Christmas Season, Dec 26, 2021, The Stoning of Stephen

   

Christmas Season

Acts of the Apostles, 6:8 – 7:1, and 7:53-60

And Stephen, filled with the touch of the spirit and with divine power, performed great deeds and signs of the spirit among the people. Then some of those who belonged to the synagogues of the Libertines of the Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria Cilicia, and Asia began to argue with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and spirit of his words. Then they put forward men who were to say, "We heard him speak derogatory words against Moses and against God." Thus, they stirred up the people and the elders, and the scribes.

Finally, they went up to him, overpowered him, and led him before the Sanhedrin. They put up false witnesses who said, "This man never ceases to revile the holy place and the law. We have heard him say, 'Jesus, the Nazarene will destroy this place and change the customs, which Moses gave us.' "

Then all who sat in the Sanhedrin looked at him, and they saw his face shining
like the face of an angel.

Stoning of Stephen, Uccello

The high priest said, "Is this so?" and he answered, "Men, brothers, and fathers. Listen, you have received the law through the mediation of angels, but you have not kept it."…

While they were listening, their hearts swelled in great agitation. And they ground their teeth. Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the light of the revelation of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, "See, the heavens are opened to my beholding. I see the Son of Man at the right hand of God."

Then they cried out with a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him all together. They drove him out of the city and stoned him and the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning him, Stephen said, "Jesus, Lord, receive my spirit." And he fell to his knees and called out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he breathed his last.

Christmas Season

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Acts of the Apostles 6:8-7:1, 7:53-60 

So closely are life and death intertwined! Today [Dec 26] the day after we celebrate the divine birth, we remember the first person to die in Christ’s name. 

Two days ago, December 24, was Adam and Eve Day. We remembered the apple of Paradise. Eaten before its time, it brought sickness and death to humanity. But hidden in an apple is a secret. 

A thin slice of an apple cut crosswise reveals a star, the symbol of the human
form. And this star in the apple is embedded within a white, five-petalled rose, the image of the pure blossom of the human body that emerges from thorny suffering. 

In between Adam and Eve Day, and St Stephen’s Day, the Christ-Star descended into earth existence. Christ suffered life’s thorns and its death. He produced the pure white rose-form of a new kind of human existence. 

And he offered this fruit of his to Stephen, whose face shines in gratitude like that of an angel, whose death is an example of the pure white rose of a new, forgiving humanity. 

We all carry within us, like the apple, the secret image. In Rilke’s words: 

We are only the rind and the leaf

The great death, that each of us carries inside

Is the fruit

Everything enfolds it. *

 

So in remembrance of Stephen, the first ordinary human being to die in the power of Christ, we can ask in Rilke’s words: 

God give us each our own death

The dying that proceeds

From each of our lives

The way we loved

The meanings we made….** 

May our lives and our deaths be fruitful. May we find and reveal the Rose and the Star within.

 

*Rilke, The Book of Hours, Macy and Barrows, p.132

** Rilke, The Book of Hours, Macy and Barrows, p. 131