Stephen: Waiter, Martyr, Intercessor

Acts 6-7

We observe the Feast of Stephen today, th 27th, this year because his feast day, December 26, falls on the first Sunday after Christmas, which takes precedence. Few are aware of this feast day, unless through the excellent carol Good King Wenceslas who looks out on the Feast of Stephen and sees a poor man. It is significant that it is on this day that Wenceslas takes action to care for the poor as we shall see.

Stephen was one of the early disciples in Jerusalem. Early in the life of the new church a complaint was made that there was favoritism being shown to the Hebrew widows over the Greek ones in the distribution of food. The apostles took this complaint seriously and did something about it, which tells us a number of things about the often romanticizes and idealized neophyte church in Jerusalem. It was made up of regular, flawed people, despite the amazing events of the resurrection and of Pentecost. They were biased towards their own. A conversion experience and baptism in the Holy Spirit did not instantly make the believers perfect. Their salvation, as St. Paul later observes, needs to be worked out with fear and trembling. Additionally they were complainers, which really a subset of the first point - more flawed, regular people.

It also tells us that they took care for the poor (widows would have no way of supporting themselves). They held together the need for the ministry of the word (teaching and preaching) and the ministry of compassion and service to the needy. So as not to neglect the first to accommodate the second the apostles appointed deacons to distribute food. Holy waiters.

It is significant to read the qualifications for waiters in the New Testament church. We might think this task could be given to anyone, it is just waiting on tables. But the Apostles asked that they "pick out men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom." (Acts 6:3, ESV) I'm not saying for sure either way, but I am uncertain whether the staff who attended to us recently at Tiny Thai would have met the requirements.

I understand that the problem the church was trying to solve required people of wisdom and character, so as to avoid the favoritism. Nonetheless, even to this humble task, the church wanted wise, respected, Spirit-filled servants. Stephen is the first of the seven deacons mentioned in the text. He was the first deacon appointed in the service of the poor, a service continued by Wenceslas on Stephen's feast day.

First deacon but also first martyr. Martyr in Greek means witness but came to mean those who were killed for the sake of their witness to the Gospel, due to the fact that bearing witness resulted frequently in death. True in the first century and true still today in many parts of the world.

Stephen waited on tables but also bore witness to Jesus Christ in word and through "great wonders and signs". Acts 6:8 This was not universally popular and many misrepresented Stephen before the Jewish authorities. This reminds me how easily it is to misrepresent those things we are not happy about. The line between a good hyperbolic rant and falsehood is a fine one which I suspect I have occasionally crossed.

Stephen was arrested due to this misrepresentation. In this circumstance many, perhaps most, would be silenced or at least become more circumspect in articulation. Not so Stephen. Read his speech in Acts 7. He lectures the religious leaders of the day on their history and points out the historical reality of persecution of the prophets. If his "they were wrong then and you are wrong now" soliloquy might possibly have gone over their heads (unlikely), he is most direct in is concluding comments, starting with, "You stiff-necked people."

For his witness to this unwelcome truth, he was killed by the crowd. Battered to death, actually, by a volley of stones. And in the midst of this experience he has a vision of Jesus, standing at the right hand of God. In his witness, his martyrdom, he sees what his people have longed for, the Messiah. It is his reporting of this fact that finally enrages the crowd to the murdering frenzy. His last petitions are, first, to be received by Jesus and then, as his Lord had also prayed in similar circumstances, that his persecutors would be forgiven. Waiter, martyr, intercessor.

"And when he had said this, he fell asleep." So ends at least the earthy life of Stephen the first martyr. As I read this again this text this morning I wept for Stephen and for all the martyrs who have shown us, through their death, how to live.

Dissipation

I love words. And as a lover of words, the English language is a feast. We are inveterate borrowers of words from other languages and have been for centuries. Perhaps the word “thieves” is better than borrowers. We seem to continue to use “déjà vu” and do not appear to have any plans to return it to the French. In English there are lots of words to love and many of them aren’t even English.

