Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter, "Resurrection Responses: Stephen"

Sermon 5/22/11

Acts 7:55-60

Resurrection Responses: Stephen

Today we’re shifting our usual gears a little bit. Instead of looking at the gospel lesson today, we’re taking time to examine a story from the book of Acts – the Acts of the Apostles, the book, written by Luke, that records the development of the early church, the struggles and triumphs of the disciples who tried to carry out Jesus’ message after he returned to God. It is another one of our Resurrection Responses – how the disciples and first followers, first church members, responded to the resurrection of Jesus, the promise of new life.

Today, we examine a particular life found in Acts, that of Stephen, a man who takes up a small two chapter space in our scriptures. Stephen is known as the first martyr of the Christian faith, the first person who gave up his life because of his belief in the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the scriptures. Today we read in Acts the account of Stephen’s death, as he was stoned by an angry mob. But his story starts a little earlier in the Book of Acts in Chapter 6. Unlike the disciples like Peter and company, Stephen’s task was not primarily as a preacher of the gospel at all – he wasn’t one of the missionaries. Stephen was part of a group of servants who had a special task in the early church. People outside of the faith criticized that the fervor of the disciples for preaching the gospel had caused them to neglect other duties like feeding the widowed and the needy. Their criticism was a reason for them to reject the teachings of Jesus – the disciples didn’t really take care of those in need! Why believe their message of good news? But the twelve responded, “‘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.’” So seven were chosen, one of whom was this man we read about today, Stephen. These seven looked on the needs of the least in their community, making sure that those who were without could receive food and be taken care of. In other words, Stephen wasn’t a preacher or a pastor, a missionary or a leader. He was a servant, a helper, a lay person in ministry. If Stephen were a 21^st century believer, he might be any one of you – someone who stepped up to help meet the needs of the community.

So how did Stephen go from being such a servant to being the first to give his life for his faith in Jesus? It turns out that Stephen was a rowdy synagogue member. He wasn’t content to just go with the flow or keep quiet in his own community of faith. So Stephen and some of his fellow synagogue members were constantly debating and arguing about his involvement in this new faith. Eventually, his peers had enough, and began to plot against him. We read of their scheming in Acts: “But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which [Stephen] spoke. Then they secretly instigated some men to say, ‘We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.’ They stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes; then they suddenly confronted him, seized him, and brought him before the council. They set up false witnesses who said, ‘This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.’ And all who sat in the council looked intently at [Stephen], and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.”

The authorities ask Stephen to respond to these accusations. And he does, in a big way. Stephen says that through the ages people have rejected the prophets that God sent to reach them, and just so they rejected Jesus, God-come-to-earth to reach them. He doesn’t try to soften his words, and he doesn’t try to make friends. He doesn’t temper what he says, or recant any of his beliefs, even though he is clearly in trouble. Stephen just says what is on his heart. In the verse before where our passage today begins, we find the response of the synagogue leaders to Stephen’s testimony: “When they heard these things,” we read, “they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen.” Instead of being scared by the group, Stephen is fortified by the vision of Jesus he has that starts our reading today. He tries to share his vision, but his words fall on unhearing ears. The men drag Stephen into the street, they throw their coats at the feet of a man named Saul, and they stone Stephen to death, literally pelting rocks at him until he dies. Stephen’s last words echo Jesus’ on the cross, as he pleads for forgiveness for those who are putting him to death.

            Stephen, the first Christian we know of to give his life for his faith, was not one of the twelve, was not known for his preaching or leadership. He was just someone who was trying to serve others, and he was unwilling to say or do otherwise, even with the cost being his own life. The Greek word that gives us this word ‘martyr’ actually means ‘witness’ – like a witness in a trial. A witness is someone who says what they know, what they’ve seen and heard and experienced. We think of witnessing today in the church as going door to door talking about Jesus. But in the scriptures, witnessing was more like the legal kind of witnessing – just telling the truth. Stephen was a witness, a martyr, telling the truth about what he believed and why he was doing what he was.

