Feast of Saint Stephen, First Martyr

Lectionary: 696

When they hand you over,
do not worry about how you are to speak
or what you are to say.
You will be given at that moment what you are to say.
For it will not be you who speak
but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

We pray daily and many times a day, "Do not lead us into temptation." Temptation translates a Greek word and a Hebrew concept that is extraordinarily complex; there may be a dozen other words that might serve as well. But temptation is close enough for our purposes. It refers to the trial that awaits every newborn and reborn Christian. And the history of martyrs makes it clear. 

Apocalyptic literature seems to refer to the end of human history, but we have experienced many such events as various ages came to an end and others began. Each was "the end of the world as we knew it." Every war caps a prewar era, for instance, and Americans often refer to the Antebellum South that preceded the American Civil War. A strange culture with a peculiar institution disappeared under the fury of warring armies. Few even saw the inevitability of the war, and no one before April 1861 could have described what might unfold when (and if) the conflict ended. Abolitionists hoped for freedom for African slaves but they didn't suppose Jim Crow would replace slavery. 

Some periods of dramatic change, like that which happened in the Roman Empire after Jesus rose from the dead, are preceded by violent persecutions. Society doesn't like change. Politics and economics like things the way they are, predictable and stable. No one wants a wind which cannot be forecast or anticipated: nor do they have much patience with people who are driven by gales of the Holy Spirit. 

Saint Stephen was the first martyr of a new age; and no religious establishment wanted to hear what he had to say. They refused to listen to his excellent, insightful explanation of how the Lord's life, death, and resurrection made perfect sense to anyone who knew Jewish history. They knew the story but could not understand what had just happened. Nor would they accept Gamaliel's confident advice, "Let's wait and see!" And so they killed Stephen. And thousands of others. And that slaughter, which never ended entirely, continues today in Europe and Africa. 

Jesus had predicted it and assured his disciples in advance that "not a hair of your heads" would be lost. They had only to "remain in me as I remain in you." 

When Christians feel reasonably assured and comfortable in a given situation, such as the United States, they might wonder if the "temptations" were really necessary. The same contented attitude might ask, "Could we not have avoided the Civil War?"
Apparently not. For eighty-seven years the US Congress was preoccupied almost entirely with avoiding the conflict. But it came anyway. 

Did the martyrs have to die? Or was that some Christian preacher's hysterical teaching? 
It was necessary, just as Jesus's going away was necessary. No explanation in advance is likely to satisfy skeptics. But faith must be tested and proven true.

"On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you." (John 14:20)