Words also have meanings and connotations that change over time. The one that struck me today was dissipation. I read it in this context: “But watch yourselves lest your hearts we weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you like a trap.” (Luke 21:43 ESV) Here dissipation is used in the slightly old-fashioned sense and is grouped, at least in my mind, with phrases such as “a life of dissipation” and with little-used, disparaging words like roué, cad and blackguard (this latter pronounced “blaggard”, it being English and the letters not mattering all that much to final pronunciation).

The dissipated life is one of carousing and carelessness. The coupling of dissipation with drunkenness in the text might even be considered a redundancy. Drunkenness and dissipation are perhaps twins not separated at birth. But perhaps we should separate them because one’s life might be dissipated even if one is stone cold sober.

If you think about the word, dissipate, in a different context, as in when a strong odor dissipates, you get the idea of what it means at its core. To dissipate something is to scatter it in many directions. In that sense one might dissipate a fortune on wine, women and song, as the prodigal son did. Perhaps this is why the twins are so often together. But, thinking further, dissipation is when something that is strong and concentrated in one place becomes diffused. It makes me wonder how diffused and scattered I may be.

I am, very often, weighed down with dissipation. My focus is on a hundred things (90 of them might actually be good things) but I am dissipated. What is strong and concentrated is scattered, wastefully, on many things. And in that scattering my clear attention and focus is gone. Ask my children, they will tell you. I miss what is most important; what is coming. That He is coming. And the day will upon me like a trap.

It is unlikely that I will become drunk today but highly likely that I will become dissipated by the raging pace of this daily life.

Unless I heed Jesus warning to watch myself.

Not very Christmasy

John Irving, in his novel, “A Prayer for Owen Meaney”, relates the hysterical story of a Christmas pageant at the local Episcopalian church. I will leave you to read it to discover why it is so funny (and there are many reasons). Owen, whose irrepressible vision for the pageant takes over, at one point complains about the singing of one of the verses of “We three Kings of Orient are.” His objection is that the last couple of lines, “Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying; Sealed in a stone-cold tomb,” don’t sound “very Christmasy.” Owen is right. They don’t.

The Gospel reading for the second Sunday in Advent is about the heralding work of John the Baptist and his message of repentance. I suspect that Owen Meaney would find this text similarly un-Christmasy:

“His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Matthew 3:12

Both John Henry Hopkins, who wrote “We Three Kings” and the creators of the lectionary were right to put the birth of Jesus, the Incarnation, in the larger context of his full redeeming work. In the hymn we are reminded of his crucifixion and death and, in the Gospel text appointed for this day, of his coming again in glory to judge the earth. What has become the heartwarming (and perhaps rather sentimentalized) picture of Mary, Joseph and a cluster of devoted animals gazing lovingly at the inf ant God, is only part of the picture. As an aside, I’m not convinced the actual experience of Mary and Joseph was as idyllic and picturesque as the nativity scenes that adorn our mantelpieces. Childbirth in the best of circumstances is a messy business. It is unlikely that it was improved by the presence of cow dung.

The Will Ferrell character in Talledega Nights addresses his prayers at mealtime to “Baby Jesus.” As our thoughts in this season turn to Christmas it is very easy, like Ricky Bobby, to think only of the cute baby and to forget that his birth has implications of cosmic proportions. And between the charming stable scene and the final glory of heaven is the further messy business of the cross and his judgment.

There is chaff in our lives - useless, wasteful, unlovely and unholy things that fill up space, but provide no value to us or to others. Jesus you who are Babe, Lord and Judge, we ask you to bring your winnowing fork among us. Shake us Lord.

Come Lord Jesus, come and clear the threshing floor. Remove the chaff from our lives and the life of your Church, that all that is not of you may be burned and that all that is good, true and holy may be blessed and affirmed. Gather us, with all your saints, that we may dwell now and forever in your presence.