would even stone these prophets.

Transcription

1 George A. Mason Fifth Sunday of Easter Wilshire Baptist Church 14 May 2017 Mother s Day/ Stephen Ministry Commissioning Dallas, Texas The Pattern of Life Acts 7:55-60 About 25 years ago, Alvin Burns and I roomed together and roamed together around the Holy Land with about 10 others from the Interfaith Commission of Dallas. A group of Jews and Christians had been meeting regularly for a couple of years, and we decided to go to the next level by traveling to that place where our faiths emerged and diverged. We traded times of leading Bible study and reflection, a rabbi and a minister alternating along the way. We were in Jerusalem on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, sitting that morning in the beautiful Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. We had just worshiped there and had gathered for a time of study and prayer. It was my turn. I chose this passage of Stephen s stoning as my text. Good thing I was among friends, don t you know?! It s not a great choice of text when a Christian minister in the presence of rabbis and other Jewish friends decides to talk about this nasty little moment when some Jews stoned to death the gentle believer in Jesus named Stephen. What could go wrong with that, right? But here s the thing about interfaith relationships: if you don t take on the hard parts that expose the pain of your history with each other, you will never grow close in true friendship; you will always stay on a superficial level of acquaintance. And don t worry turnabout is fair play: we soon visited the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, and had to deal with German Christians genocide of Jews in World War II. So intrepid George forged ahead, praying all the way. The first thing to note that should disarm our animus over a story like this is that while Jews did in fact stone this Jesus follower to death, it was Jews stoning a Jew. Specifically, it was Hebraic Jews stoning a Hellenic Jew, not Jews stoning a Gentile Christian. This was a Jewish family squabble, not a Jewish persecution of Christians. The same was true of the death of Jesus. When the Bible says that Jews killed Jesus, it was some Jews conspiring with the Romans to put to death another Jew with whom they disagreed. There is no cause for Christians to blame Jews for killing our Christ, as if Jesus were a Gentile like us.

2 But the main insight I sought to share with our group that day was the link between Stephen and Jesus, a link that reflected the link between King David and Jesus. There is a pattern to note that shaped Jesus life and death, and then Stephen s life and death. It s a pattern I want to suggest to you today as being the true pattern of life for all of us. Before we get to that, it would help to look closer at who Stephen was and why he was being stoned. Stephen was one of the first seven deacons who were elected to care for the church in Jerusalem. A problem had arisen in the distribution of food to widows in the church. It seems that the widows who had kept faith with Jewish customs and then became Jesus followers were getting preference over those Jewish widows who were now Jesus followers but had become more assimilated into Greek culture. The apostles saw this situation as an injustice, and they appointed Stephen and six others to set things straight and care for all equally. The early church, just as the church in every age, had to work through its prejudices against those whose lives didn t seem to line up with traditional values. They learned what we all continue to learn that the only thing that really matters for full participation in the life of the church is our common faith in Jesus Christ. The apostles wanted to spend their time preaching and teaching, not just tending to the life of the community. But Stephen got out of his lane. He started speaking out in public about Jesus, witnessing as if he were an apostle. If they d had Baptists back then, I figure he d have been one. We Baptists have a way of bucking roles when the Spirit moves. We think that if you are a follower of Jesus, you are a witness, no matter your title. Someone once wrote a book about Baptists with the perfect title: Not a Silent People. Yep, that s us. Stephen started telling his Jewish brothers that the whole history of their people showed how some people had been moved by the Spirit to embrace a new vision of what God was up to in the world, and others in the family of faith had seen that as a betrayal of tradition. They would put their hands over their ears and refuse to listen. And sometimes they 2

