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.