To Be Expected

 

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed amazing miracles and signs among the people.  But one day some men from the Synagogue of Freed Slaves, as it was called, started to debate with him.  They were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia.  None of them could stand against the wisdom and the Spirit with which Stephen spoke.  So they persuaded some men to lie about Stephen, saying, “We heard him blaspheme Moses, and even God.”  This roused the people, the elders, and the teachers of religious law.  So they arrested Stephen and brought him before the high council.  The lying witnesses said, “This man is always speaking against the holy Temple and against the law of Moses.  We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy the Temple and change the customs Moses handed down to us.”  At this point everyone in the high council stared at Stephen, because his face became as bright as an angel’s.  Acts 6:8-15

Cats have this inner drive to hunt, and then play with their food.  The old saying about cat and mouse is a clear picture of this drive.  And it’s not a pretty picture from the mouse’s perspective. 

Stepen is a poster child for the mouse’s perspective.  Jesus had warned his disciples about the treatment they would experience at the hands of this world’s power brokers.  As this chapter opens the church is flourishing as many are being saved.  But there was a division brewing (that always happens when the church grows). Some of the widows were being neglected at the food pantry.  So the church chose seven servants (deacons) to oversee this.  Stephen is the first name mentioned, and, it appears, he jumped into serving Christ with his whole heart.  What happened next was predictable, because Jesus predicted it. 

He told his disciples:

“If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first.  The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world.  I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.  Do you remember what I told you?  ‘A slave is not greater than the master.’  Since they persecuted me, naturally they will persecute you.  And if they had listened to me, they would listen to you.  They will do all this to you because of me, for they have rejected the one who sent me.  They would not be guilty if I had not come and spoken to them.  But now they have no excuse for their sin.  Anyone who hates me also hates my Father.  If I hadn’t done such miraculous signs among them that no one else could do, they would not be guilty.  But as it is, they have seen everything I did, yet they still hate me and my Father.  This fulfills what is written in their Scriptures:  ‘They hated me without cause.’  “But I will send you the Advocate—the Spirit of truth.  He will come to you from the Father and will testify all about me.  And you must also testify about me because you have been with me from the beginning of my ministry.  John 15:18-27

A cat torturing a mouse before it finally eats it is a sad commentary on religious authority mimicking worldly power systems.  The plotting of Pharisees and the religious leaders to kill Jesus was a cat and mouse game, of which those religious leaders would regret eternally.  Stephen was full of grace and God’s power; Pharisees, keepers of the law of Moses ought to have been rejoicing.  They didn’t.  Out of jealousy and pride they arrested Stephen and played their cat and mouse game until they realized they were losing the debate.  Since losing was not an option for the fat-cat power crowd, they hired false witnesses to lie about Stephen.

Finally, they stoned him to death.  Game over…or so they thought, for the time being.

For You Today

If you’ve decided to be a disciple of Jesus, don’t expect a parade in your honor.  A servant of Christ is mostly seen as lunch by the cats in charge.  Expect the kind of welcome to the table Stephen got.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Acts 6 see A Sermon to the Stubborn and for John 18 see Anger on the Wall                              and Like Father; Like Son

Seed of the Church

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Thursday, November 22, 2018

Saul was one of the witnesses, and he agreed completely with the killing of Stephen.  A great wave of persecution began that day, sweeping over the church in Jerusalem; and all the believers except the apostles were scattered through the regions of Judea and Samaria.  Acts 8:1(NLT)

When you’re in eleventh grade and your life revolves around football practice, games, math tests, and wondering if you’ll get into college, it would hardly dawn on you that something history-shaping is happening 1600 miles away in Dallas.  

Today is the 55^th anniversary of the assassination of President Jack Kennedy.  There have been volumes written by the press, investigators and conspiracy-theorists, about this event.  But that day, I just thought it was strange that football practice had been cancelled.  In the upcoming days I watched the funeral and unfolding drama of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby, live, on-camera.  All of it was bewildering and incomprehensible to a 16-year-old whose depth of thought didn’t reach past watching Andy and Opie make sense of Aunt Bea and Barney every Monday evening. 

Digress about 1800 years and you have Tertullian, 2^nd century Christian author who wrote of the overwhelming persecution of believers that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.[2]  Trying to make sense of the stoning of Stephen a century after the fact, Tertullian had the hindsight perspective of the wave of persecution that swept over Jesus’ disciples, and how that blood-bath scattered believers everywhere.  And in the flight to avoid torture and death, the Gospel was carried around the world.

And this is a scenario that has been played-out over and again in history.  Every time there is a move to stamp-out the church it is like pouring water on a grease fire; the Kingdom of Christ spreads with ferocious faith, despite the threats.

