On the second day of Christmas, Mother Church gives us the first Christian martyr: Saint Stephen. Stephen was selected by the earliest Church in Jerusalem as one of what we now recognize as the first deacons. Along with six other men, the Apostles laid hands on Stephen, thus consecrating him for the sacred ministry.1
The criteria used to determine who was chosen to assist the Apostles by attending to the needs of the community while they devoted themselves to prayer and preaching was that those selected should be men of good repute who were “filled with the Spirit and wisdom.”2 As the history of the earliest Christian community as conveyed in the Acts of the Apostles unfolds, we subsequently hear about only two of the seven: Stephen and Philip.
As our reading this morning shows, Stephen entered into a dispute with some of his fellow Greek-speaking Jews and his “wisdom and spirit” was unmatchable.3 Without a doubt, the essence of this dispute was about whether Jesus is Messiah and Lord. Because they could not refute him, those disputing with Stephen drug him before the Sanhedrin. This is the same Jewish religious court, authorized by the Romans to settle religious disputes among the Jews, before which Jesus himself appeared, before being sent to Herod and then on to Pilate.
It was not only the seeming blasphemy of proclaiming Jesus not only as Messiah but as Lord that concerned his fellow Jews. What concerned them was if what Stephen asserted so convincingly were true this would mean big changes. This brings us to the crux of the message for today: to encounter Jesus means to change, repent, convert. The Incarnation of God’s Only Begotten Son, which is what we celebrate at Christmas, has implications for our lives. We make a grave error when we seek to reduce Christmas to the sentimental celebration of a one-off event in human history.
To follow Jesus means to be willing to change until you attain the fullness of his stature.4 As Saint John Henry Newman observed regarding the Christian doctrinal tradition: “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”5
Stoning of Saint Stephen, by Giovanni Battista Lucini, ca. 1680
But following Christ is never a matter of change for change’s sake. To be a follower of Christ is to open yourself to the transformative power of sanctifying grace and commit yourself to on-going conversion. Stephen serves as a model for this. One of the most difficult things to do is to forgive and love your enemies. This is so difficult, in fact, that it may well be impossible to do without the grace of God.
Stephen precisely demonstrates what Jesus teaches in today’s Gospel about not worrying what you might say when pressed as a Christian. You see, Stephen’s words were not calculated to save his own life. His life was already saved by Jesus’s passion, death, and resurrection. Hence, Stephen was a free man. As such, he wanted those persecuting him to experience the same freedom.
This freedom is what allowed to Stephen to take heed of Jesus’s words that appear several verses later in the same chapter of Matthew from which today’s Gospel reading is taken: “do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”6
The Lord desires you to have the same freedom Stephen enjoyed: freedom from the fear of death. Like our tendency to hate and despise our enemies, our fear of death is very human, all too human. Without delving into it, let me just note that note in passing that these two things are closely related.
Sadly, what is not included in the account of Stephen’s martyrdom in the lectionary, which ends with the next-to-last verse of Acts 7, is verse 60: “Then [Stephen] fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them”; and when he said this, he fell asleep.”7
Echoing the words of his Lord as he was being nailed to the cross, Stephen’s final words are an expression of the freedom knowing Christ Jesus brings. That the Lord came into the world to set us free from sin and death is the message of Christmas. It is also the message of Easter and Advent, Ordinary Time and Lent. It is the Gospel, which is Good News. It is this good news that, like Stephen, we are called to proclaim.
1 Acts 6:5-6.↩
2 Acts 6:3.↩
3 Acts 6:9-10.↩
4 Ephesians 4:13.↩
5 John Henry Newman, “Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine,” Chapter 1,Section 1, Part 7.↩
6 Matthew 10:28.↩
7 Acts 7:60.↩
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