A Sermon
Presented by Rev. Merlin T. Batt
Intentional Interim Pastor
St. Matthew’s United Church of Christ
Maiden, North Carolina
The Fifth Sunday of Easter
April 20, 2008

Scripture Lesson: Acts 7:55-60; John 14:1-14
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If you have been at all tuned into the national news this past week, you will have heard a great deal about the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States, the Pope whom some have called affectionately the church’s “German Shepherd.” On Wednesday, Benedict was received with great fanfare in our nation’s capitol where he visited President Bush at the White House, met with political and religious leaders, ministered to victims of abuse by some priests in America, said Mass before many thousands of people crowded into Nationals Park; then went on to New York City on Friday for a speech at the United Nations, a visit to a synagogue, then more meetings, more worship services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral yesterday and Yankee Stadium today. It tires me out just thinking about his itinerary.

While we Protestant Christians historically have had reservations about investing so much religious authority in one man and one institution - and rightly so - we can’t help but notice and be impressed with the power of the Pope to bring so much attention to the Christian faith, to the Church, and to what they mean not only for the lives of Christians, but also in relation to the moral, social, and political dimensions of contemporary life.

It reminds me that we cannot escape from the reality that Christianity is an incarnational religion. And by that I mean, Christian faith cannot exist only spiritually in the minds and hearts of individual believers. It must, by definition, take visible shape in the world – in transformed lives, in leaders, in communities, in institutions that exist within and help to shape the world of economics and politics and social policy, and so on.

One of the most famous places where Christianity takes visible, concrete shape is Rome. If you ever get the opportunity to travel to Rome, visit the Vatican, and stand in St. Peter’s Square, as Adele and I hope to do some day before we die, you will see high atop St. Peter’s Basilica and the monumental colonnade to either side the statues of 140 apostles and saints of the church. I’m told it is an awesome experience to gather with tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, and be, in words from the Book of Hebrews, “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”

However, we free-church Protestants make very little of these and other Christian heroes. You see, through the many centuries of church history, some spiritually unhealthy practices developed concerning the saints. So, in reaction, beginning with the 16th century Reformation, we Protestants simply threw ‘em out – banished the saints from Christian spirituality, their statues from sanctuaries and shrines, and their influence from our minds and hearts.

But I fear we “threw out the baby with the bath water”! I say that because we no longer have shared Christian heroes in our collective imagination – those bold, brave, and faithful Christians from the past who, by the way they lived, and often by the way they died, show us the power of the Lord Jesus Christ to transform human life and human society. Thus we are left without Christian heroes in a world which is more than eager to substitute its own, questionable heroes from the worlds of entertainment and sports, figures who encourage in us, and especially in our young people, not the virtues of faith, hope, and love, but selfishness, greed, and immorality.

But today our First Lesson gives us an opportunity to reinstate in our imaginations at least one genuine Christian hero – a man named Stephen. You probably know very little about Stephen, and that’s not due to inattention, but simply to the fact that we don’t have much information about him. All we have comes from the opening chapters of Acts.

Here’s the little we know. His name “Stephen” is Greek, from the Greek work “Stephanos.” While Stephen was a Jew, he had a Greek name as did many Jews in the first century of the Christian era, who were influenced by the pervasive Greek or, what is sometimes called, Hellenistic culture. Stephen, the Jew with a Greek name, became a follower of Jesus within a very short time after the church was born at Pentecost in Jerusalem.

Luke tells us that Stephen was chosen by the Apostles, along with six other men – all of them men of good standing, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, men who were active in the church’s life. These seven men were assembled before the Apostles who prayed for them, laid hands on them and charged them with overseeing some of the administrative responsibilities of the rapidly growing church, in order to allow the Apostles to concentrate on teaching and preaching the Word of God.

Among these seven, Stephen stood out. Described in the Scripture as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and later as being “full of grace and power,” and therefore doing “great wonders and signs among the people,” Stephen was articulate, bold and fearless. He didn’t hesitate to talk openly about his new-found faith in Jesus. The little evidence we have even suggests that he could be a little abrasive when he did so.

One day Stephen found himself in a debate in the Synagogue of the Freedmen in Jerusalem – these freedmen were descendants of Jews who had been taken as slaves to Rome in the previous century. They returned to Jerusalem and have their own synagogue. That day in the Synagogue of the Freedmen, the theological debate became heated. Other people got involved in the religious disagreement. Word spread beyond the confines of the synagogue that Stephen had spoken blasphemy. The long and short of it is that Stephen was dragged before the high priest and the council, where he was charged by false witnesses who said, “This man never stops saying things against this holy place (the Temple, that is) and the law; for we have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.”

Well, all it took was for the high priest to ask hot-headed Stephen one question and he was “off to the races”! “Are these things so?” asked the high priest. That was his opening! Stephen then launched into the longest sermon we have recorded in the New Testament. But it was not just long! It was spirited, bold, and confronting. In making his defense, Stephen’s words got ever sharper as he went along. He accused his hearers of hardhearted resistance to the will of God. He charged them with consistently destroying the messengers whom God had sent to Israel, the last of whom was Jesus, Israel’s Messiah.