When I was in college, I took a few psychology courses as part of my pre-theology major. I loved psychology. I loved particularly adolescent psychology, and driving my brother Todd crazy by telling him that his behaviors were typical adolescent behaviors. He didn’t like that very much. But I also remember clearly being intrigued by the concept of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the uncomfortable, unsettled feeling your mind gets when there’s a gap or distortion or difference between what you believe should be true or feel should be true, and what you know is actually true. For a timely example:  a cult group predicts the end of the world. The end of the world does not arrive on schedule. But then the cult group seems more devoted than ever to its cause or purpose. This is because of cognitive dissonance – our minds are trying to compensate for the difference between what we think or want to be true and what is true, because our minds don’t like that gap. It doesn’t sit well with us. We try to get rid of any cognitive dissonance.

I’ve been thinking about how as people of faith we often experience cognitive dissonance – a gap between what we think we believe is true, and what is true. What we believe is true is what we think, the beliefs we say we hold, the views we have on issues and doctrines, our understanding of God. But what is true for our faith is our daily experience. What we actually do – that’s the concrete truth we experience. The dissonance comes because there is such a gap between what we say we believe, and what we actually do, between what we think is true, and what we experience as true.

There are healthier ways though of dealing with our cognitive dissonance than making our minds believe something we know to be false. For me, for example: I see a disparity between what I say I believe and what is really true according to what I do. I’m experiencing that cognitive dissonance. I say that addressing poverty is a huge justice issue that the gospels call us to give serious attention to – but if I don’t actually spend time serving the poor and building relationships, there’s a disconnect between my beliefs, and my actions. A dissonance. More than unsettling, that’s troubling to my spirituality, preventing my growth as a disciple. So I can deal with that in one of two ways: I can try and convince my mind that Jesus doesn’t really call us to serve the poor, or that giving a little here and a little there is really the kind of care for the least of these Jesus has in mind. Or, I can get my act together, and start building relationships, investing time and energy, and really serving those that Jesus spent so much of his time with. I would sum up our Christian spiritual journeys as a struggle to bring what we believe and what we actually do into harmony. Saying what we believe is the easy part. Doing it is the hard part.

Stephen was a man who had the courage to bring how he lived his life, what he did, in line with what he believed. He wouldn’t waver on either. Because of what he believed, he served God as best he could, with the gifts and talents he had. And because of what he believed, and how he lived, he wasn’t willing to separate his words and actions to make others more comfortable with him. It cost him his life. But I think if he had done otherwise, it would have cost him more – cost him his faith, his integrity, his discipleship. He placed a higher value on those things. Do we do the same? How much dissonance can we live with? What do you believe? What do you do? How much space is there between what you believe and what you do?

I think our journey as disciples is about taking steps to close the gap, to eliminate the spaces that we’ve created between what we believe and what we do. It isn’t an easy task. Like Stephen showed, it takes great courage, and sometimes great sacrifice. This kind of discipleship takes a lifetime to unfold, and can happen in steps that add up to great gifts, seen and unseen by us, always seen by God. Whatever it takes, despite failures and setbacks, despite challenges and obstacles, I think the struggle of discipleship is worth it. Psychologists might call it eliminating our cognitive dissonance. The scriptures, I think, describe it as the peace that passes our understanding. John Wesley might speak of it as things being well with your soul. Whatever you call it, I think we are called to strive after it, with courage, with hope, with God. Amen.

