Stephen's Martyrdom and Paul's Forgiveness, a reflection on Acts 7

The other day I was reading the story of Stephen’s Martyrdom in Acts 7, and I started to put together some dots I’d never connected before. In 7:60, immediately before he dies as the first martyr for the Faith, Stephen cries out in a loud voice—“Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And then he “falls asleep.”

In his commentary on Acts, Luke Timothy Johnson points out how carefully Saint Luke has crafted this narrative so that it mirrors the crucifixion of Jesus. Stephen glimpses “heaven standing open” (7:56) in a way similar to how Jesus saw heaven opened at his baptism (Luke 3:21). The angry mob drags Stephen outside the city to stone him (7:58) in a way similar to how the angry mob drove Jesus outside town to kill him (Luke 4:29). Stephen commits his spirit into the Lord’s hands (7:59) in a way similar to how Jesus commits his spirit into the Father’s hands on the cross (Luke 23:46). And, as mentioned, Stephen prays that the Lord would not hold the sin of his murderers against them (7:60), in a way similar to how Jesus prayed for the forgiveness of those who crucified him (Luke 23:34).

It seems like Luke wants us to read Stephen’s execution as participating, in some way, in the story of Jesus himself, and, especially, in the death of our Lord on the cross. Stephen’s martyrdom, that is to say, is a cruciform death, one informed by and patterned after the death of Jesus himself.

That, on it’s own is a sobering thought, but it becomes all the more so when you read the very next verse that follows. Because immediately after we read Stephen’s prayer asking God to forgive his executioners—a prayer patterned after the prayer of Christ on the cross—we read in 8:1 that Saul (aka Paul) was standing there, “giving approval to Stephen’s death.” Whether Paul personally threw a stone or not is moot, here; the narrative clearly implicates him in the travesty of justice that happened that day. Very likely it was this moment that Paul himself had in mind in places like 1 Timothy 1:15, where he describes himself as “the chief of sinners” (see also 1 Cor 15:9).

Here is where the connect-a-dot of Bible verses forms a fascinating picture, though. Because those who have read the Book of Acts to the end will know that Saul goes on to become one of the most influential and indefatigable missionaries for the cause of Christ the church has ever known. The Saul whom Stephen prayed for on the day of his death would eventually become Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, who counted everything as dung in comparison to knowing Christ and roamed the world seeking places to preach Him where the name was not yet known.

In other words, God literally answered Stephen’s prayer that day, and showed his executioners His divine mercy and grace. Certainly in Paul’s life, at least, he did, because by God’s grace, Paul became an apostle of Christ Jesus himself, forgiven and empowered to preach the name he once persecuted. Speculating about “what ifs” is kind of futile when it comes to the Sovereignty of God, but even so, I can’t help but wonder: how might Paul’s story have turned out differently, if Stephen had not followed his Lord’s example and prayed for the forgiveness of those who persecuted him.

It reminds me of Jesus’s promise to his disciples in John 20:23, that anyone they forgive will be forgiven, and those they don’t forgive will not. More than reminding us of them, Stephen’s story vividly illustrates them. Stephen forgave Paul (if not directly, certainly as part and parcel to his prayer for all those who murdered him that day). God forgave Paul (Acts never directly connects Paul's forgiveness to Stephen’s prayer, but the fact that Act 8:1 follows directly on the heels of 7:60 make it fair game, I think, to align the two). And Paul, forgiven, goes on to champion the Gospel of Reconciliation that he once tried to snuff out.

What if Stephen had not learned the lesson of the cross so well? 

And what might God do in the lives of those we forgive, if we will learn the message of the cross as well as Stephen did?

The Thursday Review: The Full Divine Panoply

first posted May 10, 2010

I can still remember when I first learned about that famous passage in Ephesians 6, the one where Paul talks about putting on the "whole armour of God." It was Bible Camp, grade 6. I vividly recall how the speaker walked us through each item in our spiritual panoply: the Belt of Truth, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Shield of Faith, and so on.

I`d been working my way through Tolkien that summer, so I guess my 12-year-old imagination was pretty fertile ground for images of spiritual warriors armed with mystical armour with arcane names like "The Helmet of Salvation" and "The Belt of the Truth." When I got home, I drew an elaborate picture of some elfin warrior who bore a striking resemblance to Aragorn (as I pictured him in my imagination; this is, remember, well before Peter Jackson), bearing a flaming"Sword of the Spirit" and warding off demonic darts with his "Shield of Faith."

A talk on "The Whole Armour of God," I'd discover later, is standard fare for Bible Camp speakers. I`ve heard the most elaborate talks explaining obscure details about the typical armour of the Roman Infantry, and relating them to intricate details about the means and methods of spiritual warfare for individual Christians. I was even at one Bible Camp where the speaker was a Christian children`s entertainer named (I`m not making this up) Fester the Clown. Fester the Clown made an entire set of the Whole Armour of God out of balloons, Sandals of Evangelism and all. One lucky camper got to take it home with him in a giant plastic bag as a reminder of his call to arm himself for spiritual warfare.

