RESURRECTION LIFE: BEYOND ENLIGHTENED SELF-INTEREST
ACTS 7:55-60; APRIL 20, 2008 – EASTER FIVE
THOMAS H. YORTY, WESTMINSTER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
We are in week five of Eastertide—the season that precedes Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth and beginning of the church.
We’re talking in these three sermons on the impact of Resurrection about the community last week and ‘speaking to other cultures’ next week. Today I’d like to explore the implications of the first Christian martyrdom soon after Easter—Stephen’s stoning to death—a story about which I have never preached.
The account of an innocent follower of Jesus being dragged from the synagogue where he was preaching, to the edge of the city, to be stoned for blasphemy, has always seemed an unfortunate illustration of an ancient and barbaric religious law; not relevant to life in the 21st century.
But I’ve reconsidered. There is, I think, something here for us. Actually, sudden and violent loss of innocent life is not so foreign today. A friend reminded me of the plaque on the wall in the dining hall at Princeton Seminary honoring three graduates who, like Stephen, paid for their faith and service with their lives:
Walter Macon Lawrie—thrown overboard by pirates in the China Sea, 1847;
John Rogers Peal—killed with his wife by a mob at Lien Chou, China, 1905; and James Joseph Reed—fatally beaten at Selma, Alabama, on March 11, 1965.
Once you start to think about it the names keep coming: Ghandi; King; the Kennedys; Malcolm X; Matthew Shepherd; Sadat; Rabin; Bishop Ramiera; our own martyrs here in Buffalo, Sister Karen and Father Bissonette.
After 9/11 you’d have to say that the 3,000 deaths at the World Trade Center were at least victims if not martyrs for democratic principles.
Each week we read names of soldiers who have been killed in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and while they are not martyrs in a classic sense they have sacrificed their lives. Not to mention the thousands of innocent and lost Iraqis and Afghanis.
Maybe the world hasn’t really changed all that much since the stoning of Stephen. While the form of his execution was legally acceptable and most contemporary martyrdoms are often the result of unruly violence or terrorism the fact is lives are still being sacrificed.
Or reputations. I thought the press’s treatment of Barack Obama’s United Church of Christ pastor last month bordered on the absurd. It revealed a profound and willful ignorance of the role of preaching in the Reformed tradition not to mention in a black congregation. The pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was victim, I thought, to a kind of media stoning.
Rev. Wright, has been solidly supported by the likes of John Buchanan, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago and John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. Thomas said:
It is no small irony that a pastor and congregation which for forty five years has cast its lot with a predominantly white denomination would be accused of racial exclusion and a failure to pursue reconciliation.
Criticized for the use of a mild obscenity, Wright spoke out against a war conceived in deception and prosecuted in foolish arrogance. Four thousand cherished Americans have been lost, countless more wounded, tens of thousands of Iraqis slaughtered in this war.
Where is the real obscenity here? True patriotism, true faith, requires a degree of self-criticism, even self judgment that may not be popular or easy.
Significant progress has been made in racial justice with a viable candi- date for President who is black and a black woman serving as Secretary of State. But does that mean that all is well because it is better than it used to be? On the gritty streets of south Chicago where Wright serves and on the West Side of Buffalo, where we serve, race continues to play favorites in failing school systems, unresponsive health care, crumbling infrastructure, and meager economic development. Is it racist to name the very real, yet solvable deficits that continue to afflict our nation and to do so loudly?1
The parallels with Stephen and Rev. Wright are poignant. Stephen was one of the church’s first deacons and part of a wider effort to care for the poor and outcast of his time: the orphaned and widowed. Stephen was, in effect, a first century Christian social worker before being in a helping profession was socially acceptable or even an option. He was simply doing what Jesus asked us to do.
As you can imagine taking care of those whom society, and most of the religious community for that matter, let drop between the cracks gave Stephen regular opportunities to preach the reassurance and good news of Jesus Christ.
His message was comforting to those he served and prophetic to those within the religious community who had strayed from adhering to God’s path of righteous living—what Micah called, “doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly with God.”
What was his crime? Preaching a sermon that criticized God’s people for being stiff-necked and unresponsive to God’s grace throughout their history. A criticism that God must also have been feeling since everyone of the major and minor prophets God sent called the people to turn away from their oppressive ways.