Sermon for Fifth Sunday of Easter, "At the Table"

Sermon 5/2/10, Acts 11:1-18

At the Table

During Lent, I asked participants in our midweek communion study to help me brainstorm about food imagery in the bible. There’s lots of it – if you go from beginning to end, the books of the Bible mention food perhaps a surprising number of times. But then again, maybe it shouldn’t surprise us. Eating and drinking are necessary to our survival. If we don’t eat, we don’t live. It’s that simple. And so not only is food and drink mentioned frequently in the Bible because we eat and drink every day, it also shows up in our faith stories because what better way for us to understand how God wants to be in our lives than to connect it to food? We need God like we need food – we need God to live – to have real, abundant life. God is necessary for abundant life. Communion is served with simple foods – bread and juice – basics – because communing with God and with each other in the Body of Christ is a basic. Foundational.

My first congregation had the connection between food and faith down pat. I had heard that one time, years ago, there was some church event here where the congregation actually ran out of food. This was such a disturbing event in the history of St. Paul’s that they have never ever come close to running out of food at an event again. I would tease members of our Evangelism Committee about this – when we had a breakfast for new members, I would try to encourage them to keep it simple – doughnuts and juice. But inevitably, doughnuts and juice would turn into milk and muffins and bagels and cream cheese and fruits and Danishes and so on. We ate well at St. Paul’s.

And, truthfully, food isn’t just food in the life of congregations, is it? Think of the meals we share together – be it working on Spaghetti Dinners together, or having cake to celebrate a baptism or confirmation, food that we put together for baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas, or cookies and recipes passed around at our Cookie Walk, or Philathea prayer group dinners, or meals together at Panera, or even the meal we share when we join in Holy Communion together – these meals are holy and spiritual events. At least I see them that way – seriously. Sharing food with one another symbolizes a close relationship with those with whom you eat. Sharing food means sharing a bit of yourselves. It binds us together, makes us feel like family. Think of all the ways you interact with people each day. You might see hundreds of people in a day who are so different from you. But who do you share meals with? Who is at the table with you? Usually, we don’t share our meals, our table, as freely as we share our time, our energy, and so on. Sharing food is really something special.

Most of you know that not only am I a vegetarian, but I’m also just a picky eater, and have been since I was a child. This makes for tough situations sometimes when I am being served food by someone. I never felt this more acutely than when I visited Ghana, West Africa during seminary. While we traveled just with our group, I could manage just fine and make due and refuse foods I didn’t want without consequence. But we spent an entire week of our stay living with host families. In most cultures around the world (including our own, to an extent), it is considered pretty rude for a guest to refuse food that is served, with, of course, exceptions for allergies and special diets and the like. I had communicated with my host family before my arrival that I was a vegetarian, which they graciously accommodated. But beyond that, I knew I would have to be ready to eat whatever was served to me. The food was served in huge quantities which I tried hard, but usually failed, to finish. Even the breakfast meal was huge, and I usually don’t eat breakfast, and even more rarely a hot breakfast. But, in Ghana, part of my daily huge breakfast consisted of some kind of cooked white beans. I don’t especially think of beans as a breakfast food. But I tried very hard to eat my beans. It took a lot of effort. One day I worked extra hard and managed to eat all of the beans that I was served. And the next day, I was served twice as many beans as usual! As I said, food is important in so many ways – we communicate using food, build relationships through sharing meals, and show how we feel about others using food.

It should come as no surprise, then, that food and how food was shared was a critical issue for the early church, for the disciples trying to figure out how to live and work together. And in fact, for the early church, food became a point of great conflict. Jesus and his disciples constantly were often at odds with the religious leaders of the day over appropriate rules about who to eat with, but the apostles were actually at odds with each other over rules about sharing meals. Let’s go back and take a look at this text for today, which gives us insight into this ongoing conflict.

The whole passage is sort of a flashback. Peter, apparently, has eaten with some Gentiles – the food the Gentiles would be eating would be forbidden to Peter by Jewish law, laws that had very detailed dietary laws, laws that centered on purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness. So some of the circumcised believers, the ones who are following Jewish purity codes, want to know why Peter has eaten with these people. And so Peter must explain himself, “step by step,” we read, and that is where he flashes back to describe what has caused this strange behavior in him. He’s had a vision, he says. A large sheet, maybe like a giant tablecloth, was lowered from heaven by its corners. On the cloth were various kinds of animals, representing animals that Peter would not be allowed to eat according to Jewish laws, kosher laws. Surprising to him, he hears God’s voice telling him to get up and eat these forbidden foods. Peter refuses, insisting he would not eat anything unclean. But God responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This sequence Peter saw repeated in his vision a total of three times.

