Acts 7:55-60 Commentary

The Lectionary text is only 5 verses long but it is in the context of one and a half chapters telling us the story of Stephen. Making connections to the five verses in the Lectionary, I will use my commentary to tell this larger story.

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Reformation scholar Kenneth Woo’s newly released book, Refugee Calvin, is an important reminder that the Protestant Reformers and the confessions and catechisms attributed to the 16th and 17th centuries don’t come from lofty ivory towers or academic navel gazing. As a church historian, he focuses on the Reformation as a refugee movement. Protestantism resulted in and was codified during severe persecution. John Calvin’s Geneva was a sanctuary city for Christians fleeing persecution in neighboring cities and countries. And when you apply that lens to the confessions of the 17th century, suddenly they sound different. They don’t claim that God is in charge of everything because everything is going as they’d like but precisely because it isn’t.

Commentary:

Stephen offers his testimony under similar circumstances.

The first lesson from Stephen’s life is that volunteering for church can get really out of hand. In chapter 6, Stephen lets his name stand for deacon nominations. He thought he’d be making sure the widows got their food baskets. But about 5 verses later, we find Stephen performing “great wonders and miraculous signs among the people”. Because the religious leaders at the time think they are running the inside track to God, they aren’t pleased to discover another upstart Christian preaching the Gospel and showing them up with these “great wonders and miraculous signs. ”But they don’t have anything on him so they have to go at it sideways and get some folks to accuse Stephen of blasphemy, not only against God but against the temple and the law and “the customs Moses handed down to us.”

The religious leaders believe they’ve heard all the ancient words and they understand them so well that they own the story just the way they’ve been telling it. But, with his speech, Stephen works to flip the script. Same characters, same details, same law and covenant and history and prophecy but — what if — Stephen posits — what if you all have been thinking of yourselves as the heroes in the story: Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the prophets; when, in fact, we are what we’ve always been: doubters of the covenant, jealous brothers, golden cow idolaters, murderers of prophets. Stephen’s claim is this: if you are looking for a hero in Hebrew Scripture, you’d best look past the human characters.

Here’s how Willie Jennings retells Stephen’s history of Israel:

“The story Stephen tells begins not with the line of patriarchs but with God. God is the central actor of the story of Israel.” Abraham is called and sent by God.  But, in between the calling and the sending, there is a lot of waiting. “This promised people would carry the vulnerability and fragility that comes with waiting. The waiting is everything. … Lives will be formed in the waiting, like Isaac who is the child of promise, and Jacob, his son, yet echoing the promise, and the twelve patriarchs, the flowering of the branches of that promise.” Joseph waited in a dungeon, Moses waited in the desert, the people waited in the wilderness.  But it was never just the people waiting. It was also God with them in their waiting.

Throughout the story, we see with fresh eyes a God who, with patient desire and longing love, will turn adversity toward good.  But this no excuse not to mourn the adversity. Indeed, the text stops abruptly to tell us the faithful mourned and buried their brother, servant, prophet Stephen.

And then, as the Christian church is scattered, do you happen to notice where they go? Where they are scattered to? “All but the apostles were scattered to Judea and Samaria. ”The story of the early church begins with a new promise; and echo of the old covenant promise: “All nations will be blessed through you.” The continuation of the promise goes like this: “And you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem … in Judea and Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth.”

So just in case the first century refugee church was wondering where God was in their chaos and turmoil. Just in case the refugee church in the 17th century doubted God was still upholding and ruling them in the midst of their chaos and turmoil. Just in case the refugee church today wonders how God will turn their sorrow to good we hear the whisper of providence in this story. No matter where we go and how we get there (terrified refugees, asylum seekers, sojourners) we will never be outside of or beyond God’s care and God’s plan.

We can know it’s true because, in this story of the early church, the disciples fleeing persecution end up exactly where God had already told them He was sending them. Where God has already promised to go before them, to equip and empower them to continue to tell the story. “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem … in Judea and Samaria, and to the very ends of the earth.”

Every generation is given the opportunity to flip the script, to tell a new story that is, in fact, a faithful rendition of the old, old story we have loved so long. Stephen is a story-teller in Jerusalem. The Christian Church fleeing persecution tells the story in Judea and Samaria. Throughout church history, the church has told the story in the context of their moment to the very ends of the earth. And now, here we are, at what must have been, for the first Christians, a location beyond the ends of the ends of the earth. And so Jesus invites us to flip the script, to tell the old, old story in a new and faithful way.