Stephen, Righteous Abel, and the blessing of creativity

a Homily for St. Stephen’s Day (observed)  |  Text: Matthew  23:34-39

And yet GOD never said he didn’t appreciate Cain’s gift! GOD just loves being surprised. GOD loves to see us stretch ourselves and try new things and use all of our gifts and currencies to express our love to GOD.

What Bad Thing Should We Focus On?

When our forebears chose Stephen as our patron saint, they were certainly making a statement, weren’t they? They had their pick of saints: there weren’t nearly as many churches around. They could have picked Paul, who wrote one of our favorite pieces in Christian history, personifying love as patient and kind. Or perhaps they could have picked one of the John’s: the apostle or the evangelist or even John of Patmos: men of vision and humility. Or Luke, known as a physician who healed people. But our predecessors chose Stephen, best known for being a martyr.

I don’t mean to be critical. I think Stephen is a fine choice. And whether we know it or not, our patron influences who we are without our knowing. I like Stephen.

I just don’t relish preaching in 2014 about any of this. Do I speak to faithfulness in adversity? Or do I invite us to ask ourselves the incredibly difficult question: would we be willing to die for our faith? Or do I focus on the gospel from Matthew, with Jesus’s final condemnation of the leadership? As a preacher, these are certainly not our favorite choices.

The Gospel

As you get to know me, you’ll find that I can rarely resist the gospel. Particularly when it does not seem like good news. In it, Jesus makes a reference to the righteousness of Abel, which is an under-utilized story in our Scripture. We find it right at the beginning.

We remember that in the beginning, there was nothing and the earth was a formless void. GOD set about making something out of nothing: to truly create something. So GOD creates the universe, the world, and time itself. GOD creates plants and animals, including people.

Then we hear again about creation, an older story of GOD creating a garden and the first humans. How they together eat the fruit, gain knowledge, and break faith with GOD. GOD’s response is curious. GOD gives the man the fields to till and gives the woman the responsibility of birthing children.

The story then moves to the moment when the first woman gives birth to the first offspring and she declares in great surprise I have created life like GOD!

Eventually the first and second offspring, Cain and Abel grow older. Cain takes after his father and tills the fields. Abel seems to take after his mother. He creates new work for himself, hunting. When the two brothers bring their first fruits to GOD for sacrifice, GOD praises Abel’s gift, for it has surprised GOD. He was not only resourceful and diligent, but he was creative and offered GOD, not something he knew GOD would like, but something he hoped would be adored.

Cain, in his jealousy, and anger with GOD, takes out his frustration on his brother. And generation upon generation, we have done the same.

The City That Kills Its Prophets

When we hear Jesus condemn Jerusalem, we should recognize the pairing of love and anger that Jesus is expressing. But this isn’t the brotherly love and jealous anger of Cain, but the intimate love of GOD and the outrage of disappointment. It is Jerusalem that continues to make Cain’s mistake over and over again through the previous thousand years of history. The place in which the prophet, proclaiming a new thing, declaring the new thing that GOD is doing in the world, is not only condemned, but killed by the people out of confusion, jealousy, and fear.

Jesus’s words continue to resonate in the millennia since. A fear and jealousy that we recognize when the mirror is turned on us, when we face our own mortality. Or when something new threatens to replace the old, our hackles raise and we respond, not out of the joy in knowing that GOD is pleased by new things, but in grabbing the nearest stones and using them on our brother, Abel.

From Condemning to Blessing

It is easy to condemn Cain for his action. And we keep him condemned for eternity as the first murderer: an act most of us are unwilling to forgive. But for Cain, like Jerusalem, like us, we are never permanently condemned by GOD for a singular action: we condemn ourselves when we fail to recognize our part in the deal. The prophets, from Isaiah to John the Baptizer preach repentance and that mercy follows.

So often we confuse our earnestness and diligence and our orthodoxy and our tradition and our doing precisely as we believe GOD has invited us to do for the reciprocal love of GOD. We still act as if we can earn GOD’s love and that it is our job to punish those that don’t do it right.

And yet GOD never said he didn’t appreciate Cain’s gift! GOD just loves being surprised. GOD loves to see us stretch ourselves and try new things and use all of our gifts and currencies to express our love to GOD.

And Jesus even lays it out more directly:

“For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, `Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Jesus prophetically preaches that Jerusalem’s situation is of its own making, but it can be reversed when they realize that the commandment he just described: to love GOD and love your neighbor as yourself: isn’t theoretical. Indeed, it is reversed when Jerusalem learns to love its prophets.

So…Blessed are the prophets, the creatives, the entrepreneurs, the lovers, the artists, the writers, the musicians, the potters, the carvers, the graphic designers, the scrapbookers, the gamers, the quilters, the knitters, the crocheters, the colorers, those who use their imaginations to play and act and dream and speak and build and say wouldn’t this be cool?

Blessed are these people because these come in the name of the Lord.

GOD doesn’t only want people who color inside the lines, but people who see beyond the lines, who see potential and new things and new ways of giving of themselves to GOD. We need more color. We need the bigger crayon box. Not just the 64; we need the 152. Because we all have gifts and currencies to offer, that are unexpected or pushed down because we don’t think GOD really wants them. To GOD, all of these gifts and currencies are valuable, usable, and most importantly necessary to this mission.

It is up to us to honor our gifts and to honor our neighbors in their giftedness. To love GOD and our neighbors as ourselves: creative, diverse, messed up people craving love. May we see blessing in our difference and our gifts and our creativity and our love. And may we share our love without fear and jealousy, but with a generous and creative love for our Great Creator.