The death of Stephen in Acts 7 is hardly a happy story. Christianity is not always a straight and well-paved road.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the seventh chapter of Acts of the Apostles (Acts 7:55-60), and it is not a happy story. Acts 7 describes the trial and then the execution of Stephen, one of the first deacons of the Christian Church.
While the deacons were selected and assigned to make sure that the members of that Jerusalem Church had enough to eat, it’s very clear that they rapidly had additional duties. Stephen, in particular, was noted for his preaching for declaring the story of Jesus around Jerusalem and saying what it meant for the people, for the faith, for the future.
That got him presented to the temple authorities, arrested, tried.
Most of Acts 7 consists of something we frequently call “The Sermon of Stephen, and it is not a speech designed to make the hearers happy. Stephen accused them and accused their ancestors of resisting the Holy Spirit of God by executing those who had spoken on God’s behalf. Not surprisingly, the judgment went against him. Stephen was dragged out of the city, and they threw rocks at him until he died.
As he lay there — and this is the part of the story that we will be reading on Sunday — as he lay there, he asked Jesus to receive his Spirit, and in a deliberate echo of what Jesus himself had said on the cross, he asked God’s forgiveness on those who were killing him.
The simple truth is that Christianity is not an easy road. It is not a level and graded path for us to follow. It is a winding road. It is a rutted road. It is one in which there are intersections that are not marked, and which way should we go?
Should Stephen have accused his judges in such inflammatory terms? Probably not.
But there was a truth to what he was saying. People in every age, including our own, resist the Holy Spirit of God. People in every age, including our own, set their own interests above those of the people around them. People in every age, including our own, act with cruelty, and with snap judgment, and with a disregard for the truths that they may hear.
Stephen died, yet he died with forgiveness on his lips. Stephen died, and he died with his faith in Jesus.
May we live with forgiveness on our lips. May we live with a sense of Jesus’ constant presence. And when the road does get severely rough, may we find Stephen’s courage and rejoice in Stephen’s faith.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
I learned something new this week. I learned about “Dark dining.” This is a restaurant where you eat with all the lights off. The idea is to focus your attention on the tastes and scents of the food. Thinking about one of these restaurants, Biblical scholar Roger Nam writes at Working Preacher, “Without the crutch of vision, textures, flavors, temperatures, and nodes of taste are enlightened. It is amazing how the deliberate restriction of sight may enhance a dining experience!”
And that, says Dr. Nam, is the way Samuel found himself approaching the task of identifying God’s chosen successor to Saul, the first King of Israel. He continues: “I wonder how much our own sight blinds us to God’s wishes, and prevents us from truly experiencing God’s intent. Perhaps the occasional experience of blindness can remind us how the gift of sight may prevent us from seeing the heart of God… 1 Samuel 16 implores us that sometimes we only need to deliberately close our eyes to see what God wants us to see.”
“[Samuel] looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely his anointed is now before the LORD.’ But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him, for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’”
As you can probably tell from the beginning of the text, things were complicated in Israel. Samuel had anointed Saul as the first King of Israel possibly as little as two years before. God and Samuel hadn’t been enthusiastic about replacing the system of judges with a monarch, but the Israelites had been hard pressed by raids and military incursions from their neighbors, and the people demanded a reliable, consistent leadership. Samuel, at God’s direction, had chosen Saul. It wasn’t long, however, before Saul began to do things he wasn’t empowered to do, such as offer sacrifices, and he failed to do things he was supposed to do. Samuel confronted Saul about it and informed him that God had rejected him.
It seems from the Samuel’s concerns about his safety at the beginning of this passage, and the trembling question of the leaders of Bethlehem – “Do you come peaceably?” – that everybody knew that the King and the prophet were at odds.
What he was doing, of course, was setting up the nation for a lengthy civil war. That’s the best name for it. As you might remember, Saul and David worked as a team for several years. David even married one of Saul’s daughters. A day came, however, when the relationship fractured into open conflict. As Patricia Tull writes at Working Preacher, “Samuel secretly anoints him [David] as God’s chosen future king while Saul is still reigning, and for the next fifteen chapters, that is, most of the story, the conflict between the two kings Samuel has anointed, a conflict neither of them created, balloons from rivalry and jealousy to deadly hostility: the recognized king of Israel, who still had a following, periodically determined to destroy his hidden heir, who time after time eludes his grasp.”
King Saul: Not this one.
God guided Samuel to the sons of Jesse, a respectable resident of Bethlehem. Samuel asked to meet the young men one at a time, or at least the authors presented it as something of a parade, with each one “passing by” in turn. The first was the eldest, Eliab, and Samuel thought he looked like a likely candidate for king: tall and good looking. God chimed in, however, to say, “I have rejected him, for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
If God told Samuel what was in the heart that disqualified Eliab, the story doesn’t say. We only know that Eliab got angry at David later on for asking an embarrassing question – which is, I’m afraid, the usual fate of younger siblings who ask questions that embarrass their older siblings. Was that it?
My guess is, probably not.
Eliab: Not this one.
Then son number two: Abinadab. And: Not this one.
