"And you continue, so bullheaded! Calluses on your hearts, flaps on your ears! Deliberately ignoring the Holy Spirit, you're just like your ancestors. Was there ever a prophet who didn't get the same treatment? Your ancestors killed anyone who dared talk about the coming of the Just One. And you've kept up the family tradition—traitors and murderers, all of you. You had God's Law handed to you by angels—gift-wrapped!—and you squandered it!" (The Message, Acts 51-53)
This reading is the culmination of Stephen’s trial before the Temple Authorities. Stephen had been critical of the veneration and worship of the Temple, instead of God. His accusations offended the Temple authorities. They put Stephen on trial and Stephen presented a summary of Israelite history, a history of repeatedly receiving and rejecting God’s grace. Stephen accuses the authorities of following the same pattern in their execution of Jesus. Stephen’s accusations enrage them. So they killed Stephen, turning to sacred, lawful violence and death to relieve themselves from their distress.
I believe the death penalty is a mortal sin committed by our society. I would like to imitate Stephen’s structure of argument (without the name) calling to make my case. [I am indebted to the writings of Rene Girrard for the following interpretation.]
Holy Scriptures reveal our fallen tendency to turn to violence. Cain kills his brother Able (Gen. 4) in an attempt to relieve his envy and jealousy. Moses kills an Egyptian soldier in a rage over the violent treatment of an Israelite slave (Exodus 2:12). David, in an adulterous, lustfull, plot, arranges for Uriah to be killed in battle (2 Samuel 11). Elijah kills 450 prophets of Baal (1 Kings 19) in a zealous religious fervor. In all cases, the killers face their shame and God lets them live with the consequences. Cain gets separated from the presence of God but God loves him and protects him from others killing him in retribution. David acknowledges his sin to God and suffers through the grief of his son’s death. Elijah runs to the mountains and in his meditations realizes that God exists not in the mighty storms that characterized Elijah’s ministry but instead God is in the ‘silence’ (1 Kings 19: 12).
Holy Scriptures show us story after story of our attempts to use violence: sometimes explained by human failings; sometimes explained as acts of God; sometimes justified as religious zealotry. Again and again, violence fails to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus’ execution, death, and resurrection are God’s ultimate revelation of the failure and futility of sacred/lawful violence and the resurrection shows God’s victory over redemptive violence. It is up to us to give up our culture of violence or God will continue to let us live with the consequences.
I write this meditation as part of the ministry of a congregation that choose Saint Stephen as its namesake. In what ways are we/you called to imitate Stephen, to name the sin we see in the world, to name it with Love, and challenge the world to do better?
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