The Hard Truth
Acts 7:54-60
Acts 7:54-60 (NRSV):
54 When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. 55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him, and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.
“When they heard these things”? Man, what did this guy say? Whatever it was struck a nerve, to put it lightly. Enraged. Ground their teeth. Covered their ears. With a loud shout all rushed together against him. Dragged him out of the city and stoned him. In this scene, I think we see humanity at its best and its worst. So let’s talk about that.
This is a tragic, violent story. I don’t want to downplay this, but I do also want to make it easier to find ourselves in the story, maybe by lowering the stakes a bit.
Now, I am going to tell you what Stephen said, momentarily, but I suggest that what we hold onto and let haunt us a little bit, maybe, is the reaction to whatever Stephen says, as well as his final words, regardless of what prompted this violent response.
Prophets are critics. They’re not bullies, who demean others to compensate for something. They speak–sometimes imperfectly, and you don’t need to be perfect to call out harm and injustice–they speak out of concern for their community.
I know it can be difficult to receive criticism well, even if it's coming from a loving, justice-oriented place, even if it could help us. When have you been told a truth that you didn’t really like hearing? What did that feel like, in your body? What did you do, in response? It can be difficult to offer criticism too, even if we know something really needs to be addressed. When have you been the one telling the inconvenient truth?
And there’s a danger in being too hospitable to critique, right? Just because someone is distressed by something we’ve said or done, doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve erred. Others might be speaking out of fear or anxiety or lack of information or a hidden agenda, not because they are aligned with Love.
Discernment is needed, because we can’t give undue permission to others to define us or tear us down. But there are times where difficult but clarifying words spoken by a friend are a potential gift.
So why do we resist criticism? Many possible reasons, I think. Maybe those whose self-image has been heavily formed by punishment-rewards-based religion live with nagging uncertainty about whether they’re good enough; and so when a shortcoming or harmful action is pointed out, despite their efforts to mask their flaws, maybe it’s hard not to panic, and then deny, attack, reverse victim and offender, or whatever strategies people use to say “not listening.”
Maybe people resist criticism because they just don’t have a deep self-understanding, and so rather than say “yeah, that sounds like a place I go when I’m scared or stressed” they say “that’s not me, how dare you!” Maybe it’s a fear of losing connection, like if you tell me about a harmful behavior, this is an indication that I’m going to be rejected or excluded from friendship, from community.
Maybe some don’t know how to hold an unhurried and curious space for a critique, and so rush to “you’re totally right!” or “you’re completely wrong!” or “I’ve got to fix this right now!” or “well you’re no better!” or some form of “fine, I’ll just quit.” Maybe some don’t know how to be gentle with themselves, to tenderly remind ourselves “I am a good person and this feedback will help me lean into that goodness.”
Stephen’s final words capture that last thought, for me. Stephen speaks not to eviscerate his enemies who are too far gone; he speaks to invite his fellow humans into community, into participation, into growth. He speaks with hope and with Love.
So who is Stephen? He gets two chapters, Acts 6 and 7. If this room were filled with teenagers the collective roar of “six-seven” would be too much to withstand. At least when that expression was trendy a few months ago, it’s hard to keep up.
Stephen is chosen by others in his community, to help with food distribution to widows whose needs were being overlooked, and because the other disciples didn’t want to do such work, preferring to pray and “serve the word” (6:3). That’s a little weird, but okay.
“Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people” (6:8). Given his role I assume his care for those in need was one of these wonders and signs, which is a very Jesus-y kind of wonder and sign.
Well, some of the religious leaders–and just as I’m unwilling to indict all of Christianity in one fell swoop, the same is true of Judaism, a tradition filled with Love and with those who’ve lost their way, just like Christianity–some of these leaders didn’t like what Stephen was doing and saying and so demeaned his character, and eventually used their clout to get him arrested (6:8-13). They could not “withstand” his wisdom, says Luke. They accused him of blasphemy, of misrepresenting at least their version of God.
They stirred up the crowds to create distrust and animosity toward Stephen; they, verse 12-13: “set up false witnesses who said, ‘This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.” Not really fair. Jesus didn’t want to abolish his religious tradition but to help people live into its true purpose. But we know that people easily misunderstand or even…deliberately misunderstand?...if what they’re hearing feels threatening in some way. And we are sweet creatures, humans, but certainly capable of being manipulated.