Son number three: Shammah. Not this one.
After that the storytellers ran out of names, because four more young men were run by the prophet, and four more young men were rejected.
Not any of these.
But now Samuel was out of candidates.
It turns out there was one more, one whose utility as a shepherd outweighed the prophet’s request to meet all Jesse’s sons. That was David, of course. You’ve heard the story read, and you’ve heard it before. God told Samuel, “This is the one.”
Not any of these.
This one.
Why?
That’s the crucial question, isn’t it? We don’t know what God saw in the heart of Eliab or the other six brothers that disqualified them. We also don’t know what God saw in the heart of David to qualify him. What made him a good potential king? What made the others less good – we don’t actually know they’d have been bad – what made them less suitable candidates than the youngest of Jesse’s sons?
The closest we can come is to look at what David did after his anointing. What qualities did he show? What did his behavior say about what was in his heart?
The first virtue, I have to say, was compassion. The very next story, wrapping up this chapter, tells how David became a member of King Saul’s entourage. Saul suffered from some kind of mental health ailment, described as “an evil spirit.” Music soothed him, and the musician was David.
The story told in the next chapter of First Samuel is David and Goliath. There are a lot of things you can learn about David in that, but the first and foremost is that he was brave. There are a lot of ways to show courage. David displayed many of them.
Another virtue David displayed repeatedly was loyalty. His friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan is iconic. The two maintained a relationship even when King Saul sought David’s life. Further, David, even as a rebel, remained oddly loyal to Saul himself. There are two stories of David having the opportunity to kill King Saul, and refusing to “raise his hand against the LORD’s anointed.”
Finally, David showed a quality that Saul so lacked that it was what provoked God and Samuel to anoint him in the first place. David displayed a trust in God and a humility before God that clearly separated him from his predecessor. Saul assumed that his status as king gave him priestly powers. David routinely asked God about the things he should do. His relationship with God governed his decisions far more than Saul. David’s relationship with God was further recorded in the psalms he wrote. They reveal a trust and faith that even the storytellers of First Samuel could not fully describe.
What David did not possess, the virtue of the heart that God did not discern, was perfection. It would be nice if he had, because the stories of his reign would be different. But it’s also a relief, isn’t it? God isn’t looking for people who make no mistakes. God is looking for people who are brave, but not always. God is looking for people who care, but not for people who always know exactly what to do. God is looking for people who trust in God, but not people whose faith never falters.
God knows that people are people. God knows that people will fail from time to time.
What God wants is people who try, and try again, and try again.
What God also wants is for people not to be in positions where they cannot or will not fulfill their responsibilities. God wants the inclinations of the heart to be consistent with the roles they’re called to play. Those inclinations may change – that seems to have happened with Saul – but if they’re preventing someone from fulfilling their kuleana, it’s time to move on.
You and I might envy God that ability to see into the heart, but I’ll remind you that we are not so ignorant. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the poet Maya Angelou said, “My dear, when people show you who they are, why don’t you believe them? Why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can’t you get it the first time?”
May we be visible as people of good hearts the first time and the twenty-nine times after that. When God looks into us, may we not hear: “Not any of these.”
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
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Pastor Eric makes changes from his prepared text while he preaches. The sermon you just read is not precisely as he delivered it.
That little boat on the Sea of Galilee was in real danger. Galilee is shallow and surrounded by hills. That means that sometimes the wind gets channeled between the hills and kicks up the water into good-sized waves. It turns out that one of the worst times to embark upon the Sea of Galilee is night.
When Jesus and his disciples set sail.
Jesus, apparently, was worn out, because the heaving boat, the sound of waves and wind, and the cries of his friends didn’t wake him. This is somebody who could sleep on an airplane. The flying spray and the groaning boat eventually persuaded his disciples, some of them sailors, that something more than nautical skill was needed. In danger, in desperation, they called on Jesus.
And Jesus accused them of being cowards (that’s a translation offered by several commentators). Jesus accused them of not having any faith.
Huh?
Fear is the natural response of a human body in danger. Fear gets various glands busy, producing things like adrenalin that will give that extra kick of energy to fight or flee from danger. Fear is normal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
As for faith: they woke Jesus up for help, didn’t they? They went as far as human skill and strength could go, and then they followed their faith right to Jesus. He could help. He did help. See what faith can do?
Why didn’t Jesus see it that way?
I suppose it might be the way they asked for help.
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
Yeah. That might be it.
How many of us, frustrated at something that didn’t happen that we wanted to happen, have asked a father or mother, an auntie or an uncle, “Don’t you love me? Then why didn’t you do this for me?” I’m pretty sure I remember doing that to my mother when I was four. It’s possible that I did it to my father when I was forty, but let’s not go into that.
It must be said that God has heard such things for centuries. Jeremiah called God a “deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” (Jeremiah 15:18) Psalm 10 asks, “Why, O LORD, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” Psalm 80 wonders, “How long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?” And of course, Psalm 22 opens with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus quoted that psalm from the cross.
The disciples knew what that felt like when they woke Jesus with those accusing words.
It turns out that wasn’t the faith Jesus had been hoping for.
