Dave Sanders dies enabling students to escape from the murderous gunfire of their class mates in Littleton, Colorado; (2) a delegation of American churchman (Jesse Jackson did not go alone!) at 4:45 a.m. our time today received the three Americans who had been prisoners for 32 days: Steven Gonzales, Andrew Ramirez and Christopher Stone. I know there are different political takes on this event; I also know their wives and mothers and families will have a wonderful Mother's Day next Sunday because of this "rift in the sky." A BAPTIST MARTYR Light does break through in the midst of suffering. Recall with me this bit of Baptist history. In the 1640's in New England, Clark Riley's great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather, a man who was also my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather (that was seven "greats" on my side, eight on Clark's - he's younger)...our grandfather Obadiah Holmes was branded "a pervert in the faith." Grandfather Holmes was a "real Baptist" and a sturdy one. After being arrested for participating in a Baptist prayer meeting without benefit of governmental approval, he and his companions were to be fined. Although a friend offered to pay, Obadiah felt called upon to suffer for his faith. He declined the offer and was given thirty lashes with a three-corded whip. He said, "I have done no wrong, and I will not let an unjust fine be paid. I bless God that I am counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus." According to my Junior Baptist Training Union Study Course book,[6] my ancestor did not pray that God would save him from the cruel whipping. He prayed only that God would give him the courage and boldness and strength of body to suffer for his sake without shrinking from the strokes or shedding tears. Margaret Williams writes: "His prayer was answered. He had the strength to walk boldly to the whipping post with his testament in his hand and to bear without flinching the thirty lashes....In spite of his suffering he cried aloud to the people in the street, 'Though my flesh shall fail and my spirit shall fail, yet my God will not fail.' "When he was released, he spoke to the magistrates: 'You have struck me as with roses. The Lord hath made it easy to me. Yet I pray God it may not be laid to your charge.'" (Sounds like Jesus and Stephen, doesn't it?) She concludes, "Many who saw the courage of Obadiah Holmes wanted to find out more about his faith," proving once again what the church father Quintus Septimius Tertullian had said 1,400 years before Obadiah Holmes: "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church."[7] THE FAMILY TREE OF MARTYRDOM Virtually every Christian community can trace its family tree of martyrdom. In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from the concentration camp at Auschwitz. His commandant called the inmates out of their barracks and announced that ten prisoners would die in retribution. He walked down the line arbitrarily selecting the ten..."you and you and you...." When the ten had been chosen, a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and said, "Sir, may I take the place of one of these ten?" The commandant agreed. He and nine others were sentenced to starve to death in a stone dungeon. "The records of their last days indicate that there was no complaining. There was joy! They sang hymns of praise to God. One by one they succumbed to starvation until only four were left. There was such a mysterious, powerful aura around that dungeon that the guards refused even to go near it. Father Kolbe was the last to die, almost as though he had been commissioned to help the other nine die with grace, When, after three weeks, he still lived, he was killed with an injection of carbolic acid."[8] In the cafeteria at Princeton Theological Seminary (where Joel Burnett graduated, where Sonya Park is a student, and where Marylynn Roberts once worked), there are three bronze plaques inscribed with names of Princeton graduates who, like Stephen, shed their blood for their vision: Walter Macon Lawrie - Thrown overboard by pirates in the China Sea, 1847. John Rogers Peal - Killed with his wife by a mob at Lien Chou, China, 1905. James Joseph Reed - Fatally beaten at Selma, Alabama, March 11, 1965.