Luke describes Stephen as having the “face of an angel.” Maybe a little bit of an early church crush here? Maybe? Given how much Luke venerates Stephen and compares him to Jesus, this might indicate Luke’s grief, even, as he tells Stephen’s story.
In Acts 7, we get Stephen’s speech, the precursor to his death. He gives a kind of theological history lesson, going way back to Abraham, and that initial call to leave the familiar for the unknown, which we talked about here a couple of months ago.
He talks about Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph–all those Genesis bros–and especially of God’s protection of Joseph through his traumatic moments to his surprisingly powerful position in Egypt that allowed him to help his family and many others. He talks about his ancestors’ experience as “resident aliens” (7:6).
He talks about Moses, growing up in Egypt, also coming into a powerful position but never losing sight of the oppressed, even getting into some trouble by standing up for someone being bullied and taking this a little too far, but ultimately becoming the key figure in liberating his people from their Egyptian oppression. Moses wanders with the people in the wilderness for decades, and witnesses them lose their way, creating a golden calf to worship, which I think, even if that were literal, is helpful for us, and Stephen’s audience, to receive as a spacious and thought-provoking symbol. “What’s our country’s golden calf, or American Christianity’s golden calf, or our own?” we might ask.
Stephen speaks of Joshua, David, and Solomon and, regardless of our feelings about them, frames them as key figures in the unfolding tradition in which Jesus, Stephen, and his about-to-be-livid audience are situated: the story of God’s loving participation in the life of this community and world. Stephen makes a point that Quakers can appreciate, that while Solmon built a house for God, the One Who is Loving Mystery “does not dwell in houses made with human hands.” (7:48). Where does God live, then? Stephen quotes a prophet: “What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” (7:49-50). In other words, “look around you: every person, every creature, every tree. That’s where God is: deeply, profoundly everywhere.”
You may sense that Stephen’s story contains a few implicit critiques, told in the indirect form of a story. You know–make you wonder without being too explicit. Well, Stephen reaches his much more direct and punchy conclusion: “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones who received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it” (7:51-53).
Stephen, obviously forgetting the rule of giving nine compliments before one criticism, speaks directly and emphatically. “Your stubborn resistance to change and learning puts you in opposition with the Holy Spirit, ever leading us forward, like that initial call to Abraham. You, like your ancestors, persecute prophets who speak life-saving truths to you, calling you back to the way of Love that is the foundation of your tradition.
“When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen.” To say it once more, whatever is happening here is not a Jewish problem, it’s a human problem. We’re all capable of losing our way, and many of us struggle with being criticized, even when it is a kindness to us.
Maybe you have found yourself in the place of Stephen: being the one speaking an upsetting, distressing truth to others, giving critical feedback not met with immediate gratitude but with reactivity and resentment. Or you’ve been close to being like Stephen: feeling a nudge to speak up, but not quite ready, for any number of reasons.
And maybe you have found yourself in the place of those who become so mad they grind their teeth, sweating, tensing, shaking, stomping, clenching their fists, until, instead of finding a healthy way to release that tension, they turn to violence. Unable to cope with the criticism, they kill the messenger. Turn the problem from my growth areas, to your “vile” words. I’m not the problem, you’re the problem. Classic human.
They are right on the edge of a total meltdown, when Stephen speaks as though he’s having an epiphany, which could have been upsetting for many reasons, but probably acts as a sort of Divine validation of Stephen’s speech and ministry, and so becomes the final straw: they’re trying to write him off, before he essentially says, “I speak the heart of God.” That’s just too much for these people, and they completely lose it.
Stephen dies. How others, how we respond to that death, matters. For me, Stephen is not exemplary because he died, because he’s a martyr. Stephen is exemplary because he bravely called people toward the kind of compassionate work of feeding widows he was doing, and because of his generous and unfailing hope in these people. His death is tragic, and should not have happened. We needn’t valorize martyrdom.
Many of you remember the Columbine shooting, on April 20, 1999. Two of the 13 shooting victims, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, became kind of legendary in the evangelical church for being martyrs, allegedly proclaiming their faiths to the shooters, and were venerated with books and Christian pop songs around the turn of the millennium. A lot of money was made telling their story.
