Lessons from Stephen
April 20, 2008
Acts 7:55—60
Jesus had been crucified on Good Friday and rose from the dead the next Sunday. He then appeared to many of his friends and disciples for the next several weeks. Forty days following the resurrection, he ascended to heaven.
Ten days after that came Pentecost, or what we like to call “The Birthday of the Church.” That was the day when all the disciples were gathered together and were visited by the Holy Spirit, who came and rested on each one individually, bestowing on them power for the tasks ahead. After that experience, according to the book of Acts, the disciples spilled out into the street, preaching and teaching about Jesus. On that first day, three thousand souls were baptized and added to the list of followers and believers.
Now, if we believe the Scriptures (and I think we can), the church exploded in growth from that point forward. The second chapter of Acts says that people were being added to their number every day.
The disciples had quite a job cut out for them. They were the ones who had been left in charge of the fledgling movement. They were the ones who were witnesses and missionaries to the world. It was through their efforts, that both Jews and Gentiles were being introduced to the good news of Jesus Christ.
Think about that for a minute, will you. Twelve men were given the responsibility and the challenge of building the church. Their job description was really rather short. It was found in the 28th chapter of the gospel of Matthew and in the first chapter of Acts. They knew what their job was and they were very successful at it.
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given you me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching to obey everything that I have commanded you (Matthew 28:18-20).
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
In just a short time, thousands upon thousands of people were being added to their rolls each day, adding to their responsibility. They were being overwhelmed by the demands of such a large organization. They had their primary responsibility of preaching the gospel and baptizing new converts. In addition, they had to worry about the well-being of the people.
To be a widow in that culture was to live in desperation. Without a husband or a son to care for women, they had an incredibly tough time of surviving. So the fledgling church took them under their care by taking on the task of distributing food to them each day. So the disciples found themselves running back and forth from the pulpit to the food pantry. They were being run ragged, finding that they needed to be in more than one place at any given moment. They just couldn’t handle the strain and the increasing responsibility.
Adding to their problems were the clashes of culture among the new believers. Jewish believers were being brought into contact with the Hellenists, who were Greek speaking residents of the area. Each culture was suspicious of the other. There was distrust among them. Long-standing prejudices were still visible in their interaction with each other.
Something had to be done. Some solution to the problem had to be found. Some adjustments needed to be made so that the disciples’ efforts were being utilized to their greatest efficiency.
The Scripture doesn’t say this, but I am sure that the disciples anguished in prayer over this. I am sure that they sought God’s wisdom frequently. I am sure that they prayed fervently for an answer to their dilemma. They finally found a solution which, I am sure, was discerned through the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Acts chapter 6 opens with these words.
Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables. Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, while we, for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word (Acts 6:1-4).
There is nothing elitist about this; it was simply an intelligent delegation of labor. So they chose a young man named Stephen, along with six other men. They were all devout and full of the Holy Spirit and they set about their duties with joy. It is Stephen however, who stands out in the crowd. It is Stephen who is remembered. It is Stephen about whom stories are told. It is Stephen who is remembered as the one who did great wonders and signs.
As is often the case, when God’s Spirit works powerfully is someone’s life, that working becomes a threat to others. In Stephen’s case, whether he was misunderstood or feared we are not quite sure, but it didn’t take long to raise the ire of his fellow Christians. In much the same way as Jesus was persecuted and hounded for no reason, so Stephen becomes a target.
Stephen was called in before the high priest to answer the charges against him. He stood before them and made a clear, concise, and accurate defense of the faith he was preaching. He went all the way back to Abraham and followed his faith history through time. Joseph who was sold into Egyptian slavery by his brothers was in the story, as was the whole Egyptian captivity of the Hebrew people. The Exodus from Egypt and the forty years of desert wandering filled out the narrative.
He told them that their ancestors had forever been persecuting the prophets. He then accused them of following along in their footsteps. He told them that they had gladly received the law, but had failed to live up to it. They were, he said, guilty in the sight of God.
Stephen had reminded them about King Solomon who had built the Temple so that the presence of God might be felt in their midst. The problem, he said, was that they began treating God as their own personal property. They began to view God as a stationary God; as one who was tied to a particular location; as one who was tribal in outlook, as one who cared more for the Jews than he did for others. Stephen told them that God could not be confined by a building or by national boundaries or by the particulars of race. God was a much larger God than the people were giving him credit for.
Not only were they attempting to confine God to their own imaginations, they were also unwilling to follow those leaders who were sent by God into their midst. They had become comfortable and arrogant in their religious life. They had come to believe that they had the correct and only interpretation of God’s work. They came to believe that they were right. Conversely then, if they were right, everyone else must be wrong. Anyone who challenged their long-held notions of proper theology or ecclesiology was deemed to be a threat.
If you study this story closely, you can see that there are two kinds of people in it. There are those who are willing to die for their convictions, and there are those who are ready to kill for theirs. In the name of God, these people were willing to kill. They were enraged when they heard Stephen’s depiction of their history. But Stephen, still filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, looked upward and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. The blood of his martyrdom was on the hands of those bullheaded people. They would listen no more to him, and rushed him outside of the city where they stoned him to death.
Stephen pointed out one of the greatest temptations of faithfully religious people. That is the tendency to believe that anyone who holds values other than ours must surely be mistaken. Surely God is on our side, therefore it follows that God is not on their side. We can become blinded by our own certainty.
In my opinion, it is impossible for us to assert that God is creator of the heavens and the earth and at the same time to treat him as being only concerned with us and our needs. We, like those who killed Stephen, like to believe that only we have the corner on truth, and if people don’t believe like we believe, then they are by definition wrong. Our worship, like that of the Jews in the Scripture lesson for today, can become idolatrous. The particular way we do things can become the golden calf before which we bow.
Stephen offered a new vision of a God who is bigger than all of our imaginations put together. I hope that we can dare to imagine such a God in our midst. I hope we can look for God who is always doing something new and exciting in our midst. I hope that we will refuse to allow our own pitiful, small, and finite imaginations to diminish the greatness of God. I hope we can have God-sized dreams that are not stunted by our lack of faith. I hope Stephen is a lesson for all of us of what God can be and will do in our midst.