[9] MODERN MARTYRS On Wednesday evenings I distribute a sheet of paper called the Covenant of Concern, a list of birthdays to be celebrated and persons to pray for. Three new names appeared last Wednesday: Aleksandr Kulakov, a 65 year old Russian pastor from Chechnya in Russia. Aleksandr disappeared on March 12. He had led the struggling Baptist congregation since its previous pastor (the second new name), Alexei Sitnikov, was kidnapped in October 1998. Congregates believed that radical Islamic forces had kidnapped their current pastor. We know now what happened to Aleksandr Kulakov; he had been beheaded. His head was displayed in an open market area. Police invited church members to come to a public morgue and try to identify what was left of his body. The third name is that of Volodya Kargiev, youth leader of Central Baptist Church in Vladikavkaz, apparently kidnapped by Chechnyan bandits, who are demanding $100,000 for his release. During the first week of April two Orthodox priests were also kidnapped, one taken from his church altar by four men with machine guns.[10] I am sure that out of these martyrdoms the church in Chechnya will surely grow, for it is still true that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. TRUTHS A Presbyterian pastor, Lloyd Ogilvie finds four truths in the story of Stephen: - the Lord does not promise safety; but he does offer strength - a person who has been to the foot of the cross cannot be intimidated or bought and sold for any price; - the blood of the martyrs is indeed the seed of the church - what would you and I have done?[11] The biographer of the great evangelist Charles G. Finney summarized his life in one sentence: "A conventional man, using conventional means is God's conventional method for bringing a fresh impulse toward heaven."[12] A faithful person - how conventional; a faithful God - how constant; - a fresh impulse toward heaven - any one of us can bring it to pass. CONCLUSION In the novel, The Robe, author Lloyd C. Douglas paints a word picture of Stephen's death. He holds his hand up and shouts, "I see him! My Lord Jesus - take me!" A Roman soldier says to the novel's hero, Marcellus, that he thought he heard Stephen say someone was coming to recuse him. Marcellus corrects the soldier: Stephen had actually seen someone coming. The soldier asks, "That dead Galilean, maybe?" Marcellus answers, "That dead Galilean is not dead, my friend! He is more alive than any man here." And so was Stephen a few moments after.[13] My prayer is that we will be delivered from the fate of Stephen, of Obadiah Holmes, of Dave Sanders, of Aleksandr Kulakov, Alexei Sitnikov, and Volodya Kargiev, of Walter Lawrie, John Peal, and James Reed, of Maximilian Kolbe, and all the rest of "the noble army of martyrs" as the Te Deum calls them. But if we are ever called to take our stand with them, may we be found faithful. And in the meantime, may we see the "rifts in the sky" and be faithful to that Galilean who is more alive than any one here. Woodbrook Baptist Church (Formerly Eutaw Place Baptist Church) Baltimore, Maryland Notes: [1] William H. Willimon, Acts [Atlanta: John Knox Press] 1988, p. 61 [2] Clovis G. Chappell, When the Church Was Young [New York: Abingdon Press] 1950, Ch. X, "The Chairman of the Board," pp. 103-112 [3] James D. G. Dunn, The Partings of the Ways Between Christianity and Judaism and their Significance for the Character of Christianity [London: SCM Press] 1991, p. 64 [4] Willimon, op. cit., p. 65 [5] Edmund Steimle, Birth and Martyrdom, sermon on the Lutheran Series of "The Protestant Hour," broadcast December 26, 1972 [6] Fighters for Freedom by Margaret Williams, Convention Press, 1942, p. 48 [7] Tertullian actually said, "Plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis; se,em est sanguis christianorum," which is often rendered, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett, 14th edition, Emily Morrison Beck, editor [Boston: Little, Brown and Company] 1968, p. 143, note 2 [8] Bruce Larson, Wind & Fire - Living Out the Book of Acts, [Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1984, p.77 [9] Willimon, op. cit., pp. 65-66 [10] Baptist Press, "Chechnyan Pastor Beheaded; 2 Baptists Leaders Still Missing," April 30, 1999 [11] Lloyd John Ogilvie, Drumbeat of Love: the Unlimited Power of the Spirit as Revealed in the Book of Acts [Waco, Texas: Word Books] 1976, pp. 96-97 [12] Brian L. Harbour, Living Expectantly [Nashville: Broadman Press] 1990, p. 70 [13] Ogilvie, op. cit., p. 96 |