May 10, 2020
Faithful Witness
Psalm 31:1-5. 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14
Thinking of the house promised in John’s gospel, which we have read today, brings to mind our dear sister Jill Becker. She passed away last fall. It was this passage that she requested to be read at her service. It is a beautiful passage, such an inviting image. Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” In God’s home, there is room for all. “If I prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.” This is so tender, so hopeful, so reassuring.
But good old, keep-it-real Thomas is confused: “How can we know the way?” Jesus’s response: “I am the way. … If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” This is not about exclusion, who’s in or out. Remember, God’s invitation is to all. Jesus extended it on that fateful night of the last supper, when he knew that everything was falling apart. About to be betrayed and arrested, he had washed the disciples’ feet and instituted the great thanksgiving, the breaking of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance. “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places,” Jesus tells his sorrowing disciples. Meaning: God is roomy. God is generous. God is hospitable. God can handle your doubts, your fears, and your questions. And God’s offer of belonging extends far beyond the confines of this mortal life. “I go and prepare a place for you,” Jesus says as he stands in the shadow of his own cross. You have a place with me, he says. You have a place with God.
This is a Gospel for our time. The story — your story, my story, our collective story of this precarious, overwhelming moment — will not end in death. Though we might feel alone and frightened right now – the pandemic is upon us and a nasty, bruising election is in the offing -- the Way is open before us. We know it. We know Jesus, and because we know Jesus, we know God. The Way will safely bear us home. Do not let your hearts be troubled.
But, let’s turn our attention to today’s reading from Acts. It is about the first killing of a Christian, a follower of the Way, Saint Stephen, one of the first deacons of the Church. So what did he do to become a martyr?
First, Stephen was willing to be a servant. The sixth chapter of Acts tells us that Stephen was chosen as one of seven people to be servants in the Christian faith. This literally meant ministers ordained by prayer and the touch of the Apostles to distribute alms and provide for the needs of the widows and orphans and needy people among those earliest Christians who were not being fed and cared for. It was Stephen’s first job to see to it that all who were in need were noticed, fed, clothed and loved. Acts 6 literally says that the twelve Apostles concurred that “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait at tables.” But Stephen was willing to “wait at tables.”
With Stephen and the other six ordained to this ministry, the order of deacons was born in the Church. This order preceded both bishops and priests. To this day thousands of years later, deacons ceremonially serve at the altar in Holy Communion without leading the Eucharistic prayers, as the priests and bishops do. Deacons are called especially to care for the poor and neglected, the hungry and sick, and dispossessed people of this world. While some choose to serve for life as vocational deacons, all priests and bishops of our contemporary Episcopal Church are first ordained as transitional deacons to the service of God and the people. I began my ministry with you as a transitional deacon while preparing for my ordination as your priest last year.
But while Stephen served at tables as a means of serving his Lord, he didn’t do so quietly. The Book of Acts tells us that Stephen was known for “great wonders and signs” among the people. He was a preacher. He drew attention to Christian faith, and he told any he could tell about Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the world. That got him into serious trouble. But this is the second thing that makes Stephen a martyr: he spoke the truth of Jesus Christ as he understood it, to anyone, anytime. His speech to the Sanhedrin was his death warrant.
This serves as both a model for us and as a cautionary tale in our own time. Although Stephen spoke only what he held to be true, it seems to be a perpetual human failing that the truth as another sees it is not always a welcome word, even when it is indeed the truth. The United Nations secretary general in an address on Friday warned of “a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scaremongering” being spawned by the pandemic. If hate speech, falsehoods and lies are not curbed, rising authoritarianism, ethno-nationalism and populism will give rise to mob justice and violence of the type that doomed Stephen and the racism that served as justification for Southern lynchings. One such lynching occurred in May 1917 in Memphis, Tennessee. It drew a crowd of 5,000 to witness a black man die a slow, painful death tied to a log, doused with gasoline and set alight. Of those in attendance, some were church-goers. Vigilante justice is still at work in our own day. Consider the very recent case arising out of Georgia. Stephen called out the leaders of his Jewish community, he held many of them accountable for Jesus’ death, he told them so, and they could not bear such a harsh rebuke. In their anger, and perhaps in their denial, they silenced Stephen rather than listening to him. We could be at the threshold of another paroxysm of vicious killings, human nature at its worst, as the coronavirus exacts its malevolent toll. Let’s hope not.
