The Martyrdom of
St. Stephen Bernardo Daddi 1324
The Sermons At Calvary
By The Reverend Richard H.
Humke
DEACONS AND MARTYRS
April 17, 2005, 4 Easter A, Calvary
Church
This
Sunday has a nickname in the Church. It
is popularly called Good Shepherd Sunday because of the readings. The Collect of the Day speaks of the Good Shepherd. We have the 23rd Psalm with “The
Lord is my shepherd”. Then there
is the Second Reading where we hear, in reference to Jesus and our relationship
to him: “For you were going astray like
sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of
your souls.” And the Gospel is, of
course, that of the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep. Pretty clear, isn’t it?
So
the music follows that theme, and though I won’t recite the names of the hymns
and anthem for you, I encourage you to note them. There is a certain satisfaction in everything falling into its
rightful place.
Having
noted how well our liturgy is integrated this morning I, therefore, think I
will not preach on the Good Shepherd but rather on our First Reading,
which has nothing to do with sheep or shepherds. I went back in my records, and I saw that I preached on the sheep
theme last year. That means that I’ve
used up all my stories, and I don’t want to repeat them.
However,
that makes me think of the young priest who asked his rector, “How soon can I
use a sermon a second time without people’s knowing?” And he replied, “Oh, the same evening usually isn’t too soon, if
you change the opening paragraph.” So
much for people’s retention. Or
perhaps, so much for dull sermons.
Our
First Reading really falls into two parts:
first, there is the choice of seven persons to do the “grunt” work of
the community, and then there is the martyrdom of Stephen, one of those seven
who had been chosen in the first part of the reading. At least, I am going to look at this First Reading in that way,
dividing it into those two parts. And
further, I’m going to look at it more or less as if we were in a Bible study
class and we were going to see what we could learn from it. In other words, I will point out some things
that you may or may not already know, things that this reading suggests to me.
The
Book of Acts, the fifth book in the New Testament, from which we get our First
Reading today, is purportedly a book that tells us about life in the
early Christian community shortly after the time of Jesus and into the next
generation; and for our purposes this morning we will accept that understanding
on face value. What we have in today’s
reading, then, is a very interesting example of ethnic conflict right at
the beginning of Christian history, something that has not gone away 2000 years
later.
The
Gentile, Greek-speakers in the Church complained against the Jewish members
(who had become believers in Jesus as the Messiah, of course). The Greeks complained that their widows were
not getting their fair share of help from the Christian community. When the daily rations were being passed
out, the Greeks said that their widows were being short-changed. By implication they were saying that the
Hebrew widows were being given preferential treatment. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. There is no way for us to know – but the
unhappy people happened to be in one ethnic community, the story tells us, and
so there are ethnic overtones to the story.
This
passage made me think of an article in the paper a few weeks ago about a local
Roman Catholic parish which the archbishop has turned into a Vietnamese parish
and about the unhappiness of the local, old-time members with that
decision. When I read that article I
first found myself being critical of the dissenters, wondering why a parish
community of Christians couldn’t simply overcome ethnic divides; but on further
thought I found myself having sympathy for what must be a very hard decision
for those local Louisvillians who have been there a long time and who feel that
their parish is being taken away from them.
Ethnic conflicts, you see, haven’t gone away.
Ethnic
differences were divisive even at the beginning of the Christian community’s
life when the memory of Jesus was still so fresh, so we should not be surprised
that they can be an unfortunate part of the dynamics today. What is interesting in today’s story, please
note, is that a judgment is not made on the complainers, that they don’t
have a proper Christian attitude (something we might have expected to hear) but
rather, a practical solution to the problem is proposed: Let’s select seven persons to take care of
the work that isn’t being done. They do
that, and we hear no more about it.
If I were
to develop this further topic further, I would use this as an example of how
the local congregation might deal with conflict of any kind. Forget the blaming of those who don’t live
up to a certain standard. Do something
practical about the problem, whatever it is, and perhaps it will go away.
So they
selected seven men (six of them with very difficult names) to “wait on tables,”
as it says, so that the leaders, who had been trying to do it all, could now
concentrate on the more spiritual needs of the community. I think you can see the germ of a sermon in
their solution (another sermon that I’m not going to preach): spread responsibilities of the community
around to other people, let others share in doing them; you do the things that
you are best suited to do and are needed for.
