Sermon: Letting Go of Our Stones

Letting Go of Our Stones

Acts 6:16-8:1

(preached at First Baptist Church, Edmonton, Alberta, on April 22, 2015)

 

Today, we enter into the story of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian faith. The first – but not the last. Long before the likes of ISIS and long after, we will continue to hear the stories of brave men and women who were killed – often brutally – because of their faith in Jesus of Nazareth. From our earliest years of Sunday School, we are taught to stand up for our faith and to boldly declare the name of Jesus, regardless of the consequences – whether they be ridicule, ostracism, or even death. We in the First World have sometimes cheapened the idea of martyrdom, misapplying the word “persecution” to ourselves who have so many rights but perhaps not all of them. But most of all, we have a rich history of outstanding saints who stood firm to the end – whether that end came by stone or lion or fire or machete.

As we enter into the story of Stephen, it’s interesting to note that he didn’t get killed by the government. This time at least, the Romans weren’t the ones doing the persecuting. Stephen got killed by the religious officials in the name of the very God he was proclaiming. One commentator writes this:

The people who kill Stephen are neither the local hooligans nor the Roman soldiers who nailed Jesus to a cross. They are…upstanding members of religious communities: regular members of synagogues, elders, religious professionals, priests. They are guardians of vital traditions. (source: Matt Skinner)

Two groups of people – brothers, Stephen will call them – who each claim to worship the same God, but one ends up dead at the hands of the others. Christians, Jews and Muslims – three cousins, all with a faith grounded in the God who appeared to Abraham – have repeated this story over and over again, killing each other in the name of the God we each profess to worship.

Lord, have mercy. How did this happen? And why does it keep happening?

Let’s keep these questions in mind as we get back to Stephen’s story.

We’ll go back a ways, to the beginning of Chapter 6, where Stephen is introduced with the most superlative of language: Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit; Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, a man who spoke with such Spirit-wisdom that the local Jewish leaders couldn’t stand up to him. Initially chosen by his peers to look after the distribution of food to widows, Stephen’s passion seems to burst forth wherever he goes: this godly man assigned to “wait on tables” is quickly gaining attention for performing great wonders and signs among the people – unmistakeable signs that God is at work in and through him, and the newly-birthed Church.

Unfortunately, these signs and wonders and his preaching-with-authority don’t reassure the guardians of religion. Instead, they feel threatened by what’s happening – threatened that they’re losing power, perhaps, or credibility; or threatened by these new happenings which challenge their sense of orthodoxy. Whatever it is, the tides of the religious establishment are turned against Stephen, the man filled with wisdom and the Spirit of God.

You see, Stephen was starting to sound a lot like Jesus, talking about the temple and the law, as if they didn’t even matter! This set the Synagogue leaders on edge. They’d been down that road before and they knew what to do.

Their arguments seemed old and tired next to Stephen’s passionate “innovations”. So, when the theological conversation hit a standstill, they took matters into their own hands and began to slander him: He’s blaspheming against Moses and God!

With some quick thinking and scheming on their part, they managed to get Stephen dragged in to face the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish High Council. The witnesses were paid, the crowd was prepped for a showdown, and the accusations were laid: “This troublemaker is talking nonstop, speaking against the holy temple and the law! He even said Jesus is gonna destroy the temple and change the customs Moses gave us! “

…Can we pause for a moment, to think about just how repetitive this is, of the Jesus story we walked through during Holy Week?

The temple and the law were being threatened. Let’s take a minute to consider why this was such a big deal to the Jews.

• The temple, the dwelling place of God, originally built by wise old Solomon, who was in conversation with Yahweh himself about it – would be destroyed??
• The law and the customs, the unique rules and traditions that made Jews Jews – would be changed??

The temple and the law were two of the Jews’ most important and sacred identifiers of the Jewish faith. This community of people who prided themselves on staying pure and completely distinct from the other cultures around them couldn’t even fathom the thought of such defilement – at the hands of another Jew, no less!

As these charges were laid against Stephen, the members of the Sanhedrin looked intently at him – expecting perhaps to see the telltale twitch of a madman. But what they saw instead was that he had the face of an angel. Again – the superlative language describes Stephen in such a way that gives us pause….Let’s try and imagine for a moment what the face of angel looks like, and what it could mean…Is it innocence they see, or holiness? Or is it the glow of God’s own glory, reflected in Stephen’s face as it was with Moses, whose face also glowed, as he brought the Law down from Mt. Sinai? Or, maybe his angelic demeanor simply spoke to the peace he felt in the midst of very serious circumstances.