His hearers both inside and outside the council chambers got hotter and hotter under the collar as he spoke. They were soon enraged, and they ground their teeth at Stephen. Get the picture? When they simply couldn’t stand to hear another word, they seized Stephen, dragged him outside the city walls, and began throwing stones at him, the purpose of which was not merely to punish him or even drive him away from the city, but to kill him. And they succeeded.

But before Stephen died under the weight of their rage and the rain of their sharp-edged stones, he prayed aloud, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” And then, as the stones did their bloody and deadly work, Stephen fell to the ground and cried out again in prayer with the loudest voice he could muster, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And with that he died. As generations of Christian readers have observed since, Stephen died with Jesus’ own words upon his lips, but words now addressed to the Lord Jesus: “receive my spirit” and “do not hold this sin against them.”

It was a remarkable thing for Stephen to say as he was dying. There had been thousands upon thousands of Jews killed over the span of a couple hundred years prior to the time of Jesus, men and women put to death, often in the most horrendous ways, to force them to abandon their Jewish faith and obey their oppressors. A tradition of resistance had grown up among Jews in response. With their dying breath, Jews would typically do two things. First, they spoke of their undying faith and trust in their God, who, they said, would raise them up on the last day. And second, they threatened their torturers with terrible punishment to come. With their dying breath, they would say things like this, “Keep on, and see how God will torture you and your descendants!” Bitter, ferocious, threatening words were the last words they spoke before they died.

But what was it Stephen said to his tormentors with his dying breath? If you remember his words, say them with me, “Do not hold this sin against them.” What an extraordinary thing to say. Do you see where this comes from? The example of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, and the indwelling Spirit of Jesus all combined at this one final moment to transform the dying Stephen into a powerful witness to his Lord, one we remember with awe and gratitude to this day. What a scene this is: Stephen not cursing, but calling down blessing and forgiveness on those who were killing him!

This same Stephen is sometimes called the first Christian martyr, the first to be put to death specifically because of his unwavering faith in Jesus Christ. There would be many more in the centuries to come – thousands upon thousands, upon tens and hundreds of thousands. In fact, in the 20th century alone, more Christians have died for their faith in Christ than all others over the span of 19 centuries. And, sadly, in these opening years of the 21st century, there’s no let-up in the rate of persecution leading to death for Christians. We don’t hear about this, for neither our political leaders nor the media give attention to it, but deadly persecution against Christians is happening in other places in the world as we worship today.

Now, I’ve taken time this morning to talk about a martyr’s life, Stephen’s in particular, because there is a sense in which you and I are called to live a martyr’s life. That may sound like a gross exaggeration, because here in America we’re not threatened with death or persecution for being Christians. To be sure, there may be times when we experience some awkwardness or even mild to moderate consequences if we exercise our Christian faith and values in the world. And it doesn’t appear on the near horizon that we will be facing any serious threat of martyrdom in our society, unless this culture deteriorates far faster and more radically than I expect to see in my lifetime or yours.

So why do I say that we are called to live a martyr’s life? It’s because being a Christian martyr does not only mean dying because you bear the name of Jesus Christ. Actually, the word “martyr” comes from the Greek word “martus,” and it means “witness.” So being a Christian martyr has to do with being a witness to Christ in the world.

The Apostles were witnesses to Jesus, literally speaking. They saw him with their own eyes. If necessary, they could have testified in court that they had seen Jesus do this or say that. Stephen wasn’t a witness in this sense. He never saw Jesus of Nazareth with his own eyes, but Stephen did give witness to Jesus when he spoke of Jesus before the high priest, and when, instead of shouting curses and threats at his torturers, he chose instead to do what Jesus did. He called down blessings and forgiveness on them.

That’s how you and I are called to live a martyr’s life – to let the kind of life we see in Jesus come and take up residence in us. Over the course of our lives as Christians, you and I have learned enough of Jesus to know his character and his will – his quickness to forgive, his compassion for those who hurt, his practice of prayer, his trust in his Father’s goodness, his outreach to those who are rejected, his self-giving love. We don’t need to know more about Jesus. We’ve got all the knowledge we need. What we often lack is a sincere desire to let his life be in us, to let his ways come to expression in ours, to allow his life to find a witness in ours…in our homes, with our friends, in our day to day activities, here in the church, at our jobs.

Do you recall at the end of today’s Gospel lesson what Jesus said to his disciples? Just at the point where Jesus was saying farewell to his followers, he said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these….”

Well, Stephen did just that, in both his life and at his death. He lived a martyr’s life, a life of witness to his Lord. And what’s even more important, Jesus seemed to think that, with the help of his Spirit, you and I can, too!

Now to the One who by the power at work within us
is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine,
to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus
to all generations forever and ever.
Amen.