April 20, 2008
Acts 7:55-60
Of Rocks and Stones
Mark Twain once said, “The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
If the story of Stephen’s death sounds familiar, just go back and read the story of Jesus’ death. A good man who does many signs and wonders and is adored by the common folk is arrested by the authorities and tried, then stripped and brutally killed by an angry mob. As he dies, he forgives his killers and commends his spirit into God’s hands. It’s not the same story, but it rhymes.
Having spent some time reflecting on two of the three activities that define the church, we now turn to a third. We’ve talked about baptism, we’ve talked about communion. Now we’re going to talk about ministry.
Ministry is work carried out on behalf of an authority. Ministry is the work of carrying out a mission defined by someone in charge. Stephen is perhaps the quintessential example of Christian ministry. He was one of the first deacons, ministers especially set apart to attend to the table, or the in-house work of the people of God.
The church is that peculiar place in which we ask to be confronted and to have our toes stepped on. The church is that peculiar place when we ask to be agitated and stirred up and troubled and bothered. We come in dead, twisted in the bindings of the grave, and we ask to be resurrected, untangled and set free.
But the dead sometimes want to stay dead. And to call them to life is sometimes to call them to vengeance. When Moses led the Israelites into the desert as freed slaves, they were not really very happy about it. They missed the free meals and the housing.
It seems to be the nature of the people of God that we forever are struggling among ourselves about our relationship to the world. It seems most of us want to accommodate ourselves, and to subject our God to the powers we are subject to, to use God to justify and maintain the way things are.
Stephen is not confronting an unbelieving world who has never heard of God. He is confronting people who have not only practiced their religion all their lives but have excelled in it enough to be considered the top leaders and authorities. He is stoned because he tells them they are hypocrites, people who claim to belong to God but who reject God’s commands. This is what we might call and in-house issue.
Whether or not Jesus is the Messiah, or Christ, turns on the question of purpose. What is the purpose of the people who claim to belong to God? Why has God created this nation and made us its citizens?
Is the purpose to go along to get along, as so many seem to think? Is it to reinforce the rules of the society in which it finds itself and help people feel good about the way things are? Or is it to be something different, something powerfully unique and remarkable, something that stands out?
The resurrection of Jesus, according to Stephen and the other preachers of the day, was God’s seal of approval to a particular idea of purpose and mission. We are here to manifest God’s passionately loving presence in a world that rejects him. We are to manifest the image of the cross: God, dying without resistance, forgiving those who kill him. We are here to love those who hate us, just as God loves them.
That purpose has a way of getting mucked up in the messiness of human sin. “God, give me what I want,” instead of “Your will be done.”
Now there’s nothing really wrong with a world that makes a god of the self and preaches a gospel of chasing one’s own desires. To live according to such rules as people who belong to the world is perfectly appropriate. But is it okay for the people who call themselves Christians? Are we to adapt the message of the Scriptures to the rules of the world?
This is not a new question.
In the great Old Testament story, the purpose of the people of God got mucked up with a desire to be great in the eyes of the world. Israel wanted to be a big dog in the world of political power. It wanted the big king and the big palace and the millions of serfs and the glittering armies and the stockpiles of booty and the rich upper classes all the other nations had. So they pushed God aside, and with him anyone who spoke for him.
The purpose of the people of God got mucked up with human schemes of worth and value, this person being more valuable than that one, this person worthier of a more goodies than that one, this person more deserving of power than that one. And if anyone came and said, “No, this is not God’s way,” that person was rejected, and his God with him.
The purpose of the people of God got all mucked up until the people of God become like sheep without a shepherd, stolen one by one by thieves pretending to represent God, who misled them and slaughtered them. And if anyone came representing the true Shepherd, the thieves drove him off, and the Shepherd with him.
But amazingly, God kept coming back.
And strangely, this message to us becomes a message about us. We, the people sent by God as a message of his love to the world, we become that man, pushed away, betrayed and murdered, forgiving still. This is our purpose in the world, to show the world that image, to be that image, of the God the world rejects and murders, who nevertheless forgives, and yes, comes back for more.
It is the religion of the rock that leads to the stoning. When faith becomes about maintaining stability and peace and certainty, it turns to a pillar of salt, a dead rock in a dry land. And woe unto him who would swing a hammer on that rock! The flying stones might kill him!
The deaf sometimes come to love the silence, and sometimes the blind cannot let go of their canes, and sometimes the lame have grown comfortable in their wheelchairs. To shout in their ears, to wrest their canes from their grips, to sweep them up on their feet, this is the ultimate in betrayal. They rush at the one who has disturbed them, crying out in anger, and fall on him in a murderous rage.
And as Stephen dies, the exaltation of the crucified one becomes clear to him. The son of Man, Jesus, is seated at the right hand of the Father, precisely because he showed us, the people of God, who God is and how we are supposed to manifest his image.
As Stephen dies in the same way Jesus died, Jesus comes again in glory.
It rhymes.
And if we see this, if we remember, if we repent, well then—
There are still some whose eyes are opened, whose ears are uncovered, who get up and walk.
All through history, real people of God have arisen among the great faulted institution of the church, and have been willing to stick to the mission, to be the image of our God, who comes into our troubled world and is killed again and again, but always, always rises again.
Thank God, nothing can defeat the true and undefiled church, for authentic people of God are still sprinkled here and there, like salt and light, shining like stars in the dark night sky.
God suffers when we push him aside. God even dies when we fail to serve him. He does not resist us, and even forgives us as we kill him.
But now it is Sunday, and the tomb is opened. And he is no longer there. He is risen, and we see him, seated at the right hand of the Father.
