April 20, 2008
Fifth Sunday of Easter (Year A)
Acts 7:55-60; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
We only get to read from Acts during the Easter season, and so, at least once during Easter, I like to try to wrestle with that portion of scripture. But this week this particular story, the stoning of Stephen as Saul, later to become the Apostle Paul, stood and held the coats of the stone throwers, has wrestled me!
I thought of these stones put in our African display [at our Altar], river stones, and wondered what it would be like to be stoned to death, to be pelted constantly until finally, blessedly I would think, a stone strikes a part of your head that renders you unconscious while the deed is finished.
But then I wondered, who could throw such a stone? Who could pick a stone from an arsenal of piled rocks and fling it thunderously at a man whose arms and legs were bound and was forced to stand in a hole about up to his waist? I wondered at Saul/Paul watching.
Now, of course, today we do not stone people to death, well, not in America anyway, or at least not publicly, though almost as barbarically we punish people with death for a variety of reasons which I won’t go into or discuss this morning. But what I want to speak of this morning is what we do do to each other. We do pelt each other with words or actions or behavior that causes emotional, spiritual, or psychological bleeding. Often we use words to hurt the people we love the most. Such pelting does not describe the whole of who we are or the whole of our behavior as the stoning of Stephen is the whole of what we know of these stone throwers this morning. We do know that we are now often aware of our pelting of others, and how self justifying we are in our explanation of it, how self serving. This is why it is often true that the ones we care about most are the ones we are most capable of hurting. Knowing these things to be true, makes it all the more remarkable to me that Stephen is reported to have said as he was being pelted, “Lord, do not hold this against them.” How many of us can do that?
Stephen was, as you likely know, one of the first deacons of the church. He served selflessly as deacons do, and reminds me of how generous, aware of the needs of others and willing to hear and find good in every side of every one, even when metaphorical stoning seems to be taking place, Maggie, our Deacon is. She stands in Stephen’s line.
But still to forgive people, and to ask God to forgive people as they are with gritted teeth and furious anger wrongly throwing stones to cause your death, one wonders, I wonder, how a human being can do that?
For me it brings up the whole notion of forgiveness in very graphic terms: as God forgives us and as we are, as faithful followers, called to forgive each other. Well, it seems too much sometimes, and yet here is this story to remind us, as if Jesus’ words of forgiveness on the cross were not enough. It tells us that mere mortals can forgive as deeply and selflessly as Christ did.
The men (and they would have been men) who threw the stones at Stephen were probably the most religious and faithful members of the synagogue. They loved their children, provided well for them. They gave generously to the widows and orphans, studied torah and prayed constantly. When they threw the stones, it was with the absolute surety that they were protecting all that was sacred from a blaspheming idolater who dared to want to shake the very roots of all they held sacred. They threw stones knowing they were right, and that there was no possibility that Stephen was innocent. They did not see their own culpability or guilt and certainly no sin in what they were doing.
I would even imagine that Stephen’s begging God not to hold this “sin” against them made them even more furious, that it fueled their muscles, gave them a shot of adrenaline to throw those stones even more vigorously. They were justified and righteous in their behavior.
Anger and fury are like that in human beings. They are fueled when the recipient of the anger and fury doesn’t bleed or crumble up into a ball of inert guilt for being the root and cause of our own pain and anger.
I think of those angry, righteous stone throwers. They were not bad men, no more sinful than anyone else, likely no more sinful than even Stephen. They were doing as people ”always did.” And they were doing it in God’s name because their way of knowing God was the only way and the right way, even in the pluralistic world in which they lived. They were right and Stephen was a threat to all they believed in.
To allow Christ to be the Messiah was to give up their dream of a new Israel. To allow Jesus to be Messiah was to deny their prayers and hopes and dreams for themselves and their children. To allow Jesus to be the One this Stephen said he was would have been to rip their lives to shreds, all they worked for, gave, and did. But, of course, their anger and fury masked their fears of their own losses should the peaceful healer and lover of all souls be the Messiah.
I have come to believe that fear and anger are evil partners. They prevent us, by fueling each other, from being able to trust in God’s eternal love. Fear prevents us from forgiving as we have been forgiven. Fear prevents us from seeing a beloved of God in the one who throws stones at us. Fear owns us when we fail to forgive, and the fear does as much damage as the stones.
This week a remarkable thing happened in the world. The Pope asked forgiveness of the children now adults who were raped and molested by priests. The admission of such guilt is profound, and I can only imagine the fear the Pope had to overcome to be able to ask that forgiveness. But what do these people do now? How do they forgive? How do they forget life crippling stones thrown at them, stealing their childhood, ruining their lives? If they are brave and if they can let go of the fear that binds them, fear of not being a victim any longer, fear of defining their lives by the evil that was done unjustly to them, fear of trusting others, they can be healed. They can truly become whole. That is what forgiveness does; it makes us whole.
Stephen forgave even those who did not ask for it. When we do that our souls are freed. His soul was freed. The victims’ souls can be freed. When we forgive each other, especially those we love the most and care for most deeply, layers of evil wither and die, and we will be free in ways that we cannot even imagine from the place of anger, and fury and self righteousness. For evil cannot live in the face of love and forgiveness.
I do not know the fears with which you are living. I do not know the stones that are or have been pelted at you and what they have done to your soul. But I do know that if you can find the courage and faithfulness to forgive, not because it is asked, but because by faith you can give it, that you will become a new person and Christ will work in you more than you can possibly imagine. I promise you that it is true. I also know that it is not easy. Still my prayer is: "May the world know us by our capacity to forgive, to forgive as we have been forgiven.”
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd