Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Acts of the Apostles, the 6th and 7th chapters:
… some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen…[And he said to them,] “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. …And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! And don’t you forget it!
Philip in today’s Gospel lesson asks Jesus to show the way to the Father. Normally, this wouldn’t be such a big deal, a hard question, but Jesus seems nearly incredulous as He answers him, “Have I been with you so long, and you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Now Jesus isn’t speaking some type of heresy here, where you say that Jesus and the Father are the same person, He’s saying they are the same God and they will be in the same place, for Jesus also reminds us that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and that soon He shall go and prepare a place for us, a place where we shall be Jesus eternally.
And that is the reason the Acts passage, and the passage from the Gospel, come to us in this Easter season of the Church. For this Christ who is risen from the dead has gone to prepare a place for all believers. He has gone to prepare a place for you. A place we cannot yet see, but a place in which we hope. And we do not hope in the way that we say, “I sure hope lunch is good,” or, “I hope to see you soon.” We hope because that hope is the natural outgrowth of our faith. This hope is sure, this hope is certain, this hope has an object, and that object is Jesus, for when did Jesus say anything and it was not true? When did Jesus lie to us? Never. And so we have this hope that we shall see Jesus, and we certainly shall.
And this is Stephen today. Stephen, with a sure and certain hope of seeing his Savior and going to be with Him, having just been picked to help the apostles and all disciples of Jesus, hoped in the risen and victorious Lord. This hope, this hope that we all have, is the very strength of Jesus to persevere. It’s a hope that gives us the strength and courage to say what is needed. And, in the case of Stephen, and countless martyrs since, it is a hope that leads us to confess Christ and almost immediately be able to see our Jesus face to face.
Stephen was the first martyr of the Church, and what does that word mean? Martyrs are those who die for the witness of Jesus Christ. There are many martyrs, and there are more people being martyred today than in all of Church history. They are dying by the hundreds and thousands in all lands that deny the Gospel, China, Nigeria, the Sudan.
The Church Father Tertullian once said that, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” And this is true. For the blood of Christ is our foundation, the Church’s foundation, the blood spilled and shed for the world gives us a sure foundation upon which all the Church is built. But the blood of the martyrs is the seed that finds it way into that foundation of Christ, and from there takes root, grows up, and provides shade and nourishment for all those whom Christ calls to Himself. After all, the Church is growing and has always grown like a weed in every place where the martyrs die.
The violence of the act in the martyrdom of Stephen, then, was the cause of much celebration. That seems weird to say, doesn’t it? Yet, the violence against Stephen did not discourage the believers, but gave them even more confidence in the certain hope that they would have in their Savior, Jesus. In fact, in Stephen’s death, Stephen was given such a vision from the Lord that Stephen saw the fulfillment of Christ’s promise, that Christ is ascended on high and sits at the right hand of the Father, judging and overseeing all things, but especially that, from upon Christ’s princely throne, Christ welcomes all believers into the heavenly places to await from Christ the good news that the fulfillment of time has come and we shall be raised from the dead, as is our Christ.
But our life until we reach this point is much like Stephen’s. It is a life of suffering. It is a life of hardship. Do not believe, that though Stephen seemed peaceful in his death, it felt good. Do not believe that Stephen enjoyed his murder. Do not believe that Stephen found pleasure in his death. He found it all afterwards, of course. But, to be stoned in the way that Stephen was, it was not a pleasant experience. Neither are our deaths, neither are our lives.
Our lives and our deaths are often filled with much suffering and hardship. After all, who among us believes that all things are going great? Who among us does not feel the ravages of time? Who among us never has want or need or lack? Our lives are hard at times, and this is because of sin. And our deaths are rarely peaceful and pleasant. Our deaths, instead, can be difficult as our bodies, our organs, our senses shut down. Death is not pretty, and it is because we are sinful.
It is not necessarily because we have committed a particular sin, but it is because, since our conception in our mothers’ wombs, we have been given into sinful flesh. We have a sinful nature, an Old Adam, and this Old Adam in us, and in others, causes us to suffer, for it knows the Law of God and it hates it. It rebels against God, it attempts to depose and dispose of the King. We would kill God if we could, and two thousand years ago, we did. We would rather be rid of God than love Him. We would rather hide from God than glory in Him.
And that is our sinful nature. Others cause us to suffer because they are sinful, of course, but we cause plenty enough hardship on our own. And it’s not because we love to suffer, but suffering and hardship are in this world because of sin. It is the consequence to Adam’s and Eve’s choice, and now we have to live with that sin within ourselves.
But that is not enough for God. The Father does not take pleasure in our suffering, and He does desire for it to cease. Yet, in love, He also sent His Son to suffer in our place. He sent His Son to take upon our flesh, to live among us sinners, and to suffer at the hands of angry men. This all had its purpose: to save us, to redeem us, to give us the promise us that our suffering will someday come to an end. But this end is not yet. This suffering is when Christ returns to this earth to remake all things, and to raise our bodies from the ground, so that, death having taken its toll upon us, it shall never do so again and we shall live forever with Christ.
If Christ came to suffer for us, then we, too, should expect suffering. If God did not withhold suffering from His beloved Son, then we, too, should expect suffering. It is not because God doesn’t love us, but because it works, as it did with Christ crucified, to show the glory of God.
And this is why the Church is seeded in the blood of the martyrs, their blood, having been strengthened by the true blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, and their bodies having been strengthened also with His true body, as you have been, as you will be. Their suffering, their heinous deaths bring to the Church those who are converted by their testimony of blood. Like Abel, their blood cries out to God and to all who may hear it that their hope was certain and true. Abel went to be with His Lord when he was murdered by his brother, Cain. And Stephen went to be with his Lord even when he was murdered by his brothers in the flesh. That blood cries out for redemption, and they have it in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
And so, too, do we. We have our redemption now, for Christ has washed us in the waters of baptism, giving to us a certain and sure faith, delivered to us by the Holy Spirit. And Christ has given us our redemption as we eat and drink His true flesh and true blood with the bread and the wine in the Supper. And we have our redemption, when convicted by the Holy Word of God, we repent of our sins, and when, by the Holy Word of Christ, we are forgiven of all our sins. This is our redemption, and it is won by Christ for us upon His cross, and continues to come across space and time through the very means that Christ has given, for when has Christ lied?
When He says baptism now saves you, it does. When He says, this is my body, this is my blood, it is. When He says He goes to prepare a place for us, He has. When He says He forgives you, He does. And this is our redemption, this is our hope. And it is the same hope that Stephen had as he was cast down from a cliff, it is the same redemption he had when stones crushed him, it is the same redemption he shares with us in Christ. Stephen’s blood cries out from the ground that the hope is true and certain, for he has seen, as we shall soon see, the Son sitting at the right hand of the Father. And Christ there waits for us to be with us forever. Stephen’s blood shows us the true testimony of Christ, that all things are fulfilled in Christ, and we may have certain hope then in these words of Stephen, for they, too, are the testimony of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
This is not the last time we hear from Stephen, however. In fact, in the sixth chapter of the book of John’s Revelation, we hear Stephen and all martyrs. It says:
“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”
What is this vengeance the saints, the martyrs, ask for but for them to be raised from the dead? What more would shove it in the face of those who murdered them, martyred them, than to show that their actions have no lasting effect? To be raised from the dead after a martyr’s death is a good promise, it is a good hope. And it is our hope, for Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia! In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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