The Stoning of Stephen

 Twenty-first Thursday after Pentecost

Jennifer gets a point in the quiz for correctly identifying Judas as the one who said that the money should be given to the poor. The context is the anointing at Bethany in John 12. Mary of Bethany anoints the feet of Jesus with a costly ointment of pure nard. Judas complains that the ointment could have been sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor. I don't have my scorecard with me, but to the best of my recollection Stuart holds the lead in the quiz with 2 1/2 points; Nell close behind with two points. The first person to five points gets a candy bar,

 

We return today to our Acts Bible Study with the story of stoning of Stephen. Please read Acts 7:54-8:1. Stoning was the most common means of capital punish used by Jewish courts. Jewish executions were rare. At this time they were illegal. Only the Roman government had the authority to execute, and they executed frequently. When it came to a Jewish court executing a fellow Jew, the Romans would commonly look the other way. 

 

As Stephen finishes his rather lengthy defense speech (Acts 7:2-53), He looks into the heavens and has a vision, which he tells aloud. He sees the heavens open and "the son of man" sitting at the right hand of God. There is an oddity in this statement. In the Gospels, Jesus and only Jesus uses the phrase "Son of Man," normally as an identity for himself. The phrase occurs many times in all four gospels, but is never used by anyone other than Jesus. Stephen's words are the only other time in the NT that the phrase is used. Stephen's vision recalls Daniel's vision in Daniel 7:13, "As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him." This is the only time in the OT that the phrase is used. The (non)exception is that God frequently addresses Ezekiel as "son of man," but in those cases the phrase simply means "man." (I would translate those God to Ezekiel phrases as something like, "Ezekiel, you son of a gun"). I really dislike the translation "human one," which we find in the Common English Bible (an attempt to be gender neutral with a phrase that really isn't). Note than both Daniel and Stephen use the phrase only when they are seeing in a vision. Christians understand Daniel's vision as a prophecy of Jesus. 

 

Stephen's final words, "Lord...receive my spirit," and "Lord, do not hold this sin against them," recall the words of Jesus on the cross in Luke 23:34, 46.

 

In Acts 8:1 we read that Saul, a.k.a. Paul, was apparently a witness to the stoning and approved of it.

 

Stephen was the first Christian martyr. There would be many thousands of others during the time of the Roman Empire and myriads more in the time since then up to the present. One of the questions I remember a Sunday School teacher asking me when I was 13 or so was, "Would you be willing to die for your faith?" The question haunted me. I know that the answer for me now would be "yes," in part because I don't have that many years left anyway. When I was a youth, it was a much harder question. 

 

The name "Stephen," (Stephanos  in Greek) means "crown." Later in the Roman period we have Christian writers speaking of "The crown of martyrdom." 

 

In liturgical calendars which keep saint's days the color red is used for saints who were martyrs, red being the color of blood. In the third century the church father Tertullian wrote, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

 

Faithfully,

Christian