When Stephen sees Jesus in a vision, at the end of his preaching, and refers to Jesus as the Son of God, the leaders of the congregation are sent into apoplectic rage and drag him to the Damascus Gate to be stoned.
The reference to Saul, a known persecutor of Christians, who would later become St. Paul, is haunting. While he does not throw any stones, those who do the dirty work ask him to watch their coats while they proceed to engage the lengthy, bloody, and difficult execution.
You get the sense learning about people like Stephen and Rev. Wright and the others that something larger than their own self-interest defines who they are.
My hunch is that self-interest is often the bottom line when it comes to making choices of deep commitment and even potential sacrifice.
This is not, in itself, bad logic. If we don’t take care of ourselves how can we care for others? It’s just that the ‘self-interest litmus test’ doesn’t apply to all of life’s choices.
But it would be easy, today, to accept that it does. The culture encourages us to think self-interest, if not selfishness, is the golden mean for successful and happy living. But consider for a moment the times we live in.
The media industry refers to the ‘age of irony.’ Sometimes I think our times feel more like the ‘age of cynicism.’ People like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and shows like South Park and Family Guy are often clever and amusing. But, at the end of the day, after they have skewered moralistic pretension, those shows don’t leave you much to take home besides a vented spleen.
Meanwhile the war grinds on, unemployment rises—especially among minority males—social institutions like schools and hospitals struggle, and you get the sense that something somewhere needs to change.
Actually that is the title of a book our Case Library series will read and discuss this summer, Everything Must Change. I look forward to reading the book because the title seems to have captured a deep and prevalent grassroots sentiment.
But without having to read a book or solve vast social problems, I’d like to suggest that we consider adopting Stephen’s brave witness to the truth as the ultimate weapon in our struggle against the forces of darkness in the world.
In Stephen’s case, it was his commitment and personal relationship to the Risen Christ—as a living, guiding force in his day to day existence—that enabled him to trust the truth of his words more than fear the response he might get or what people would think or say.
The question this story raises for us today is not are we willing to put ourselves in some situation where we are stoned to death or thrown overboard or lynched by an angry mob.
The question, if we take our faith seriously and have our eyes open to everyday injustices, is: ‘what cause would we be willing to sacrifice our security and self-interest for? Maybe it’s also a cause some of us would be willing to die for.’
On what issues, in what relationships, would we be willing to stick our necks out rather than calculate gains vs. losses. I believe some issue calls each of us to transcend our self-interest: the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from church and society; the vortex of defeat and violence that claims so many urban teenagers; corporate self-dealing; policies and practices that will permanently alter the planet. What is it for you?
If we let self-interest govern what we are willing to speak about and act on then we will lose our appreciation for the richness and beauty of life. Life will seem flat. The French “ennui” or boredom will creep over our living like a deathly mold and fungus. We will succumb finally to what the ancients called “acedia” or lack of purpose and depression.
You see, paradoxically, our self-interest is served when we exhibit the courage in our actions that we demonstrate with our lips about our deepest beliefs. We become more robust, healthy, and alive. The planet promises to fulfill God’s vision at the time of creation. The peace and hope of shalom survive another day.
What better message for Maxwell Thomas Ackley and his generation, than the courage to risk what is precious for the truth, for life, for the human family? But how will they learn unless they see us taking such risks?
Unless I miss my guess, many of us here today are named Saul. And though we may not be directly involved in some perpetuation of damage to others or the earth – we have not expressed our disapproval either.
Yet, we’re watching the coats, as it were, of the polluters, the robber barons, the dictators in our midst as they prey upon the weak and destroy the world we live in achieving their short-sighted and selfish aims.
But you know what happened to Saul. He saw the light and received a new name. No longer persecutor but liberator and builder. He traveled to every village and town he could find, putting his life on the line daily. He wrote letters encouraging fledgling believers to allow nothing to stand in the way of letting the truth of God’s victory over death shape their homes and churches and neighborhoods.
The question today is this: where is God calling you and me to let go of our shrunken notions of security and self interest, to speak the truth in love and let the chips fall where they may.
Isn’t it safe to say that the future of our city, the future of the human family and the future of the earth depends upon us and many others doing just that! Amen.