Day: December 26, 2025

Sermons

Sermon for the Feast of St. Stephen

“Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”

What most know about St. Stephen, if anything, is probably from the carol, “Good King Wencelaus”, a 19th century English Christmas carol by John Mason Neale set to a 13th century medieval tune collected in a 16th century Finnish collection of carols, Piae Cantiones. Neale’s carol is based upon a 10th century duke in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, about whom not much is known, other than is being favorably inclined towards Christians. The carol makes no mention whatsoever of the Christmas story and yet, paradoxically, it is one of the most popular Christmas carols! Nonetheless, the carol touches in at least two ways upon some of the most significant features of the Christmas Mystery and the Christian Faith.

The Feast of Stephen, explicitly mentioned in the carol, is one of the three great Holy Days of Christmas. Stephen is the proto-martyr of the Christian Church. Along with The Feast of St. John the Evangelist and The Feast of the Holy Innocents, St. Stephen’s Day contributes to our understanding of Christ’s Incarnation. Lancelot Andrewes notes that Christ’s Good Friday and his Christmas Day are “but the evening and the morning of one and the same day”; a point which John Donne twenty years later also echoed; both of them highlighting the necessary connection between the Nativity and the Passion. They are inseparable. “His whole life was a continual passion”.

T.S. Eliot notes in his play Murder in the Cathedral the central paradox which goes to the heart of the Christian Faith. We celebrate Christ’s Nativity with the Eucharist which recalls and re-presents to us his Passion. As the carol In Dulci Jubilo puts it “Christ was born for this”. Perhaps, it is not really all that strange that on the very day after Christmas we celebrate the first martyr of the Christian Church, St. Stephen, whose story in some sense or other has become associated with the carol and with Christmas.

The two ways in which Stephen is significant in terms of the mystery of Christmas is that he was, first, one of the early deacons of the emerging Christian church, known then simply as ‘The Way’ – the Christian Tao, as it were, and secondly, his sacrifice is explicitly modelled on Christ’s crucifixion and echoes Christ’s first and last words from the Cross. “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do” is Jesus’s first word on the Cross to the Father. Stephen’s last word is “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge”. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”, Stephen prays, an echo of Christ’s last word, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit”.

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Prayers and liturgy

Saint Stephen the Martyr

The collect for today, the Feast of St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

GRANT, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth, for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, may learn to love and bless our persecutors, by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

The Lesson: Acts 7:55-60
The Gospel: St. Matthew 23:34-39

Antonio Carracci (attrib.), The Martyrdom of Saint StephenAll that is known of St. Stephen’s life is found in the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7. He is reckoned as the first Christian martyr–the proto-martyr. Although his name is Greek for “crown”, he was a Jew by birth; he would have been born outside Palestine and raised as a Greek-speaking Jew. The New Testament does not record the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity.

Stephen first appears as one of the seven deacons chosen in response to protests by Hellenist (Greek-speaking) Christians that their widows were being neglected in the distribution of alms. The apostles were too busy preaching the word of God to deal with this problem, so they commissioned seven men from among the Hellenists “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”, then prayed and laid hands on them. Stephen, the first among the seven, is described as “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit”. A few verses later, Stephen is said to be “full of grace and power [and] doing great wonders and signs among the people”.

Clearly, St. Stephen was a man of exceptionally fine character with miracle-working power and abilities of teaching and preaching. Although just a deacon, he had received divine gifts apparently equal to those of the apostles. Some Jews from Greek-speaking synagogues debated with Stephen about the gospel of Christ and were not able to overcome his wisdom. In their anger, they had Stephen arrested and dragged before the Jewish council on unjust charges of blasphemy against the Law of Moses and against God.

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