St. Stephen

It has been said I listen with half an ear. Nowhere is this short-coming more easily picked out than in Sunday School. We’re in Acts right now, what the apostles did after the crucifixion, before there was such a thing as Christianity. It was a time when evangelism—spreading the Word—bubbled up, creating a new religion as opposed to a sect of Judaism.

Anyway, Patricia was talking about how at one point, after Pentecost everyone was preaching and praying but nobody was feeding the widows. So the early followers of Christ decided to create deacons to go out and take care of the poor, and one of the seven chosen to do this was named Stephen.

I should have listened more closely because I’m not sure if Patricia told us if he took care of the widows or not. But he did go out preaching in a way that sounded incredibly critical and unnecessarily nasty.

This is where I missed something from the lectern, the point where I must have lapsed into some kind of supernatural Sunday morning daydream. The next thing I heard was the crowd became infuriated and took him outside of the city gates and stoned him to death, while Saul, later Paul, stood by watching everyone’s stuff, with wholehearted approval.

And so Stephen became Christianity’s first martyr, Patricia told us.

I was at a loss--how could someone become a martyr, I asked, when he was preaching with words like, “You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears!” Isn’t that sort of asking for it?

That’s all I heard. So it’ s a good thing I took Patricia’s advice to actually read Acts when I got home from church--at least up until the point where Stephen (aka St. Stephen) was martyred.

Not only do I listen with half an ear, I find it difficult sometimes to put myself in the mindset of when the various pieces of the Bible were written and I tend to want to judge by modern standards. In context, it makes perfect sense—Jesus had been crucified and there was bitterness and chaos and real fear about what would happen next. The world was in upheaval, political battles for hearts and minds. There may have been a feeling that God could come down at any moment and exact a vengeful (probably bloody) justice on people who didn’t do right.

Anyway, for the record, this is the rest of what St. Stephen said: You stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murders, who have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.

A few verses later: And they stoned Stephen as he was calling on God and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.