“Well, Stephen,” the Council-members ask, “are these charges true?” And Stephen launches into full-sermon mode with a lengthy summary of Israel’s story – which is really a bunch of chapters of the God Story that we have been echoing these many weeks at First

Some have said he rambles, he’s arrogant, he pushed too far, he got what he deserved. But our narrator, Luke, tells us this: Stephen was filled with the Holy Spirit. His speech was a passionate and a pointed one, circling around themes of God and God’s people and the temple and the law, ever narrowing until he reached a final piercing accusation of his own at the end.

His overarching point is this: Jesus is the fulfillment of the Temple and the Law – everything the people of God longed for in their worship and their sacrifices is answered, completely, in Jesus himself.

But the way Stephen makes his point highlights a critique of his listeners.

We didn’t get to read the full text of the sermon this morning, but it went something like this, brimming with all of Stephen’s passion:

That Temple you love so much that you think is the be-all and end-all of your faith? It wasn’t even built when the God of glory introduced himself to Abraham and made us into a people. There was no priest, there were no sacrifices – we didn’t even have this sacred land yet! What about Jacob? He was in Egypt, of all God-forsaken places – and yet, he wasn’t forsaken. God was there!  Or take Moses, born in Egypt – God appeared to him in the wilderness, in a burning bush – and that too was holy ground! There wasn’t a temple in the wilderness, but there was the tabernacle – and it moved…with God leading the way!

As for your so-called zeal for the law (Stephen continued) – where was the zeal in the wilderness all those forty years? There were no sacrifices or offerings to Yahweh – only to a golden calf and other idols they made for themselves.

All these godly men, who were willing to move with God – but they were rejected by the people! Even Yahweh himself, the God of our salvation – they rejected for an idol!

And yet – Yahweh was faithful; he didn’t give up on us for good.

And finally, in the time of David there was talk of a temple, an actual wood-and-stone building and Solomon finally built it. It was good, and it was beautiful, and it pleased God – but even so, God said, “The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands…What kind of house will you build for me?”

You see, Stephen was trying to drive home this point that the temple and the laws were never meant to be the end of the story – they’re just starting places for getting to know God – who can’t be contained, controlled or summed up by these things…But that was just what his accusers were trying to do.

And here is where Stephen drives his point of accusation home, so painfully:

God’s Holy Spirit is doing amazing stuff all the time (he says), and you – stubborn, stiff-necked, and beloved of God – so often have fought against the very things He’s doing! You have persecuted and even killed those who came to do God’s work – most of all,  Jesus! You care about the temple and customs more than you care about God, you resist the Holy Spirit, you have murdered Jesus, and you don’t even obey the law that you never stop talking about, but instead have twisted it into something unrecognizable.

Whoa! Did I mention some thought Stephen came off a little too strong in his sermon? His listeners certainly thought so, for their extreme reaction marked the proper response to what they considered the worst kind of blasphemy – gnashing of teeth, covering of ears, and anger – raging, white-hot anger.

Here is a terrible picture of righteous zeal gone wrong.  These folks were passionate about their religion, but they had become blind to the work of God through the Holy Spirit – who kept doing all sorts of crazy and unexpected things. Consider the God Story that is unfolding in the books of Acts:

• At Pentecost, which happened not long before Stephen came on the scene, the Holy Spirit was given to all people, not just the spiritual elite, and forever, not just temporarily. And the Spirit said, make room in your hearts for God to dwell – Be filled!
• In a the next chapter of Acts, we read about Philip, who meets a quintessential outsider – an Ethiopian Eunuch – and feels that same Spirit saying, make room for what God is doing – Baptize!
• And after that, Peter will have his vision of animals which were considered unclean by the Jewish food laws – another major identifier for the Jewish community – and yet God will say, Take and Eat! Make room for what God is doing – toss the rule that’s keeping others out!

It’s pretty mind-boggling when you think about it. The Holy Spirit was casting far and wide, being so reckless with God’s acceptance and welcome. But the religious folk of the Synagogue and the Sanhedrin couldn’t catch the vision. They couldn’t see Jesus in heaven with Yahweh, as Stephen did, and that made them even angrier. They could only see the threat – of change, of powerlessness, and of chaos (even if it was a holy chaos). And so, in a great mob outside the city, they picked up stones and, done now with accusations, they hurled rocks instead.

For his part, Stephen looks a lot like Jesus. In the midst of this violent interchange, he prays, he entrusts his life – and death – to God, and with his last breath, he forgives, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And then he “falls asleep” – an image no doubt meant to highlight his inner peace amidst the horror of being stoned to death. And so Stephen became the first martyr of the Christian church, at the hands of his own people.