Except that…it was not true? It eventually came out that these faith confessions never happened, and yet a whole generation of Christian teens were invited to fantasize about becoming a martyr, not for the sake of helping the hungry and healing a violent world, but for more self-serving reasons. What should have mobilized these Christians to work to end gun violence in the US, instead fed into the growing persecution narrative of white evangelicalism. Many rallied to celebrate a fabricated hero, not to condemn an atrocity. The problem was framed as hatred of Christian faith, not preventable gun violence. Opportunism took the place of weeping.
Stephen calls people to find their way back to Love, to care for widows and orphans, among others. Others don’t like it, and respond dramatically. We can celebrate Stephen for his courage and honesty and compassion, without celebrating him for dying, or turning him into someone who died for doctrines or personal glory. We can lament his death, and let it catalyze us to prevent as much future violence as we possibly can.
What I also find inspiring about Stephen, beyond his courage in telling the truth to people he had to know would not give him a warm hug at the end of his speech, is his remarkably gracious appraisal of his murderers. You might recognize his prayer “do not hold this sin against them.” These are apparently Stephen’s last words and, according to Luke, who wrote both Acts and, surprise, Luke, are Jesus’ final words. Luke 23:33-34: “they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’”
Stephen, and Jesus, take a gracious, comprehensive view on the people hurting them that refuses labels, refuses to make their harm-causing the entirety of who they are, refuses to see people as monsters, but as people. Stephen, like Jesus, looks at these people, with compassion. While he might have called them stiff-necked, in frustration, now, I think he only laments. These poor people. Not evil. Ignorant, maybe. Lacking information. Manipulated. Desperate. Hungry, thirsty, not getting what they need. They are just people, hurting in their own way, lacking something crucial. The goodness they most certainly possess is overpowered, here, by their violent self-protective impulses.
Stephen and Jesus don’t resent their killers. They seem to sympathize, and appear unwilling to give up on them, even in the final moments of their lives. Forgive them. Don’t hold this against them. There is goodness there that can be found and nurtured. There is still hope. Stephen holds on to their humanity, and potential for change.
I am reminded of a Biblical almost-tragedy, when a woman accused of adultery is nearly stoned, until Jesus intervenes: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7). In that story, the would-be murderers take a moment to take what folks in recovery call a “fearless moral inventory” or what mother of Quakerism Margaret Fell meant when she said “deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, for the good of your souls….It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make all manifest which lodges in you” (https://dailyquaker.com/2024/06/let-the-light-search-you/). In today’s story, this self-reflection does not happen, and Stephen suffers for it.
I imagine this left an impression on Saul, maybe a haunting catalyst for his own eventual transformation. He doesn’t fully participate, like those who take their coats off to prepare for violence, but he’s there. It makes a good transformation story if Saul actively cheers them on and then finds his way to Love-inspired community. But it also makes a good transformation story if Saul is a passive, complicit observer, not throwing stones himself but doing little to stop others. The journey from evil to good is a nice narrative, but the journey from doing nothing to doing something may be more relatable.
How have you responded when someone told you a truth you didn’t really want to hear? If it’s hard to think back, think forward. Imagine someone telling you a hard truth. How do you think you’d respond? Assuming you discerned that they’re at least kind of right, since nobody has the right to just pick on us, would you respond with curiosity and graciousness? Or with rage, and some kind of counterattack? Or by withdrawing, escaping the situation and person entirely, because it’s just too painful?
Hate crimes or crimes of passion or whatever you want to call what happened to Stephen, have not gone away. We should take Stephen’s death seriously, not as a martyr to emulate, but as a story that sparks efforts to stop things like this from happening, as much as we can, whether through policy or educating our neighbors or other means.
But I also think we can recognize that this experience, while dramatic, might shed light on our own experiences as truthtellers and truth-receivers. What’s something we see in Stephen, we’d like to emulate? What’s something we see in others, we’d hope not to?
We could, unlike the mob, start by not covering our ears, and choosing to listen, together–which seems like a good place to start, as a Quaker meeting.
Queries:
Who are the truthtellers–or what are the truths–that our world is ignoring?
Why do people become violent? Why do people have difficulty with criticism?
What helps people more graciously and fearlessly listen to critical feedback?
Where is brave truthtelling needed? Where do I need to give loving feedback?