Christ Church Cathedral

Fredericton, NB

The martyrdom of Stephen - Acts 7:55-60

A sermon by The Rev'd Patricia Drummond, Honourary Assistant

All questions were directed through an interpreter. "Today, Mr Khrushchev," he said, " you talked about the hideous rule of your predecessor, Stalin. Yet you were one of his closest aides and colleagues during those years. What were you doing all that time? "

Khrushchev's face turned red. "Who asked that?" he roared. Five hundred reporters peered down into their notepads. "Who asked that?" he shouted again. No one spoke or moved. "That's what I was doing," Khrushchev concluded.

To do what is right when everyone around you chooses wrong demands courage. To stand up and speak up for what you believe when an angry crowd disagrees with you demands courage. But it is the kind of courage that our Lord requires from those who are his witnesses. Next week's epistle reading from the first letter of Peter says, "'Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened. But always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." Always be prepared, not just prepared when it is convenient and is not going to get us into trouble. For in Second Timothy it says, "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power"

Stephen had the courage to speak up for what he believed in the face of an angry crowd. He is introduced in the Book of Acts as the first of seven men whom the Jerusalem church appointed, and empowered through the apostolic laying on of hands, to make to make a fair distribution of food to the widows of the community, so that the apostles might be able to concentrate more on prayer and preaching. Stephen is described as a "man full of faith and the Holy Spirit" and as "full of grace and power." He was young and with youthful zeal had preached Jesus' vision of a new type of society, a society which would give the poor and oppressed something to live for, but which would mean radical social change. He had given the impression that this would mean changes to traditional Judaism and had aroused opposition, as Jesus had. Some men were persuaded to falsely accuse him of blasphemy, and he was brought before the Sanhedrin, the supreme court, composed of the chief priests and elders. He was required to defend himself against charges of speaking against the Temple and the Law and did so with great eloquence, recounting the story of God's dealings with the people of Israel form the call of Abraham. Then, with a youthful passion not yet been moderated by experience and maturity, he had launched into a strong fearless attack against his listeners, accusing them of opposing the Holy Spirit just as their ancestors had killed his heralds, the prophets, and of not keeping the very law they were accusing him of disobeying. If this angered his audience, they were enraged when he claimed to be able to see a vision of the glory of God, and Jesus standing at his right hand. They dragged him outside the city to lynch him by stoning, where he died a death reminiscent in many ways of Jesus' death, praying for his spirit to be received, not by God in this case, but by Jesus, and for forgiveness for his murderers.

Stephen spoke with total commitment to his Lord, and to what he believed to be right. He did not temper his message to save his skin or suit his audience. His courage in speaking up before the Sanhedrin cost him his life, but it was a crucial event in the history of the early Church for it caused the gospel to spread. God was able to use this tragedy for good, as he has been able to use so many tragedies. If we read on just a verse beyond this morning's reading, the Bible says, "On that day a great persecution broke out against the Church at Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria." And three verses further on, "Those who had been scattered, preached the word wherever they went." The gospel spread in ever widening circles like the ripples when a stone is thrown into a pond.

For many years, Christians in our Western society were free from persecution and discrimination. Even when most Western nations moved from being Christian societies to being considered post-Christian, there was little antagonism. Now, however, we are beginning to see an anti-Christian society - one in which the Christian faith is dismissed, not only as irrelevant or outdated, but in which Christian motives and behaviour are subject to attack.

Alongside the decline in knowledge of the basics of the Christian faith, and a willingness to attack and ridicule what is not understood, there has arisen an increase in the number of different cultures living together in many different areas of our country, and a growing presence of non-Christian religions. In many areas Canadian Christians are in as much of a missionary situation as that faced by the early Church of Stephen's day, and what is often needed is the same sort of courage in expressing a Christian viewpoint, not aggressively or antagonistically, but in love, because we believe that modern society is desperately seeking meaning, and that in Christ that sense of meaning and purpose may be re-discovered.

In the last few weeks our news has been filled with a number of horrific or scary stories , and I'm not talking about the news from Israel or Afghanistan, but that which comes from much closer to home. There have been several stories of family dis-function which ended in multiple murders or murder/suicides. There was the news of the acquittal of John Robin Sharpe whose stories of the kidnapping and torture of young boys were deemed to have artistic merit. There has been news of bullying in our schools which has caused victims to end their lives.

The question is what is happening to our society? Obviously, there are many possible answers. One is that the North American culture is both on "fast forward" and sensation driven. All of us, adults, teens and even young children are forced, if we are at all tuned in to any of the media, to grapple with explicit sex, blood-soaked movies and the free-for-all of the internet, where advocacy of violence, hatred and pornography flourishes virtually unchecked. For many children there is virtually no responsible adult guidance when it comes to confronting the underside of mass culture because many adults shy away from it or are simply unaware of the extent of it and its impact upon young minds. For families, distance from close supportive relatives, and a decrease in religious and community ties, mean there is little support when help is needed.

Another reason behind so many tragic occurrences may be due to people's wish to "pick their own truth" and the denial of the existence of any over-riding values or rules in society. Herbert O'Driscoll has said, "We are in a culture of a thousand beliefs and no belief." The last verse of the book of Judges, written after a long period of moral decline which included the worship of other gods, says this, "In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit." That, I believe, is what we are seeing today.

But maybe these tragedies, like the death of Stephen, can be used by God for ultimate good. Maybe he can use them to awaken our world to the devastation caused by crumbling family and moral values, lack of hope and the frenzied pace of modern society, to the need to find a better way. To the need to find a way in which what is valued, and what we encourage our children to seek, is that which, to quote St Paul, is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. A way in which we make sure that they know that the Prince of Peace walks beside them through all that life throws at them, assuring them that there is hope for life everlasting in a place far more wonderful than anything they have ever known, for he has gone ahead to prepare a place for us all.

But, if recent tragedies are to produce good fruit, God needs our help as his body here on earth today, just as he needed the witness of those persecuted after Stephen's death to spread the gospel. He needs us to stand up against things we know to be wrong in our society even if it is the unpopular thing to do, to speak out when our values are trampled, and above all, to show his love to those who so badly need to know it. It is easy to think that there is nothing we can do to counteract so many and such great problems, but there is a lot we can do in our own small circle, in our own neighbourhood. Perhaps you remember the bank commercial that speaks of growing one customer at a time. If we all work at spreading the gospel of love, there is no knowing how far the ripples of our actions might spread.