Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen
admin | 26 December 2011“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. … Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
Nothing concentrates the meaning of Christmas more directly and more disturbingly, perhaps, than the Feast of St. Stephen celebrated on the day after Christmas. He is commemorated as the first martyr, the proto-martyr, whose witness, for that is the proper meaning of martyr, namely, witness, is the prototype, the model of all martyrdom. As the lesson from The Book of the Acts of the Apostles makes abundantly clear, Stephen achieves his eponymous crown (stephanos in Greek means crown) by losing his life not simply at the stone-throwing hands of a vicious mob but by losing himself in Jesus Christ. He has taken the Christ whose holy birth we have just celebrated as the model of life itself, the life of forgiveness. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit… Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” Suddenly, the Christmas mystery illumines the mystery of the Passion of Christ and vice versa.
Following Christ is our Christian vocation. The Feast of Stephen opens out to us the radical nature of that following. It is to let the life of Christ define your outlook and being. More poignantly, it is to let the essential element of sacrifice and forgiveness have complete rule and sway. The Feast of Stephen is one of the three holy days of Christmas that open out to us the radical meaning of Christ’s holy birth. Human redemption comes with a price, the heart-blood of the Son of God become the Son of Man. Our witness, too, necessarily means sacrifice … and forgiveness.
Stephen’s words at the time of his being stoned to death echo two of Christ’s last words on the Cross: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” and “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” His violent death recalls the horrendous horror of Christ’s crucifixion, the most hideous depiction of human sin and its violence against God and his creation which is the story of human depravity and degradation in the Christian understanding. All of the peace and joy of Christmas seems at once negated by this cruel and gruesome scene, the stoning of a man and his last words which echo the last words of Christ crucified. And yet out of that horror and violence comes indeed the greater peace and joy of human redemption. Out of the desolate and barren emptiness of human violence comes our blessedness. It is found in our being in Christ and Christ in us. “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord.”
And such is the witness of Stephen.
This meaning of this feast and its Christmas connection is coloured for us by the wonderful old carol, “Good King Wenceslaus,” with its explicit reference to the Feast of Stephen. A winter’s tale, the carol captures another aspect of the nature of Christian witness. It is found in the service of the poor and lowly, “in [the] master’s step he trod/ where the snow lay dinted” to bring joy and cheer to those in need. “Ye who now will bless the poor/ shall yourselves find blessing.” We are at once like that “yonder peasant” to whom the King of glory has come to bring us to the heavenly banquet. “Bring me flesh and bring me wine/Bring me pine logs hither/ Thou and I will see him dine/ When we bear him thither.” Yet, we are also like the page, the servant, who goes with the King to bring in the poor of the world. “Page and monarch forth they went/ Forth they went together/ Through the rude wind’s wild lament /And the bitter weather.” And like the page, we find in the dark night of human experience that our hearts fail and that we cannot of our own strength and power do the good that is wanted to be done. “Sire the night is darker now/ and the wind blows stronger/ Fails my heart, I know not how,/ I can go no longer.” The awareness of human limitation opens us out to our need for God’s grace, specifically, the grace of the Incarnation, if we will note it. “Mark my footsteps, my good page/Tread thou in them boldly/ Thou shalt find the winter’s rage/ Freeze thy blood less coldly.”
Far greater than the winter’s rage is the rage and horror of violence and cruelty; it can only be overcome by our walking in the steps of our master, letting his holy life define our thoughts, our words and deeds.
In a way, the Feast of St. Stephen provides us with the radical meaning of Christ’s holy Incarnation, signaling the wonder and the marvel of God’s embrace of our humanity and calling us to our vocation to be witnesses to Christ. Like St. Stephen? Yes and no, perhaps. It is not violent death we seek, to be sure. The witness is about the life of Christ being made visible in our lives through service, through sacrifice, and through the qualities of divine forgiveness, forgiving one another through him who has forgiven us. Thus is Christ in us and we in him and all to the glory of God.
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. … Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Stephen
December 26th, 2011