Let’s pause now to ask the questions again: How did this happen? and Why does it keep happening?

But first, I have a confession to make: I have heard the story of Stephen many times before, and although I look up to him, quite honestly, I find it hard to relate to him. Those glowing descriptions of his wisdom and grace, and his heroic experiences of praying and having visions and forgiving in the midst of being stoned just feels beyond me.

But as I reflect and live into the words of this story, I’m quite disturbed to find that I can relate to the Council members a bit more than I’d like to admit. I too have felt the need to “protect” God from others whose views are too different from mine. I have felt the fear of changing my mind about God. I have felt my controlling fingers close tightly around the things that make me feel in control of my faith in God – my sense of certainty, my orthodoxy, my good works.

Will Willimon writes this:

The Pharisees and Sadducees on the council are only doing their duty in protecting the faith of the ancestors from destructive innovation. But in their effort to conserve what is true, they, like Jesus’ critics before them, have missed the truth.” (58)

If we are to answer these questions, we must look not only to Stephen as our positive example, but to Stephen’s accusers as a negative example, our warning against being the agents of such blindness and violence in our own lives, all in the name of God. As one writer put it, “We may not stone people today in our churches, but we have been known to destroy the lives of people who don't agree with us.”

What are the “stones” we hold so tightly, poised to throw upon any who disagree with us? We can all channel the spirit of the Sanhedrin when we hold our “stones” of certainty, orthodoxy, and power more tightly than we hold on to God himself. When that happens, we can think we’re fighting “for God” when in fact we’re fighting against the very thing that God is doing in our midst.

Have we, in our efforts to hold fast to the truth, actually missed it? Have we made a stand for a cause while standing on a person or a group of persons? To put it another way: In the name of God, have we withheld cakes, and with it our love and kindness?

What if, in our zeal for God himself, we are missing what God is doing? How can we be more like Stephen and those first Spirit-led believers, recognizing God at work and ready to move with the Spirit?

John Stott writes about the fear of change that is often at the root of our resistance to the new and unexpected or “innovative” work of the Holy Spirit:

Change is painful to all [he writes], especially when it affects our cherished buildings and customs...Yet true Christian radicalism is open to change. It knows that God has bound himself to his church…and to his word…But God’s church means people not buildings, and God’s word means Scripture not traditions. So long as these essentials are preserved, the buildings and the traditions can if necessary go. We must not allow them to imprison the living God or to impede his mission in the world. (143)

Our God is a God on the move, and with him we’ve got to travel light. We properly find our identity as children of God, redeemed by Jesus – that is what we cling to. Dare I say that everything else can be held just a little more loosely? Because we know that God is bigger than any box we can make for him – whether it’s our church building or denomination, or our particular interpretations of Scripture, or our preconceived notions about how – or in whom –  God will or won’t work. Thank God he is bigger than our boxes!

Like our less noble spiritual ancestors, we too tend to gather stones in our attempt to hold on to power and certainty and order. We may not necessarily throw them, but we do have a habit of building them into walls. We try to keep certain people out, to keep our identity “pure,” but God keeps breaking them down – calling his people to Make Room for an Ethiopian eunuch, for pork-eating and uncircumcised Gentiles. God keeps challenging us when we are tempted to find our identities in the things we do or the people with whom we fellowship. Our identity is found in Jesus, the Living Stone. And as we take hold of his hand to walk with him, we’ll find ourselves able to let go of our own stones, and ready to follow the adventures that the Spirit has for us – calling us to live bigger, better, and broader – welcoming the outcasts and the outsiders into our midst.

And so as we close today, let’s consider the boxes and the walls perhaps we build in God’s name.

• Is there some structure God and the Holy Spirit would like to dismantle, some piece of our certainty he’s inviting us to hold a little more loosely?
• Is there some person or type of person who you just can’t believe God will accept?
• Is there one section of Scripture you tend to emphasize at the expense of another?
• Is there a situation when you find yourself trying to “protect” God?
• Or, maybe there’s some place of comfort, some place that feels particularly secure, which God is calling us out of and into holy chaos, so that we can go adventuring with him. Are we willing to lay down our stones, and move with the Spirit of God?

Let’s pray:

Jesus, you are the living Stone, rejected by humans but precious to God. Empower us to lay down our stones of security and arrogance and violence, so that we may take hold of you instead. Open our eyes and our hands to see and share in the holy work you are doing in our midst.

Amen.

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Benediction

Peace be with you as you go from here, holding Christ a little tighter, and your stones perhaps a little looser, and following the Spirit who is doing amazing and unexpected things in our midst. Amen.