Witness of suffering [St. Stephen Day]

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READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• 2 Chronicles 24:17-22

• Acts 6:8-15, 7:54-60

• St. Matthew 23:34-39

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph 1)
 
Jesus speaks on this 2^nd day of Christmas aka St. Stephen’s Day, saying:
“For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” 
 
When you hear the Word of God and realize you believe, having received faith from above, it hits you like a ton of bricks. (Sorry St. Stephen+ no offense). Your entire worldview changes. What you thought you knew, turns out to be lies. What you thought were lies, turn out to be true. The world seems to flip on its head and the rocks tumble all around.
 
Though really, through God’s Word the world is just righting itself. For it is you who were backwards and upside-down, believing the lies. You were clinging to the earth, the dust, the rocks from which you came and you tumbled along with them, hurling yourself at the God who made you suffer.
 
Yes. In our sin that is our charge we bring against God. “Why bring me here if I’m just going to suffer?” Job speaks this point saying, “Let the day perish on which I was to be born,
And the night which said, ‘A boy is conceived’” (3:3).
 
The Christian Church is the Church because it suffers, because it bears the cross of her Lord and Savior. Whether its the wood of the cross or the stones of the tomb, the ancient saying goes, “the blood of Christians is the seed [of the Church]” (Tertullian, Apology, L:13).
 
However, it is not enough for the Christian to suffer, more to the point, we were not made to suffer. 
Genesis 1 says, “So God created man…and blessed them…and behold it was very good” (v.27, 28, 31).
 
It is also not the point of suffering to seek out suffering. In that route, we seek suffering in our sin and St. Peter warns us in our 2nd Sunday after Christmas Epistle, “let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler” (1 Pet 4:15), in other words, as a sinner. 
 
Note the crime they accuse St. Stephen of. It is not giving to the poor, it is not doing good deeds, it is not even for “being a Christian”. As we heard them from our reading in Acts, St. Stephen is charged with speaking against the authority of the day. In this case, satan’s authority coming from the twisting of holy Scripture.
 
The twist that says, no matter what God’s priests and Temple authorities do, it is God’s will. The twist that gives godlike authority and lordship to all who “serve” and “preach” and “teach” in God’s “service”. The twist that allows murder and the breaking of all commands in order to preserve its own power structure, even at the cost of defying the God they claim to be in service to.
 
Satan is the only one to lie and proclaim and promise that kind of earthly glory to those “serving” today. This is why we term this sort of theology the theology of glory. 
 
Theologies of glory are approaches to Christianity and to life that try in various ways to minimize difficult and painful things, or else to defeat and move past them, rather than looking them square in the face and accepting them. In particular, they acknowledge the cross, but view it primarily as a means to an end – an unpleasant but necessary step on the way to good things in the future, especially salvation, the transformation of human potential by God and the triumph of the Kingdom of God in the world. As Luther puts it, the theologian of glory “does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil” (The Heidelberg Disputation, Proof to Thesis XXI).
 
So we hear the words of both our saints today, St. Zechariah in the Old Testament reading and St. Stephen. Don’t be fooled, however. Zechariah is not demanding revenge. The word there is “judge”, in the Greek. Meaning, he is calling upon God to judge between his words and the words of the authorities.
 
St. Stephen is doing the same. Though St. Stephen already knows God’s judgement, because he has seen it in action, in the flesh, on the cross. And God’s judgement, which St. Zechariah also asked for, is guilt for the Son, innocence for the sinner.
 
And where St. Stephen and St. Zechariah can only pray and hope for God’s forgiveness to be handed out to their enemies, Jesus Christ, the King of Saints, purchases and wins salvation, making it a reality.
 
Jesus Christ is buried under the rocks of His martyrs. Though He is somewhat special. His rocks are brand new. It was “a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid” (Jn 19:41) and they threw “a stone against the entrance of the tomb” (Mk 15:46). A special stoning for a special man.
 
For while Sts. Zechariah and Stephen did not get out of their tombs of rock, Jesus did.
 
St. Fulgentius from the 6^th century makes this point for u:,

“Yesterday, my dear brethren, we celebrated the birth in time of our timeless King; today we celebrate the triumphant suffering of a soldier. Yesterday our King, clothed in a robe of flesh, came forth from a virginal womb and deigned to visit this earth; today a soldier, leaving the tabernacle of the body, departs, as a conqueror, for heaven. The former, preserving the majesty of divinity, assumed the lowly form of human nature and entered this world to do battle; the latter, laying aside corruptible bodily trappings, has ascended to reign unceasingly in the palaces of heaven. The One, Christ, descended veiled in flesh; the other, Stephen. ascended laureled in blood.
 
Yesterday the angels sang exultingly “glory to God in the highest”; today they have joyously received blessed Stephen into their midst. Yesterday Christ was wrapped for us in swaddling clothes; today blessed Steven is clothed by Him with the stole of immortality. Yesterday the narrow crib carried the Infant Christ; today the boundless heavens receive the triumphant Stephen. Our Lord descended alone that He might make many ascend; our King has humbled Himself that He might exalt his soldiers.
 
Nevertheless, dearest brethren, it is necessary that we know with what weapon blessed Stephen was armed so as to overcome satanic savagery and merit such triumph. To obtain the crown which is signified by his name, St. Stephen was armed with charity and by it conquered all obstacles. Because of his love of God he fled not from the cruel Jews; because of his love of neighbor he prayed for those who are stoning him. In charity, he corrected the erring that they would amend; in charity he prayed for his executors that they would not be punished. By virtue of charity he conquered the fire-breathing Saul and so merited to have his persecutor on earth as companion in heaven.“ (St. Fulgentius, Matins of St. Stephen, Pius Parsch I:216)

 
In this way only, were the torrent of stones dear to Stephen, as they were dear to Christ Who rested in the tomb for you. We thusly pray with St. Stephen today, at this Altar, in this Service, with Psalm 63, “My soul clings fast to Thee” because my body was stoned for Thee, my God (v.8). 
Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord.