Stephen, The Martyr

John 14:1-4
Acts 7:54-8:1

Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan Newcomer

April 20, 2008

Stephen is the first deacon in the fellowship of disciples we would now call the church. He was also a fiery preacher speaking truth to power, as we say. He certainly afflicted the comfortable, saying things such as, “you stiff-necked people,” you “uncircumcised in heart,” in heart “and ears.” Uncircumcised in heart and ears! A good image for a Sunday when so many women are away.

And what a new spiritual idea: to be circumcised in the heart and in the hearing! This is a step-up in Hebrew spirituality, from the body to the source of life—the heart that pumps the breath.

Stephen seals his fate. Stephen pleads and accuses, in this sermon, just prior to his being stoned to death, “You are forever opposing the Holy Spirit,” for ever opposing the Holy Spirit. Why? Why? Why? Just stop it!

And then we get his face, the face of Stephen, the first Christian martyr. This is one of the most famous faces in our religion. It is filled with that very Holy Spirit that he says they’ve been forever opposing. He lifts his face and gazes heavenward. He sees God and Jesus at God’s right hand. He sees a vision of transcendence.

In the adult education group recently we talked of the visions people see when dying. Stephen wasn’t dying yet when he saw his vision. But he was about to. He had to know that his edginess had brought him to a precipice.

Soon, now, at Pentecost, we’ll hear the prophecy, “and the young men will see visions and the old men will dream dreams.” Certainly Stephen is such a visionary man. And we get to glimpse his face full of glory.

We have here the story of a man full of spiritual passion, giving voice to truth, dying a violent death, because of his idealism, and dying with the peace and grace of God upon his face. An honorable death is greatly to be desired. Selfless sacrifice is both a Greek and a Christian virtue. We’ve just marked the 40th anniversary of the killing of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. King is the embodiment of Stephen—and a long strong line of Christian martyrs binds them together.

The virtue to die nobly is particularly important to men. Yet, few of us recall that Martin King’s mother also was killed in her husband’s and her son’s church—at worship one Sunday. But because throughout the ages men, by and large, have given life through ideas and through protection, to be willing to stick to the truth, and to the task, to the bitter end, really redeems a lot of men from a life of quiet desperation or meaninglessness. So many men whom I have ministered to on their death beds have expressed to me in strong and peaceful tones their concern for the protection and welfare of their family, their desire to have their death not be a problem for anyone. It’s as if a remnant of nobility suddenly is found.

When I was the minister of the town’s Protestant church in Chester, Connecticut, I was the Protestant Chaplain to the volunteer fire department, called quaintly, “The Chester Hose Co.” Deep within the spirit of these small town New Englanders was Jesus’ proclamation: “Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend.”

Of course the Chester Fire Department has women fire fighters willing to risk their lives also. And, of course, child-birth was for centuries the challenge of self-sacrifice or death for women. Some thinkers suggest that it is through war and its threat of death that men look for the moral equivalent of the courageous risks and pains of child-birth.

So before we idolize Stephen as a male Christian archetype, let us include in our imaging here women martyrs—everyday women and saint’s day women. A very feisty older woman in my last church—she’d been a French teacher—was appalled at how little I knew about Joan of Arc and I was thrilled at the biography of Joan D’Arc that she made me read.

Would it be too much, also, to think in terms of gender-cide? Isn’t ethnic cleansing really making women martyrs, and would not all the thousands of so-called witches be at least as noble in their wrongful death as any sainted martyr, if not as clearly transcendent?

But there is a turn I’d like to make here. A re-direction. For we have begun to see in our time a spirit of death that makes the martyr’s death the goal—when it is the martyr’s life and the martyr’s face—face filled with glory and spirit—that is the spiritual value of our death, a martyr’s death, in our religion.

The Good News. The gospel of Jesus Christ is not: you can die like me. It is you can die like me and rise like me, and you can live like me. And once risen, you are not a dead man walking.

That is what suicide bombers are, dead men walking. That is who Muhamed Ata at Logan Airport in Boston that 9/11 morning was—as I’ve shared the security agent’s memory of seeing his eyes as the deadest eyes he had ever seen.