Amen.
Acts 7:55-60
Of Rocks and Stones
Mark Twain once said, “The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
If the story of Stephen’s death sounds familiar, just go back and read the story of Jesus’ death. A good man who does many signs and wonders and is adored by the common folk is arrested by the authorities and tried, then stripped and brutally killed by an angry mob. As he dies, he forgives his killers and commends his spirit into God’s hands. It’s not the same story, but it rhymes.
Having spent some time reflecting on two of the three activities that define the church, we now turn to a third. We’ve talked about baptism, we’ve talked about communion. Now we’re going to talk about ministry.
Ministry is work carried out on behalf of an authority. Ministry is the work of carrying out a mission defined by someone in charge. Stephen is perhaps the quintessential example of Christian ministry. He was one of the first deacons, ministers especially set apart to attend to the table, or the in-house work of the people of God.
The church is that peculiar place in which we ask to be confronted and to have our toes stepped on. The church is that peculiar place when we ask to be agitated and stirred up and troubled and bothered. We come in dead, twisted in the bindings of the grave, and we ask to be resurrected, untangled and set free.
But the dead sometimes want to stay dead. And to call them to life is sometimes to call them to vengeance. When Moses led the Israelites into the desert as freed slaves, they were not really very happy about it. They missed the free meals and the housing.
It seems to be the nature of the people of God that we forever are struggling among ourselves about our relationship to the world. It seems most of us want to accommodate ourselves, and to subject our God to the powers we are subject to, to use God to justify and maintain the way things are.
Stephen is not confronting an unbelieving world who has never heard of God. He is confronting people who have not only practiced their religion all their lives but have excelled in it enough to be considered the top leaders and authorities. He is stoned because he tells them they are hypocrites, people who claim to belong to God but who reject God’s commands. This is what we might call and in-house issue.
Whether or not Jesus is the Messiah, or Christ, turns on the question of purpose. What is the purpose of the people who claim to belong to God? Why has God created this nation and made us its citizens?
Is the purpose to go along to get along, as so many seem to think? Is it to reinforce the rules of the society in which it finds itself and help people feel good about the way things are? Or is it to be something different, something powerfully unique and remarkable, something that stands out?
The resurrection of Jesus, according to Stephen and the other preachers of the day, was God’s seal of approval to a particular idea of purpose and mission. We are here to manifest God’s passionately loving presence in a world that rejects him. We are to manifest the image of the cross: God, dying without resistance, forgiving those who kill him. We are here to love those who hate us, just as God loves them.
That purpose has a way of getting mucked up in the messiness of human sin. “God, give me what I want,” instead of “Your will be done.”
Now there’s nothing really wrong with a world that makes a god of the self and preaches a gospel of chasing one’s own desires. To live according to such rules as people who belong to the world is perfectly appropriate. But is it okay for the people who call themselves Christians? Are we to adapt the message of the Scriptures to the rules of the world?
This is not a new question.
In the great Old Testament story, the purpose of the people of God got mucked up with a desire to be great in the eyes of the world. Israel wanted to be a big dog in the world of political power. It wanted the big king and the big palace and the millions of serfs and the glittering armies and the stockpiles of booty and the rich upper classes all the other nations had. So they pushed God aside, and with him anyone who spoke for him.
The purpose of the people of God got mucked up with human schemes of worth and value, this person being more valuable than that one, this person worthier of a more goodies than that one, this person more deserving of power than that one. And if anyone came and said, “No, this is not God’s way,” that person was rejected, and his God with him.
The purpose of the people of God got all mucked up until the people of God become like sheep without a shepherd, stolen one by one by thieves pretending to represent God, who misled them and slaughtered them. And if anyone came representing the true Shepherd, the thieves drove him off, and the Shepherd with him.
But amazingly, God kept coming back.
And strangely, this message to us becomes a message about us. We, the people sent by God as a message of his love to the world, we become that man, pushed away, betrayed and murdered, forgiving still. This is our purpose in the world, to show the world that image, to be that image, of the God the world rejects and murders, who nevertheless forgives, and yes, comes back for more.
It is the religion of the rock that leads to the stoning. When faith becomes about maintaining stability and peace and certainty, it turns to a pillar of salt, a dead rock in a dry land. And woe unto him who would swing a hammer on that rock! The flying stones might kill him!
The deaf sometimes come to love the silence, and sometimes the blind cannot let go of their canes, and sometimes the lame have grown comfortable in their wheelchairs. To shout in their ears, to wrest their canes from their grips, to sweep them up on their feet, this is the ultimate in betrayal. They rush at the one who has disturbed them, crying out in anger, and fall on him in a murderous rage.
And as Stephen dies, the exaltation of the crucified one becomes clear to him. The son of Man, Jesus, is seated at the right hand of the Father, precisely because he showed us, the people of God, who God is and how we are supposed to manifest his image.
As Stephen dies in the same way Jesus died, Jesus comes again in glory.
It rhymes.
And if we see this, if we remember, if we repent, well then—
There are still some whose eyes are opened, whose ears are uncovered, who get up and walk.
All through history, real people of God have arisen among the great faulted institution of the church, and have been willing to stick to the mission, to be the image of our God, who comes into our troubled world and is killed again and again, but always, always rises again.
Thank God, nothing can defeat the true and undefiled church, for authentic people of God are still sprinkled here and there, like salt and light, shining like stars in the dark night sky.
God suffers when we push him aside. God even dies when we fail to serve him. He does not resist us, and even forgives us as we kill him.
But now it is Sunday, and the tomb is opened. And he is no longer there. He is risen, and we see him, seated at the right hand of the Father.
Amen.
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