Now, I hate to burst Fester`s balloon, but the thing that he never told me, nor did any of the other speakers I`ve ever heard expound on this passage, is that throughout Ephesians 6:10-20 Paul uses the 2nd person plural. He is not talking to or about individuals here, arming themselves for solo combat against their personal demons and temptations. He's talking to and about the group, the community of faith, the Church. Put differently: "you" are not called to put on the whole armour of God as much as "we" are called to do so together. This is a subtle point, perhaps, but a few examples will show that it's not so subtle as to be moot.

Take, for instance, the Bride of Christ imagery. While Jesus is most certainly the lover of individual souls, when the Bible says that "you" are the Bride of Christ, it means "you" plural, that is the church together, is the Bride of Christ. And we miss a vital theological point if we miss this distinction. A more obvious one, perhaps is the Body of Christ imagery, where we are each, clearly, only members of the whole Body and can't function without the others; a less obvious one is the Temple of the Holy Spirit, where the primary reference is to the community of Faith together being built up together into the Temple of God (Though it's common to hear talk about how you (sg) are the Temple of the Spirit, out of 7 references to the Temple of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, only 1 refers to individuals and all the rest are about the community together).

What difference would it make if Paul's envisioning the Community of Faith in Ephesians 6, arming itself together for spiritual combat, and not individual spiritual gladiators? Maybe a good place to start thinking through the implications would be 6:18, where he talks about the "secret weapon of prayer" (as I heard one preacher call it picturesquely). If Paul's primarily imagining corporate prayer here as a "weapon" in our battle against the powers of this dark world, then it will mean, I think, remodelling the "prayer closet" a bit. In most of the discipleship material I've ever seen, the emphasis has been almost exclusively on individual prayer.

And if Paul is calling the church corporate to take up the "Sword of the Spirit," which is the Word of God, then sharpening my personal knowledge of the Bible in my personal "quiet time with God" will certainly not do it. Instead, the call will be answered as the community of Faith itself becomes a place where together we seek out, listen for, weigh together and respond in one spirit to the utterance of God (the word there is rhema, not logos) as it is breathed by the Spirit through the Scriptures into the gathered community. Puts a little different spin on the "sword drill," that other staple of Bible Camp spirituality.

We could do the same with the rest: what if lacing up the Sandals of Evangelism was less about me personally leading individuals to the Lord (though it may include that), and more about the community of faith becoming, and being, a place where the Gospel or Peace is proclaimed, and lived out, and given room to touch and transform lives? Of course, Fester the Clown would have to do a whole lot more balloon twisting if this reading is right, but as a spiritual exercise go through Ephesians 6:10-20 and read it asking yourself: would it make any difference if this was about "us" and not "me"?

Philippians 4:10-20

Here is the final installment in our verse-by-verser in Philippians.

Philippians 4:10-20 The (Other) Secret

The Book of Philippians (9)

Here's our next sermon on the Book of Philippians.

Philippians 4:1-9 "Practicing for Joy"

The Book of Philippians (4)

Here's our fourth sermon in our voyage through the book of Philippians:

Philippians 2:-1-11 "The Mark of the Cross"

The Book of Philippians (1)

Two Sundays ago at the FreeWay we began a verse-by-verse series on the Book of Philippians (We also moved into our new location at Kedron Public School, which I mention here to explain why, what with a lot of extra stuff on the go, I'm a bit behind in my blog-posts).  Anyways, here's the first installment in our series.  The second will be along shortly.

Philippians 1:1-11 "A Partnership Made in Heaven"

Paul in Philippi

Acts 16:25-34  Jailhouse Rock

On the Road with Paul

I am preparing for a series on the Book of Philippians in the fall, and thought that to set the stage for it, I'd spend a bit of time in the Book of Acts, looking at Paul's story, his ministry and mission (hence the last two sermons posted here at terra incognita).  This Sunday's sermon was a look at the famous Damascus Road Experience.

Acts 9:1-19.  Called

Did you hear the one about Lucky Eutychus?

Inasmuch as we're between sermon series at the FreeWay just now, I thought it would be the perfect Sunday to preach a text from my running list of most-obscure-Bible-passages-I've-always-wanted-to-preach-for-the-sheer-zaniness-of-the-text.  It was between the resuscitation of Eutychus (Acts 20:7-12) and the strange case of the Gethsemane streaker (Mark 14:51-52). Eutychus won out in the end, but what to do with Mark 14:51-52 is still simmering on the back burner.

Here's the sermon (with apologies in advance for the sound quality; our audio levels on the recording equipment were a bit off... I wasn't really bellowing the whole way through).

Acts 20:7-12  The Fortunate Fall

The Leveling of St Paul

In 1835, the French political thinker Alex de Tocqueville published Democracy in America, his famous study of the United States. One of the intriguing observations he made about American democracy was that the same cultural values that promoted equality also ensured a kind of "middling mediocrity"-- a gravitational pull culturally towards the lowest common denominator that made it impossible for great people to be great. At its worst, he argued, democracy can devolve into a "tyranny of the majority," where society actively limits the talents of any who challenge it with greatness, trading true freedom for a kind of leveled out mediocrity because it cannot abide anything that threatens its equality.

