Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen
“Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord”
The words are familiar to us from the Benedictus in the liturgy just before The Prayer of Consecration at Mass. A phrase from Psalm 118 (v.26), it is also familiar to us from the story of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday also read as the Gospel for The First Sunday in Advent. Perhaps less familiar to us is Matthew and Luke’s use of the phrase in the context of judgment and warning by Jesus to the Scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem. Not Bethlehem and yet the mystery of Christmas in Bethlehem is incomprehensible without reference to Jerusalem. The Feast of Stephen illumines the deeper meaning of Christ’s Nativity. It has altogether to do with service and sacrifice, things perhaps that we don’t really want to hear and yet these are the things that belong to the greatest truth and dignity of our humanity. They belong to the Christmas mystery.
What, if anything, is known popularly about St. Stephen is known by way of a nineteenth century carol by John Mason Neale, Good King Wenceslaus, that refers to a touching medieval legend and one which captures certainly the theme of service and even the idea of the imitation of Christ which is certainly at the heart of The Feast of Stephen. The lesson from The Book of The Acts of The Apostles concludes the story of Stephen with his martyrdom; he was stoned to death for his testimony to Christ and in the moment of his dying he, like Christ on the Cross, prays for the forgiveness of his executioners, not the least of which is Saul who will become Paul the Apostle. “Lord Jesus,” Stephen says, “receive my Spirit,” an echo of the last word of Christ from the Cross, “Father, into thy hands I commend my Spirit” and then, echoing the first word, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” Stephen’s last word is his prayer, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” The words of the dying, it seems, are often the beginning of something profound and deeply moving.
Stephen is the proto-martyr in the Christian understanding of things and what makes his feast so important is the way it illumines the deeper meaning of human redemption. His feast signals the idea of redemptive suffering and the nature of Christian witness as participation in the sufferings of Christ. We probably forget certain aspects of the larger story of Stephen.