Right after this happens, three men appear who are Gentiles, and Peter feels the Spirit telling him “not to make a distinction” between himself and these men. So he goes with them and fellowships with them. In his heart, Peter finally understands his vision. He tells the questioning apostles, “I remembered the word of God . . . ‘John baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” And the apostles get it too, finally, after hearing Peter’s story: They praise God and say, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life!”

What, you might be asking, is it that they all seem to understand now from Peter’s strange vision? Well, as we encounter in this text and other texts in Acts and the epistles of Paul, Peter and the rest of the ‘original’ disciples and Paul and Barnabbas and the apostles working with them approached their ministry very differently. Paul, certainly a devout Jew, spent most of his ministry reaching out to those who were not Jewish – reaching out to the Gentiles. Paul had a complete conversion on the road to Damascus, and he was ready and willing to let go of all the old things in his life – so he felt free to tell others becoming Christians that they didn’t need to adopt all the commandments of Jewish life – they were new creations in Christ. But Peter and company didn’t see things Paul’s way: Peter and the rest of the Twelve focused their outreach and evangelism primarily on those who were already Jews, viewing God’s message in Jesus as directed only or at least mostly for the chosen people of Israel. He thought that those who were not Jews who wanted to follow Christ should at least convert first to the Jewish faith, and then become Christians. The two sides spent a lot of time disagreeing over this topic, and ultimately agreed that each would focus on their own special area of ministry. But here, here is Peter’s own conversion experience. Peter has already converted his life to be a follower of Jesus Christ – here he has a conversion of a different nature, when his mind is opened and he sees the radical inclusive and all-reaching nature of God’s love and grace in Jesus Christ. In his vision, he’s told essentially that only God decides what is clean and unclean, and that what God has made clean, we humans have no right to reject.

To me, the verse that sticks out in this passage is where Peter tells the other apostles, “The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us.” For Peter’s day and time, this was a huge statement. The Jewish faith was all about being a distinct people – and the Jews weren’t alone. Cultural differences created huge barriers between people. The Romans who occupied the lands hated the Jews because of their distinctiveness. People from neighboring villages didn’t get along with each other because they felt the distinctions between them were too great. Distinctions, differences, were the causes of wars and controversies and divisions. But Peter was beginning to realize that because of the new life he experienced in Christ, because of this love of neighbor that Jesus talked about – this new commandment of love for one another – because of this, distinctions were irrelevant.

Do you think we’ve changed a lot? If we look around us, we’ll see many different kinds of Christians – United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, Quakers, Seventh Day Adventists. But actually, today I think most people aren’t particularly worried about these distinctions between denominations. But even if these distinctions don’t matter to us anymore, focusing on our distinctions still seems to be a problem – perhaps in more serious ways. We make distinctions all the time – Democrat or Republican? Pro-life or pro-choice? Native or immigrant? Black or white? Rich or poor? Educated or uneducated? Conservative or liberal?

As people of faith, as children of God – a trait we share with everyone – we’re called, like Peter, to remember – the Spirit has told us not to make distinctions between them and us. When Jesus calls us to love one another, he calls us to love Lutherans and Catholics, rich and poor, native and immigrant, liberal and conservative with the same unconditional love of God. We can appreciate the differences between us, but we should never let the distinctions divide and separate us. Because the one distinction that Jesus does encourage us to have, the one thing that is most meant to set disciples apart is that they will be known by their generous and far-reaching love.

“And I remembered the word of the Lord . . . if then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believe in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” Amen.