The eyes and the face of a terrorist are not the eyes and the face of Stephen. A killer willing to die is a killer not a martyr. A martyr is a person alive, who lives, and is willing and able to die.

Since I’ve seen this issue in terms of women as well as men, diet-starvation for so-called beauty is a symptom of the spirit of death in our time. Anorexia is a disease, but it is also an icon to a way of non-life, of dead women walking.

So we need a turn. A re-direction.

In the hymn, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” there is that last line by Julia Ward Howe about Jesus, Jesus who was born among the lilies far across the sea and as he died to make men holy let us die to make men free. As a Civil War battle cry of freedom, to die to make men free was certainly a pressing challenge for everyman. But over time, often, people chose to change her verb and to sing as “he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free”—and then Christ’s truth goes marching on.

Now a lot of people watch a show on T.V. called American Idol. Carey Creed sings a great song about how movie stars, idols and all, are just faking it, “Just Pretending.” Why on earth would any body want to be like them? Charlton Heston was quoted in his recent obituary as having spent his whole life being what his audience wanted him to be! That’s the most un-Moses-like thing he could have ever said. How could he play Moses with his head screwed on so backwards? I do feel safer now that Charlton Heston has passed on! Charlton Heston was “El Cid,” a dead man in a saddle.

Being like an idol is like being dead. So Stephen is not the Christian version of American idol: “Be like Stephen, get yourself stoned to death.” Idol worship has always had a bad name in our religion—idolatry. And this is especially important for us when it comes to Jesus Christ. Is Jesus our idol? Are we supposed to be like him, and if so, how? In our second reading this morning from the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” and to come to God you have to come through him.

If we hear that as “I am your idol,” “be like me,” we will spend our whole lives either pride-fully assuming that we are like him, or agonizing pitifully how we are not like him. And also never getting to be ourselves.

The way to be like Jesus is to seek the glory of God. That’s what will put grace and peace and glory in your eyes and on your face.

In Psalm 115 we are given the ancient recipe for avoiding idol worship. Jesus would have known this Psalm, and it is a perfect introduction as to how to seek God’s glory and be yourself. The Psalm says, “not to us O Lord, not to us, but to your name—bring glory—bring glory for the sake of your love and your faithfulness.”

If we seek God’s glory we are worshipping a living God, not an idol, a God whose will is being done.

Idols are—the Psalmist says—silver and gold. Idols are the silver and gold work of people’s hands. Idols are not like Jesus—for they cannot speak. Idols are not like Jesus—for they cannot see, have ears but cannot hear, noses but cannot smell, hands but no touch.

The truth, the gospel truth here, is that we are not idols, not to ourselves or to others. We are not spiritually fed by lifeless objects. The astonishing revelation of Jesus Christ is that he is not an idol, nor is God. Rather Jesus has feet and can walk, has a throat and can speak.

The Psalm concludes that those who fashion themselves after idols will become dead like idols, and we can conclude that for us Jesus is no idol, and that to fashion ourselves after Jesus would be to have eyes that see, ears that hear, mouths that speak, noses that smell, hands that touch, feet that walk, throats that sing.

To be like Jesus Christ then simply starts with being alive, and receiving and expressing the world through our senses. The mission to be a disciple of Christ, like Stephen, has as much if not more to do with the vision of transcendence that Stephen had—putting peace and glory on his face—than his willingness to die.

All we who would follow in the way of Jesus need not idol-worship Jesus, need not woodenly imitate Jesus, nor kill ourselves or be killing trying to be like Jesus. What we do need to do to follow the way, the truth and the life is to follow Psalm 115 using each of our senses, song, sight, smell, taste, touch, movement, speech, sound. That is why my own vision of church mission includes “spiritual practices”—such as walking the labyrinth—as much as “partnerships of the spirit” and mission projects.

Especially we men—we can and need to bring our senses, as well as our common sense, into our spiritual life, our religious life. The foundation, the house, the dwelling place, the walk, the journey of Christ, all in the body of Christ, the church, and are made up of our bodies ourselves!

Amen.