It’s strange to think how such events as the stoning of Stephen, as well as the modern-day assassination of a president can inspire movements.  Kingdoms topple, paradigms shift, hearts are rearranged – all because evil wants to strut, but God shouts back with calm resistance.

In the case of Stephen and the early church, Saul was part of the mob; he was given the coats of the execution mob to hold.  But he probably yelled encouragement to inflict death on Christ’s witness, Stephen.  Sometime later it was Saul who would have his heart and life rearranged after a meeting with Jesus on the Damascus Road.  Jesus gave him a new name, Paul, and we have that name affixed as author to roughly one-third of the New Testament scriptures as evidence of just how drastically a life can change when the blood of a martyr becomes a seed in your history.                                                

Jack Kennedy was not a martyr for the cause of Christ; he was hardly what you’d call “a saint”.  He was a politician…beloved and despised by political types, but a fallible human being with a reputation of infidelity.  We don’t know much about Stephen, other than he was a well-respected leader in the early church, who didn’t keep his mouth closed when he had the opportunity to be a witness for Christ; neither did he keep silence when they threw the stones to knock the life out of his body.  Stephen died begging God to forgive his killers.

For You Today

A question that comes to mind for us all is to what star would you hitch YOUR wagon?  Would you leap into a movement for a president, gunned-down, heroically-promoting his political agenda?  Or would it be to join Stephen, a nobody, erased by an angry mob, simply proclaiming the agenda of a Heavenly Kingdom?

Which seed would you plant?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Rembrandt (Public Domain)

[2] Apologeticus, Chapter 50

A Life of Sacrifice

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Thursday, August 31, 2017

Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children.  Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.  He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.  Ephesians 5:1-2^(NLT)

I am always somewhat embarrassed when someone refers to my brief stint as a member of the U.S. Army and says:  Thank you for your service.  It’s not that I’m ashamed; it’s just a part of my life that I endured.  I did not join-up to defend home, hearth and freedom; I was drafted because my number came up.  I didn’t request to go to Vietnam – I was assigned because they needed another grunt to fill a spot.  I didn’t do anything particularly heroic; I was there for a year and came home.  When I took the oath to defend the United States against all enemies, domestic and foreign, it was for two years, and then, if I survived, I would be free to go on with my normal life.

I’m glad I survived, but there were those many that didn’t.  They, along with many others from many other wars, are part of a group to which we refer as heroes, those whose sacrifice made our freedom possible.  We don’t investigate those lives too deeply.  We want our heroes to stay heroes; it’s much easier on Memorial Day to have a parade and be glad we survived, and be at least momentarily thankful that others died to protect our way of life.

But what of the living heroes, those who gave up so much and yet survived to carry the scars and stress, bearing the cost of our wars in their bodies and minds?  And how do we genuinely honor such sacrifice?  I trust, for the sake of those who live in the shadows of their horror–filled, PTSD daily nightmares, which can never truly be repaid, we are finding ways to sacrificially support recovery and rehabilitation.  And that we do not just throw money at the symptoms.

Of course the sanest way to push-back against the need for the kind of heroes we honor and memorialize is to make bigger heroes out of peacemakers, people who find ways to diffuse anger and make war a faded archive.

How you do that is another thing.  I’ve never been much of a joiner in the waves of political movements; I hate waving any kind of flag.  It may be somewhat emotionally exhilarating to get on a charismatic leader’s bandwagon, but most of it is simply to get a political career off the ground.  Rather, I see value in living an authentically changed life.  I see movement one life at a time.  I guess my calling as a pastor is tied to that kind of core value; I cannot change the whole world and I know it.  But if God can use me to make a difference one life at a time, at one moment in time, it somehow resonates with Paul’s challenge to live in imitation of Jesus who loved me, and loved us – enough to sacrifice His life to clear our sins out of the pathway to God. 

I cannot offer a world peace strategy, or save everyone ravaged by the infections of natural disaster, war or some heinous deed.  But I can be ready to be involved with the person right in front of me.  I can come alongside and be a voice of hope for one other human soul.

This is the working out of what Jesus said is the key to genuine life:

If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.  Luke 9:24^(NLT)

Trying to hold on to everything that benefits your selfish desires spends life like a prodigal son in the far country, but a life of sacrifice, investing in the lives of others is what will make our life blossom and mature into the kind of Kingdom vine you were meant to be.

For You Today

Somewhere in this day you’ve been given will be an opportunity to plant a sacrificial Kingdom seed.  The authentic follower of Jesus Christ living a sacrificial life will not hesitate to kneel down, dig a little hole, and plant deep in someone else’s life!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy  Pixabay.com