It was one thing to believe that Jesus could make a difference in the storm. It was another to trust in his willingness to do so. Which would offend you more? That someone isn’t certain that you can do something, or whether you care enough about them to do it? These people were, at that time, the closest people in Jesus’ life. Of course he ached when they asked him, “Don’t you care?”
As for that fear, Debie Thomas writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “The problem isn’t fear; the problem is where fear leads. When I face fearsome circumstances, my go-to position is not trust or even curiosity; it’s full-on suspicion. In my fear, I conjure up a God who is stony-faced, implacable, and loveless. A God to whom I am expendable. A God who withdraws. Once I’ve conjured that God, I withdraw, too. I curl up tight and focus on mere survival, convinced that I’m alone. All capacity for reflection disappears.”
The disciples were afraid. Nothing was going to change that. What did they do in their fear? Did they maintain their confidence that their friend and teacher loved them? Cared about them? Shared their lives and their trust? They could have done that, but that took courage, and they let courage fly away on the wind.
They got rebuked for it, but I’ll tell you, better a rebuke than drowning, in my opinion.
When Mark’s Gospel began to circulate among Christians, things were not good. The rebellion against Rome had erupted in Jerusalem, and the Temple had burned. Christians had been persecuted in the city of Rome under Nero and sporadically in other provinces of the Empire. Sharon H. Ringe writes at Working Preacher, “If Mark’s account of Jesus’ life and ministry were to be ‘good news’ for the church, it would have to proclaim that message in the midst of the storms through which they were living (and in which many were dying). It would have to shine a light of hope in the nighttime of the life of the church, and not only proclaim the coming ‘day’ of Christ’s longed-for return in power. This story affirms that still in that nighttime, when the long and perilous journey is in process, the cosmic authority of the crucified and risen Christ is with us. God is with us, and we are not alone.”
We are not alone. We are in danger, but we are not alone.
This is not the first century Roman Empire, and we are not subject to arrest and detention for being Christians in the US, no matter what some people claim. This is no longer 2020, and our risk from COVID-19 is much reduced from four years ago. Again, despite what some people claim, violent crime in the United States is down. Eric Levenson at CNN quotes FBI statistics for the first quarter of 2024: “The new numbers show violent crime from January to March dropped 15.2% compared to the same period in 2023, while murders fell 26.4% and reported rapes decreased by 25.7%. Aggravated assaults decreased during that period when compared to last year by 12.5%, according to the data, while robberies fell 17.8%.”
Rates in Hawai’i, by the way, tend to be significantly lower than the US as a whole.
So what are we in danger from? What’s the storm that’s threatening our boat?
Has anybody noticed that we’re getting older?
OK. You aren’t. But I certainly am. My portrait that hangs on the wall in the church Lounge alongside all the other pastors of this church shows somebody with a dark red mustache. It’s pretty much white now. When I worked for the Connecticut Conference, one of my tasks was to take photos at events. That meant I spent a lot of time crouching at the front of a room. Well, a few years ago I was visiting someone in a nursing home, and I crouched beside the bed because it was set low and there wasn’t a chair in the room. My legs went to sleep. When I finally got them awake enough to carry me out, I was sure that I was going to fall flat on my face in the hallway and the staff was going to admit me.
Sleepy legs aside, the simple truth is that aging is a pretty stormy thing, isn’t it? Not only do our bodies have more trouble doing the things we’re used to, they also start doing things we don’t want them to do. Hypertension. Heart disease. Decreased lung capacity. Neurological conditions. Cancer. How many of us have been in the boat accompanying someone through their storms? How many of us look ahead and see that the seas ahead may be rising, that the winds might be strengthening?
As I look ahead as a church leader, I see storm clouds. We in the United Church of Christ and in the mainline Protestant tradition have lost members, and influence, and resources over the years. Aging membership means storms for each of us, and it also means a storm for the church as a whole, as we confront the world’s deep needs with fewer people, and with less money, than we’ve had before. Well we might ask if Jesus cares whether the United Church of Christ, or Church of the Holy Cross UCC, exist.
Debie Thomas writes, “I think I will spend the rest of my life seeking this one grace — the grace to experience God’s presence in the storm. The grace to know that I am accompanied by the divine in the bleakest, most treacherous places. The grace to trust that Jesus cares even when I’m drowning. The grace to believe in both the existence and the power of Love even when Jesus ‘sleeps.’ Even when the miraculous calm doesn’t come.”
The one thing I am sure of is that when the storm is upon us, Jesus is there. God is there. The Holy Spirit is there. Sometimes over the years that has been a comfort. Sometimes over the years that has been a frustration. Sometimes over the years it’s been all that kept me going. Sometimes over the years it’s been the gentle arm over my shoulders when I had to come to a stop.
In danger, in the storm, go ahead and call for Jesus. Wake him if you feel you must. If you can help it, try to avoid, “Don’t you care?” It didn’t work with your mother, it’s not going to work much better with Jesus. But either way, Jesus will be there, the Holy Spirit will be there, God will be there, and in the midst of the storm, you will not be alone.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes in the course of preaching. Mostly he hope these are improvements.