Okay: I don't know that Alex de Tocqueville was right. And even if he was, I'm pretty sure that, this side of the Second Coming, I'd choose democratic equality over any of the alternatives that we've seen in human history.

But I was thinking about de Tocqueville the other day because I was working on a sermon, and I went to say something about "Saint Paul." Then I checked myself and changed it to plain old "Paul"-- reflected again-- made it the "Apostle Paul"-- then finally settled again on "Saint Paul."

But not without a bit of uncertainty.

You see, when I was growing up in church, you never said "Saint Paul." Or St. Luke, or St. Mark, or St. Mary. There was nothing tyrannical in this, you just never did it. And somehow, you knew you never did it. I have a few theories about why this was, but my main one is this: One of the central tenets of our theology is its conviction that we are all equal before God-- all equally have sinned and fallen short of his glory. And since calling some people "Saint" and others not might confuse this equality, we didn't do it. Paul was a sinner in as much need of God's grace as any of us, so let's not risk forgetting that by calling him Saint Paul.

But when I stared at that uncertain "Saint Paul" on my sermon page, I started wondering if we didn't risk a kind of "middling mediocrity" in our spiritual vision when we refused to call a saint a Saint. Because really, equal sinners though they were, God called and commissioned Paul in a way he didn't call or commission any of us-- and he spoke through Luke or Mark or John in a way he hasn't spoken through any of us-- and He chose Mary to be something that no other human being in the history of the planet has ever been: the mother of God Incarnate. In being so used by him for his great purposes, each of these really did discover themselves "set apart" in the very way that word "saint" signifies.

And if we acknowledge this, we have a real opportunity to rejoice in the free, unfettered grace of God, grace that can raise up the common, the lowly, the chief of sinners according to his will, and lavish an unmerited glory on them by using them uniquely in his great plan to show the world how good he is.

Thomas Howard puts it like this:

The more glorious the king, the more glorious are the titles and honours he bestows. The plumes, cockades, coronets, diadems, mantles and rosettes that deck his retinue testify to one thing alone, his own majesty and munificence. He is a very great king to have figures of such immense dignity in his train, or even better, to have raised them to such dignity. These great lords and ladies, mantled and crowned with ... honour and rank are, precisely, his vassals. This glittering array is his court!

Now I'm not suggesting here that we return to the Catholic system of canonization. Just this: if we can find the spiritual generosity to celebrate the many-layered splendor of this court of Saints, without keeping an eye on how high or low or equal our own place in it might be, then we will find ourselves truly free to worship the glorious King whose splendor it reflects.

On Jesus and Paul-ianity

I was talking with a friend a while ago who told me that he was trying to come to a more mature understanding of the Christian faith. He held that that Christianity as we know it today has more to do with Paul than Christ, and he wanted to get back to the historical Jesus. I've heard this claim before. Just the other day I heard a man on CBC Radio opine that instead of Christianity, the faith should be called "Paul-ianity."

I didn't have time to get into it with my friend, but this is what I would have said if I did.

The question we have to ask of the "more Paul than Jesus" argument is just this: how do we know anything at all about the historical Jesus? The answer, of course (especially if you've already ruled out the living presence of the risen Jesus in the community of faith) is that we're dependent on the historical record-- the things the earliest Christians wrote down about what they believed Jesus said, and did, and was.

But once we admit we're dependent on the historical record, we have to grapple with three pretty significant issues. First, even if we read the gospels as strictly history, they're still an historical interpretation of Jesus, as much an interpretation as Paul's. Second, though the gospels are certainly historical, they are not "strictly" history in the modern sense. Their genre is actually much more fluid than that. Finally (and this is big), as historical documents, Paul's letters are actually among the earliest writings we have in the historical record (compare AD 48-51 for the earliest letter to say AD 60 for the earliest gospel).

The question then becomes: why privilege the gospels over Paul's letters as historical documents about Jesus?

Think about it like this: When I was in High School, I was an exchange student in Quebec. During those months away, I wrote a shoe-box-full of love letters home to my girlfriend. She's now my wife, and has the shoe-box somewhere in our basement. Suppose that now, about 15 years later, an observer of our long-distance relationship—my brother maybe—writes a biographical novel about my time in Quebec. We’d have essentially two historical records: a box of letters written during the events in question, and an historical novel written later, based on what an observer remembers.

The question then becomes: which of the two would offer a more useful picture about our relationship during the Quebec-separation years? The analogy is admittedly very limited and simplified, but this is somewhat the same situation we have when we look at the historical record of Jesus.

Paul had no doubt that his message was consistent with the apostolic tradition about Jesus; he also insisted that he had received it from the living Lord Himself, not from any man. Maybe better than privileging the red letters over the black in our modern editions of the good book, we should ask: what are we missing in our readings of both Paul and the gospels that would help us hear the harmony in the apparent discord of their interpretations of Jesus?