I keep the laws

After Acts 6:8 – 7:60

I keep the laws

I wash, when I should,

I fast, when I should,

read and listen when I should

he serves the widows at table

I live near, the sacredness

of this place spills over my home

I tithe what I should

He serves the people with love

And you, Stephen, hand me

Scripture and history and

innocence and spirit and

wisdom and the face

of an angel

he serves his Lord in what

he says

I give you stones, cast

I give you stones, thrown

I give you stones, hurled

he serves his Lord in what

he does

stones, Stephen,

stones

he is served stones

Painting of the stoning of St. Stephen by Rembrandt van Rijn, oil on canvas, 1625; Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lyon.

Raining Grace: Stephen and Saul

The very early church had a problem. The “Grecian Jewish” believers perceived that the Hebrew Jewish believers favored their own in caring for the widows. Today, we would immediately split off and form a new church, but the elders of the early church handled it differently. They listened, agreed, and then told the church to choose seven men to serve. (It’s interesting that they didn’t appoint the seven themselves but instead told the church to choose them.)

The seven they chose, Luke tells us in the book of Acts, were Stephen, Philip, Procurus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas of Antioch, a convert to Judaism. Stephen is specifically singled out as “a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit.” Of the other six, only Philip is ever mentioned again – Philip the Evangelist of Acts 8 and 21.

We don’t know any of Stephen’s background or even when he joined the church. He might have been one of those “thousands” who heard the disciples preaching in the temple courtyards and came to faith. We have the impression he was young, although that’s not explicitly stated.

A few verses later, Stephen is singled out again. Luke describes him as “ a man full of God’s grace and power, and did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.” Luke, of course, is setting the stage for what is about to happen. Stephen makes a speech to the Sanhedrin, tells the truth, and is dragged out to be stoned. As he’s dying, he asks God to forgive his murderers.

Watching the stoning “in approval” was Saul.

Stephen’s death was one of the significant events of the early church: he was the first martyr; it was the start of the first persecution; the church was scattered into the surrounding territory; and it was a significant step into what eventual became the spread and triumph of Christianity on the Roman Empire.

And then there was Saul, who helped lead the persecution in Jerusalem, and did so well that he decided to carry the campaign to Damascus. And on the road to Damascus, Saul became Paul.

Several times in his epistles, Paul refers to his role as persecutor of the church. And I can’t help but think that the image of Stephen crying out to God to forgive his murderers must have been remembered by Paul every time he mentioned his role.

Both Stephen and Paul were forgiven. Stephen did not do the terrible things Paul did, but both were forgiven. Both experienced the ful measure of God’s grace.

As Andy Stanley points out in The Grace of God, grace is also poured out over us. It’s a kind of unruly, unpredictable thing, this grace of God, confounding our human notions of fairness. Whether we believe as a child and work our entire lives for the Lord, or sincerely accept faith on our deathbeds, the grace of God pours down.

Grace poured down on Paul; it poured down on Stephen. Believers might want to identify more with Stephen, but most of us more closely approximate Paul’s early experience.

It is something to grateful for, this grace that pours down. There’s nothing we do that can earn it. It just pours down.

Led by Jason Stasyszen and Sarah Salter, we’ve been discussing The Grace of God. To see more posts on this chapter, “Saved by Grace,” please visit Sarah at Living Betweenthe Lines.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Follow Me – into Persecution?

Early on in my faith, I spent a fairly considerable amount of time reading church history. I was even able to take a seminar in early church history as part of a masters degree program at Washington University in St. Louis. While it was more than 20 years ago, what I remember most about the course was two things: the professor’s deep admiration for the late 19^th and early 20^th century church historian Adolf von Harnack (a leading proponent of what was then called “higher criticism”) and my research project on forms of government in the early church.

You can’t read anything about church history for very long without coming into the subject of persecution. I originally understood (likely thanks to a lot of movies) was that the Romans spent 300 years avidly persecuting the church before finally throwing in the towel. In fact, it didn’t actually happen that way. Persecutions tended to be local or at most regional, with a few notable exceptions, such as the empire-wide persecution under Diocletian about 300 A.D.

The major charge against the Christians wasn’t that they believed in Christ; it was that they wouldn’t worship the emperor as a god.

Not long after receiving my degree, I was among a small group of corporate speechwriters asked by a national PR association to write a short article on a speech I deeply admired. Most of the group selected speeches like the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, or “Blood, Sweat and Tears” by Winston Churchill. I selected Stephen’s speech before the Sanhedrin, the one that ended in his death by stoning and the persecution of the church in Jerusalem.

My article wasn’t used. I was asked to write on something “not religious.” I declined, pointing out that the articles that would be printed actually had religious underpinnings and even direct references to God, while mine didn’t refer to God. They declined to print mine, an indication of what was already happening in American culture more than 20 years ago. I don’t consider this a form of persecution, but it was an example of anti-Christian discrimination.

Things have not gotten better since then.

What I said in my article was that Stephen’s speech and death, and the persecution of the church in Jerusalem that followed, had actually resulted in the first great wave of Christian evangelism, scattering Christians from Jerusalem to cities all over the Mideast and perhaps all the way to Rome. Paul, a leader in the persecution effort, was on his way to Damascus to extinguish the church there when he had his roadside conversion.

This became a pattern for the next three centuries. Persecute the church – and watch it grow. In fact, whenever the church has experienced persecution, it has grown. Today, in places where Christians face imprisonment and often death for their faith, the church is growing.

“We often think persecution is horrible, and certainly in many ways it is,” writes David Platt in Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live. ”But persecution is often a sign that the gospel is progressing. As long as the gospel lies dormant in a country or amid a people, and as long as no one is coming to Christ, then no one cares about Christianity. It’s only when the gospel spreads and people are converted to Christ that opposition begins to arise against Christianity.”

Persecution is a terrible thing, but for Christians, it is also a sign.

We’ve been reading David Platt’s Follow Me as part of a book discussion at TheHigh Calling. Today Marcus Goodyear concludes the discussion. Please visit the site to see his comments and the discussion.

The Stoning of St. Stephen

He barely notices the first,
hitting his left shoulder
at the arm,
face, shining.

He looks upward as the second
pointed, sharp, tears skin
on his neck,
voice, calling.

The third and fourth together
herald the rock torrent
piercing, tearing, ripping,
wind, rushing.

The fourteenth aimed precisely
smashes the right side of his face,
absorbed in blood and light,
body, falling.

He murmurs forgiveness
through broken teeth,
his spirit soaring into
sky, darkening.

To see other poems submitted for One Shot Wednesday, please visit One Stop Poetry.

Photograph: Stones by Evette Murphy via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.