It was the entry posted by Hunter - "People of Faith" - that did it. I knew that, as per the Anglican lectionary, we would be reading about the stoning of Stephen from Acts and the living stones built into the spiritual house faith, described in First Peter.
My sermon talks about the kind of "virtual martyrdom" - not outright homicide, but the killing of reputations, of souls practiced by the religious right. This making of martyrs, practiced by pseudochristians against Christians is nothing less than an assault on the gospel. Here is my sermon.
"Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" With those words, St. Stephen is dragged out and stoned to death, earning for himself the distinction of being the first martyr for the gospel. The Feast of Stephen, which used to be observed on December 26th, now falls on August 3rd when the snow is not quite so "deep and crisp and even." Although everything we know about him is contained within seventy-five verses of Acts, he shines through the pages and over the centuries as a remarkable personality. And, as is so often the fate of remarkable personalities, he is destroyed by the powerful whose advantages are maintained by the status quo.
Stephen's path to martyrdom begins, as it always does, with an idea - a new and radical and powerful idea. He perceives that with the vindication of Jesus as Messiah, the religion of the Temple had outlived its usefulness and that Mosaic law needed to be seen in a new and different light. In this way, Stephen stands at the forefront of the "second wave" of the spread of the Gospel as it moved out from a small circle of Aramaic-speaking Jews in Jerusalem, to Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora, located mainly in what is now Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey.
Stephen is brought before the religious authorities accused of blasphemy, of trashing the teachings of Moses. Asked to respond to the charges, he replies with a lengthy defence of Moses, recounting the remarkable story of Israel's salvation history. There is no doubt that everything he says would have been greeted with nods of acceptance. But suddenly, the tone changes. Stephen lights into his judges, descendents (as he sees it) of those who contended with Moses in the wilderness. "You stiff-necked people," he cries, "uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit just as your ancestors did." Then Stephen angers them further by accusing them of violating the law of God by denying that Jesus is the promised Messiah. His judges "grind their teeth," and then Stephen seals his fate with a vision. This is where we pick up the story. Stephen sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and his testimony to this messianic epiphany is enough to have him dragged out and killed.
The rest, as they say, is history. There is no holding down a powerful idea - if its origin is in God, the idea will grow and even co-opt the most unlikely figures to achieve its fulfillment. In this instance, the banner would be taken up by no more unlikely a figure than the man who stood by and held the cloaks of Stephen's executioners - Saul, or as he came to be known, Paul. Paul, that most orthodox of Pharisees, would go on to be the apostle to the Gentiles - to folks like us, in other words - and the position of Stephen as first among Christian martyrs and the patron saint of deacons would be enshrined.
What makes a martyr? To say that a martyr is one who dies in testimony to his or her faith is obvious, but what I want to know is why someone is martyred in the first place. Simply put, martyrs are made when someone or some group feels so threatened that the one testifying must be violently eliminated. Martyrdom exists in the realm of the strongest emotion because questions of faith pierce us to the core of our being. Faith has the power to transform lives and overturn societies. It has the power to unseat the ungodly and ennoble the righteous. Faith exposes deception and untruth, and shouts from the rooftops truths that have been obscured and hidden. Faith causes institutions and beliefs to crumble, and shakes the foundations of history. And it is martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero - and, yes, St. Stephen - who create faith. Martyrs create faith - faith does not create martyrs.
Whether they threaten piety, authority, social customs, or all three, martyrs are victims in a spiritual warfare which is ongoing. But somewhere along the line, the number of Christians dying for the faith at the hands of those who oppose the Gospel began to dwindle, and Christians dying at the hands of Christians began its rise. Jan Hus, the Czech priest condemned by the Council of Constance in 1415 and burned at the stake for advocating reform in the Church, is considered the first martyr of the Reformation. Many more would follow. Literally tens of thousands of people died in the religious wars of Europe which accompanied the Reformation.
But the desire to destroy threatening testimony does not always lead to the killing of the one speaking it. John Wyclyf, who translated the Bible into English in the fourteenth century, died a natural death - but the threat his legacy posed was so great that the pope who condemned Hus - Martin V - ordered his bones exhumed, burned, and thrown into the River Swift. Of course, Pope Martin would happily have burnt the living Wyclyf at the stake, but as the centuries passed and sectarian killing campaigns subsided, a kind of virtual martyrdom came to be a useful substitute. If you can't silence your opponents by burning them, there are more subtle ways. Driving people out of faith communities, publicly vilifying or slandering them, dragging them into court, declaring yourself or your congregation out of communion with them - there are countless ways of committing such virtual martyrdoms.
I recently came across this quote from Pat Robertson, the American television evangelist: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them." Indeed. After several centuries, we've all learned the phrase "don't make a martyr out of them." Killing someone for their faith gives their ideas more power - but a lack of charity, the withholding of fellowship, and the destruction of reputations gives power to those who oppose the Gospel.
As we heard today in the Epistle of Peter, we are "living stones...built into a spiritual house." We are not stones to be picked up and hurled at sisters and brothers trying to make their way to towards understanding God and God's will. We should all know from our personal faith journeys that the way is often filled with uncertainties and ambiguities in our own context and culture - never mind the context and cultures of others. Never let anyone tell you that the path is simple and uncomplicated. Nothing worth having is simple and uncomplicated - and there is nothing worth having more than salvation and God's kingdom of peace, justice, and mercy. If scripture teaches us anything, it is that God loves diversity and despises partiality.
If we are living stones, then martyrs are the keystones which bind the structure of our spiritual house together. We may differ with any one of them on points of theology, but we can and should all be in agreement that their zeal for the gospel is worthy of praise and emulation. At this paschal season, when our prayers for unity are particularly apt, let us with one accord honour those who have surrendered their lives for the Truth by committing ourselves not to sacrifice others for opinion. Amen.