When your patron is a martyr, you know you’re in for a challenge. When that martyr mimics Jesus’s challenge to the religious leaders, well…
Stephen and a scandalous gospel
The Feast of Stephen | Acts 6:8-7:2a,51c-60
Today we remember Stephen, who the author of Acts describes as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” and “his face was like the face of an angel.”
The tradition honors him as the first deacon and the first martyr. Which, if we’re counting odds, makes me wonder why any of us would step up to serve after that. Seriously, they went 1-for-1 right out of the gate! And worse than that, Scripture doesn’t give the impression that he was in this specific ministry long. I don’t think he made it to his wood anniversary. Maybe it was stone. Maybe garnet.
While the story of Stephen is pretty straightforward—he’s one of seven deacons God called to help serve the expanding reach of the Good News and was tried and stoned to death for blasphemy—the questions of why remain. Why has the church chosen to honor him on December 26th? And why do we follow him as our patron?
Why Stephen Today?
The timing of this day, like the timing of Christmas and its twelve days all come from Celtic tradition. It speaks to the deep spiritual connection we have to the Incarnation. In a way, the crazy idea of going from the baby in the manger to a deacon stoned to death only seems like a train wreck.
I think it actually grounds us.
Because there’s something about coming out on Christmas Eve to once again witness the birth of Jesus that is a little like hearing a story about an escape ship from Krypton landing on the Kent farm. We could miss the truly grounding elements in favor of the origin of Superman.
But those stinky shepherds and a baby born to outcasts? That part of the story is central.
After the Christmas, we celebrate three days in a row which fully ground us: Stephen, John, and Holy Innocents—the last being the story of Herod’s slaughter of infant boys in and around Bethlehem. He was afraid one of them might replace him as king.
And more recently, we’ve added more grounding in Thomas Becket on the 29th and the prison reformer, Frances Joseph Gaudet on the 30th.
It seems that the church has intentionally called us to dig past the surface sense of the Incarnation’s announcement of a savior. It compels us to more examine why we need one.
If we don’t look at our need, we’re likely to presume it is there on purpose. And always will be. As if we aren’t responsible for our world.
Why Stephen Specifically?
There’s an old connection to the Celtic tradition known as the wrenning, when boys were sent out to kill a songbird. This tradition, was about connecting boys into the sacredness of creation—not unlike our more familiar Native American traditions of hunting and honoring the earth. And yet this hunt has come to more resemble the religious leaders who killed Stephen.
Another tradition, going back over 1600 years was to collect alms for the poor on the second day of Christmas. A spiritual precursor to Boxing Day—when Christians would box up food and gifts to serve the community.
And yet, the need to dig deeper, to ground ourselves persists.
For that, Stephen’s story is really good.
The Hellenists
Stephen first appears in what seems like a pretty arrogant moment for the church. At least that’s usually how I read it.
The Apostles feel overwhelmed. It feels like they are doing everything, so they call upon seven followers of Jesus to be deacons to “serve at tables”. The Apostles needed more time for prayer and writing and couldn’t be bothered with menial things like breaking bread with the people.
It almost sounds like Stephen was called to do “the dirty work.”
But that is too much of a modern gloss to be real.
The apostles called the first deacons because they had a specific problem. The Hellenists were feeling neglected. Specifically their widows weren’t getting fed as regularly as the rest. If we take off our skeptic lenses for a minute, we can see it. These aren’t people who are ignored on purpose. These are people who weren’t born Jewish. Hellenists are Greek.
This is the era long before they are called Christians who gather as the church. These are Jewish followers of Jesus who haven’t yet fought over whether or not to include non-Jews, and the Greeks in particular.
They aren’t ignoring the Hellenists so much as they have suddenly realized that there are too many people for the twelve of them to serve effectively and still be prayerful.
This is a story of dramatic church growth and expanding responsibility beyond tradition.
And the first person on the apostle’s list is Stephen: “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit” with a Greek name.
The Martyr
The leaders kill Stephen for blasphemy. Which means they kill him for proclaiming the Good News.
As deacon, God called Stephen, as it says in Acts, “to serve at tables”. But the real implication is that he is helping expand the proto-church’s ability to proclaim the Good News in word and deed. God called him to help serve a community which was widening the circle of its embrace to non-traditional members.
And for that ministry, they killed him.
“Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.”
Stephen wasn’t stuck at the table or to quiet ministry behind the scenes. He was participating in God’s inbreaking into the world! He was incarnating the Christ with neighbors in his neighborhood.
And as the leaders prepare to kill him, Stephen preaches a prophetic sermon tying their actions in their own day to a long line of selfish rejections of the grace of God by our unwillingness to incarnate grace in our community.
In other words, Stephen got political. He tied a present sin to a historic pattern of sin found throughout the tradition’s story.
Which brings us uncomfortably to us.
Why is Stephen our Patron?
I genuinely would love to find a diary from 1840 to find out how this worshipping community became St. Stephen’s. Unfortunately, we don’t get to know why he’s our patron. But it allows us to focus on the more important question for us.
What in Stephen’s story is for us?
Or what can we learn from Stephen?
We see questions of change, authority, and proclaiming the gospel. We see a zeal for the Good News and respect for the tradition. And through it all, we see a profound courage to stand for the faith in light of persecution.
Most striking to me, however, is the profound truth of what God called Stephen to do: to help serve a community widening the circle of its embrace to non-traditional members. He immediately proclaimed the Good News that God is already widening the circle.
The leaders sought to condemn him after the grace of God flowed through him in wonders and signs.
If we were St. Paul’s, we could draw on a treasure trove of letters. Or if we were St. Matthew’s, St. Mark’s, St. John’s, or St. Luke’s, we could draw on the evangelists different visions of Jesus. And if we were Grace or Trinity, we could draw on our connection to a profound theology of God.
But in Stephen, we have more than an image of a deacon or a martyr. We have one prodding us toward the full, scandalous truth of the gospel. That the question isn’t the size of our table or who serves at it. It’s that God keeps expanding the guest list. And we keep inviting.