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.





I should have read Luke Timothy Johnson's Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church more than once. He opened new avenues of thought in my mind and prayer in my heart. I think more of the Holy Spirit's action in our Church and my life.
Dr. Johnson shows how Saint Luke highlights the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus and the life of the Church. The two books -- the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles -- were meant to be read together. As the Spirit impelled Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, it drove the disciples from Jerusalem into the whole world. It's unfortunate they are grouped separately in our New Testament.
In fact, the Holy Spirit is manifest on every page of the Old and New Testaments, if we are willing to feel that Presence.
In today's gospel Jesus reassures his disciples that, when they come for you, the Spirit will be with you.
The birth of the early church was not a welcome event, neither in Jerusalem nor in Rome. The exuberant joy of Jesus' disciples met serious resistance and sobering hostility as soon as they arrived to announce the Good News. The Spirit assured them their message was needed. The world is dying without the Word of God. Wars, disease, famine, and pestilence plague the nations because they do not know God.
And because they will not listen.
Just look at what happened to Christmas. At its core is the story of an infant born in poverty, and a man who will die by public execution. Christians celebrate it as a wonderful story of God's mercy but it somehow became an orgy of consumption and forced merriment -- with little reference to God, much less The Burning Babe.
In response the Church introduced the feast of Saint Stephen. Let us temper our joy with a sobering story of martyrdom. Rather than discarding the whole Yuletide, as some denominations did, let us consider what happened to Stephen.
His joy is palpable and irrepressible. He is on a roll, a gambler who can't lose, a tennis player firing aces, a basketball player hitting nothing but net. He has given himself to the Holy Spirit and the Spirit speaks through him. Cursing, beating and bruising stones cannot distract him. Even as he is dying he keeps his eyes fixed on the Lord and shouts to everyone,

"Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

This "protomartyr" follows the footprints of Jesus and demonstrates the power of the Holy Spirit for every Christian who would set out on the Way.