3 would even stone these prophets. Now, no one likes to be told they are on the wrong side of history when they are just trying to be faithful. So here is Stephen, standing before this group that s getting madder by the minute. Suddenly he turns his attention away from the people in what shall we call it an upward strategy move? He is given a glimpse into heaven and sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God. This is a way of saying that Jesus is supporting his witness and advocating for him before God. And then he tells the people what he sees. The people can t stand his audacity. They see it as blasphemy, identifying Jesus with God and claiming that God is on Jesus side and Jesus is on Stephen s side against them. What they do next is worse. They take him outside the city gates. That is, they do what the law says to do. They don t rush him like a lynch mob right then and there; they methodically keep the law and take him outside the city to stone him. They make him a scapegoat. They justify their violence against Stephen by invoking the law of God. This is still a pernicious problem in the Christian community. We may not stone people to death any longer to protect our community s beliefs and keep it pure, but we have a way of dismissing those who disagree with us and wanting to put them out. Conservatives and progressives both have a way of doing this. We don t want to listen to a narrative that contradicts our understanding of things. We put our hands over our ears and would sacrifice others rather than consider what new thing God might be doing among us. Then we justify our actions by saying that we are just protecting our house of faith. A friend from Athens, Texas, listens to us every week and sometimes writes to me about the sermons. A few weeks ago, he commented on my point about our willingness to use violence to defend ourselves in Jesus name. He was at work a few days after a local couple shot and killed some intruders who had broken into their house to rob them. One of his work colleagues, a committed churchgoing Christian, laughed and cheered, saying, Good. That s a good thing. My friend challenged him, saying that while people who are doing evil sometimes have to be stopped by violence, that s nothing to celebrate. Those who live by the sword will die by it. Those two thieves have no chance now to repent 3

4 and be redeemed. How can we call that good? The man just declared that people need to be able to defend themselves and that two bad guys got what they deserved. Maybe so, but do you see what this does to us? It s about the evildoers, yes, but it s also about our being willing to take life into our own hands instead of following a pattern of life given to us by Jesus that Stephen also followed, right to his own death. What is this pattern? When Jesus died, he looked up to God and said, Into your hands I commend my spirit. He was quoting Psalm 31, a psalm of David. Instead of striking back against his persecutor, Saul, David appealed to God and prayed those very words. Jesus looked out at his persecutors and said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. When Stephen is being stoned, he quotes Jesus quoting David. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. He appeals to Jesus at the right hand of God, and then, like Jesus, he forgives his killers. Stephen understood that the true pattern of life is seen in our baptism and is repeated throughout our life and culminates when we take our last breath. It s simply this: we die and we are raised, we die and we are raised, we die and we are raised. So when we find ourselves in the midst of suffering and even facing our death, we should be looking to God to see how God is going to bring us through it this time. We don t take matters into our own hands; we commend our spirit into God s hands. We don t try to do the same to our stone-throwers that they are doing to us. We will teach the world a new way of living only when we live this new way ourselves. There is an old story about a rabbi who, while in Persia, found a great ruby. This was not just any ruby. It belonged in the emperor s crown. An official crier was sent throughout the kingdom with this message: Whoever returns the emperor s jewel within thirty days will be rewarded. But then he added an ominous warning: If it be found on him after thirty days, his head will be cut off. On the thirty-first day one day after the deadline the rabbi brought 4

5 the ruby to the palace. The emperor asked, Did you not hear the proclamation that the ruby must be returned within thirty days or the possessor of it will be beheaded? The humble rabbi responded, Yes, your majesty, I did, on the first day. The emperor asked, Then, why did you not return the ruby within the thirty days? The rabbi calmly replied: I did not return it until now so that you could not say I returned it because I feared you. I returned it because I believe in God. The emperor was so impressed by the rabbi s witness to his faith that he exclaimed, Blessed be the God of these Jews. 1 Wouldn t it be something if we lived in such an unafraid way that we were able to refer all things to God? What would our witness to Jesus be like then? Who might be changed? We know one man who was changed by Stephen s witness, although not right away. It was a young man named Saul. After watching the cloaks of those who stoned Stephen to death, he soon became an ardent persecutor of the church, ready to stone others. But he must have been haunted by the way Stephen died. When God stopped him in his tracks on the Damascus Road and asked him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?, this Saul would have remembered another Saul King Saul who, when he pursued David, heard him cry out, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? That would have taken him back to Stephen and to Jesus and to David and the pattern of life they perfected. And he was changed for good, becoming, like them, unafraid of human beings, referring all things to God and forgiving his enemies. You Stephen ministers being commissioned today know you are named for this man, Stephen, the first martyr of the church. You may not think that what you are doing is dangerous work, but when you spiritually befriend those in the midst of suffering, you are leading them to embrace a new perspective that is a pattern of life with God as old as the first day of creation: we die and we are raised. We die and we are raised. We die and, praise God, we are raised. 1 Cited by King Duncan, 5