Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen
“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”
Christ’s “whole life was a continuall Passion,” John Donne notes, echoing perhaps Lancelot Andrewes’ observation that “all his life long was a continuous cross.” We forget that we really only come to Christmas, paradoxical as it might seem, by way of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ; “a continuall Passion,” “a continuous cross.” We easily overlook this in the sensuous and sentimental features of our contemporary hedonism that overwhelm the festivities of Christmas. The three great holy days that follow Christmas Day are a great wake-up call and a necessary reminder of the radical meaning of Christ’s holy birth.
He comes as redeemer and saviour because of the darkness of our sinful hearts and world. Our refusals of his grace are made part of the Christmas story. “He came unto his own and his own received him not,” a reference to his Passion. Thus the rejections of grace are made part of the story of grace and one which we desperately need to hear. Archbishop Thomas à Becket’s sermon in T.S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, highlights the profound point that “we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of our Lord,” and so too “in the death of martyrs.” “Is it an accident, do you think,” he asks rhetorically “that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ?” A martyr is a witness to another, to Christ. “A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God.”
“Not my will but thine be done,” as Jesus prays in Gethesemane. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” as Jesus teaches us to pray. “Be it unto me according to thy word,” as Mary prays.
St. Stephen’s day can only be celebrated in the context of the radical meaning of Christ’s holy birth. He has come to redeem and save through his Cross and Passion and those who are his followers and witnesses participate in his Cross and Passion. St. Stephen is the great proto-martyr who illustrates the meaning of that participation in Christ’s self-giving and sacrificial love. He is persecuted and stoned to death for being a follower of the way, of what will later become known as the Christian Faith. To be a Christian is to be a witness to the love of Christ. The story of his martyrdom in Acts illustrates this beautifully even as the Gospel reading from Matthew highlights Christ’s lament over the desolation of Jerusalem in its sinfulness and violence.