This leads to the third thing for which Stephen is a martyr. He chose the way of forgiveness. Stephen probably was aware of the stories passed through the small community of the earliest church, remembered and told by others, that Jesus, on the cross with little life left in him, chose to ask that God forgive those who were taking his life, for they did not understand all they were doing. In that moment of grace, Jesus opened the door to our forgiveness, healing and salvation from our own sins. Stephen no doubt took to heart Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount as related at Matthew 5:44-45a, “But as I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” So, it is no surprise that Stephen, in his final moments of life, asked forgiveness for those who were taking his life, and in doing so, he again spoke truth and grace about the Lord he loved and served.
So, it’s easy to be a fan of the martyrs, but perhaps not necessarily for their death, but rather for their lives. After all, “martyr” is a word translated to mean “witness”, in our case, witnesses to the love of God revealed in Jesus. Stephen was a martyr for Christ, a witness for Christ, long before his death. So we should honor him first for his living, for his servanthood in Jesus’ name. Secondly, for his speaking truth to power, telling people of Jesus the Savior, even at the risk of his own life. Third, we should honor Stephen’s martyrdom because of his choice to love and forgive others, even those who took his life. Stephen should be honored not because he is a hero, but because he honestly and humbly patterned his life after his Lord. This is not to deny the importance of Stephen’s death in his witness for Jesus, for he made his witness even with his last breath. He may not have converted his accusers, but his words and example had an effect no doubt on one his auditors who probably had a hand in stirring up the mob, Saul of Tarsus who was to become Paul, with monumental consequences for the future of the fledgling church. The road to Damascus (and beyond) loomed. Stephen’s agony and death throes should have haunted Paul/Saul for the rest of his days; Stephen’s witness should have driven his apostolic zeal.
And speaking of martyrs, saints in our lives, need I remind you that today we celebrate Mothers’ Day? Sometimes priests ask themselves, should we preach a sermon to mark the day? In a word, yes. This year in the midst of the pandemic, the answer might be, “You’d better!” The lock-down has been a pressure-cooker for many. It has exposed cracks and crevices in marital relationships. It has revealed to parents just how busy they used to be with activities and how long-suffering their children’s teachers are. Some parents have discovered that the screens and devices in their children’s hands are very addictive.
Some clerics and others might choose to disagree loudly. But think about it for a few minutes. Mothers’ Day is not a Hallmark holiday. The Bible stresses the vital role of women in the transmission of the faith. Not only is motherhood vital in the Old Testament, Paul himself commends the mother of Timothy and his grandmother. Paul honors them for being the ones who gave Timothy a vision of what to believe. “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well.” (2 Tim. 1:5). There is a touching moment at Romans 16:13 when Paul sends his personal greeting to his friends in Rome, particularly Rufus “and to his mother who was a mother to me.”
Who was Rufus, you might ask? He was the son of Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross of Christ on the last leg of that painful Good Friday journey to his execution, another victim of mob justice, albeit state-sanctioned. This means that Simon may have gone home from that experience a changed man. In all likelihood, he shared the power of that moment with his wife who then, likely, shared it with her sons, Alexander and Rufus. (Mark 15:21). In a remarkable loving intersection of faith and circumstance, she might have shared it with Paul. How they met, where they met, and under what circumstances this remarkable coincidence occurred, we do not know.
But imagine this: she was like a mother to the Apostle Paul. Paul of Tarsus may have learned about the final moments of the life of his new Lord from the wife of the man who carried the Lord’s cross, Simon of Cyrene. She was like a mother to him. Whatever that meant for Paul, we should be thankful for her. Her care and love of Saul/Paul of Tarsus, the terrorist-turned-missionary, should inspire us all. Without knowing who he would become, she was a mother to the most significant convert in the history of the Church.
We all have needed mothers in our own lives. And those mothers, living or dead, good or bad, loving or cold, gave us life. Mothers’ Day is a reminder of God’s faithfulness to us at so many levels. It and the witness of Saint Stephen indeed do deserve a sermon – and a caution and touchstone to us all as we strive to navigate these trying times. In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