Let me say
something about these seven men with the mostly difficult names. We traditionally look upon them as the first
deacons of the Church, persons chosen to help with the care of the needy and
with the more daily (rather than spiritual) concerns of the community. Baptists and others have boards of deacons
who, I think, are members of the congregation chosen to take care of some of
the practical needs of the building, the grounds and such.
In our
tradition of deacons, which is the ancient Catholic tradition, they are one of
three kinds of ordained persons:
deacons, priests, and bishops.
The deacons are to focus their ministries on persons in need, modeling
their ministries after the seven men (with six unpronounceable names) in
today’s reading who helped the needy Greek widows. Deacons do not preside at the Eucharist. They do not become rectors of parishes. They are to pay particular attention to the
needs of people. Rhonda will be
ordained a deacon on June 4 at 1:00 p.m., and if she is to have a rich
diaconate, there will be an emphasis at this period of her ordained ministry upon
ministering to the needy in some capacity.
In time
she will be ordained as a priest, and since one never loses one’s previous
ordinations, a priest is always a deacon as well, though the diaconal aspect
may often take a back seat for a priest as he or she, unfortunately, gets
caught up in other aspects of ministry.
One
further thing: there are some deacons
who do not wish to become priests and they remain deacons for their entire
ministries. We call them permanent
deacons. Many of you know Helen Jones,
and that is what she is, a permanent deacon.
Helen has exercised her diaconal ministry as a chaplain at Norton
Hospital, and now at St. Matthew’s Church as a pastoral assistant. If you have had the opportunity to need
Helen at any time, you know what a wonderful example she is of diaconal
ministry, caring for those in need.
There is a
lot more that we could squeeze out of that first part of the reading, but I’ve
gone on a long time already and I hope that I’ve pointed out some things that
you hadn’t seen in it. There are still
some things to say about the last part of our reading. So I’ll skip to that.
What we
hear in that last part of the reading is the account of the martyrdom of
Stephen, the proto-martyr of the Church.
That is, Stephen is the first martyr of a long line of martyrs for the
Faith stretching down to our own day.
A martyr
is one who gives up his or her life as Jesus did. The martyr models, so to speak, the Lord’s own sacrifice. We see this already in today’s reading where
Stephen’s last words are these: “Lord,
do not hold this sin against them.” And
surely your thoughts go back to that word of Jesus on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do.” Stephen goes to his
death, as Jesus did, without hatred or retaliation in his heart. He is an example
of a classic martyr.
And we are
told that “a young man named Saul” is participating in this cruelty against
Stephen. That’s all it says about Saul,
but its dramatic understatement is enough, for this Saul later has a great
conversion experience and changes his name to Paul. And Paul, I am convinced, is the reason we are here this morning,
for Paul not only opened the faith in Jesus to Gentiles but Paul showed us how
to think about that Faith and its implications for us in a deeper way.
Probably none
of us here will be faced with martyrdom for the Faith, though it is an
interesting exercise to consider what it might look like and whether you would
do it or not. But since the Greek word
in the Bible that means “martyr” also means “witness,” one realizes that one
has ample opportunity to witness, both by word and example. I am not, at this late point in my sermon,
going to go very far down another path, though I might like to do so, except to
say that never before in my lifetime has there been the need that there is now
to witness to the kind of Christianity that I have always preached and that I
believe in and that many of you believe in.
You see,
our Christian faith is today being high jacked by self-serving politicians and
slick preachers who use religion to their own advantage and who would have you
believe that those who do not agree with them are not people of faith. The political ploy is so obvious that one
wonders why everyone can’t see it.
Just
because they use the word “Christian” does not mean that they speak for many of
us. I no longer believe that the word
“Christian” is sufficiently descriptive of anything unless it is further
defined. I cringe at its use sometimes,
and I always want to say, “Just what do you mean by ‘Christian’? Because if you mean arrogant, narrow,
self-serving, simplistic, power-hungry, anti-scientific, then I don’t recognize
it, and I don’t want to identify with it.”
Stephen
did not die for a mean Christianity of the kind that has swept over America
today. He died with the words of Jesus
on his lips. I want to witness for a
gentle and loving Christianity, a Christianity that does not spend its time
telling us who is in and who is out, a Christianity that grows and changes as
we humans come to know more and more.
That’s what I want to witness to.
And I want you to do that, too.
Richard
H. Humke