To Die For?

Adapted from the sermon preached May 7, 2023 at First Presbyterian Church-Memphis.

Questions are a big part of my daily life. Now, when I say that, I don’t merely mean the deep questions and ponderings that I engage as a pastor, avid theologian, and human being. Questions are a big part of my daily life because I have three children, ages five and under. It may or may not surprise you to know that they ask a lot of questions. Small questions, like, what do worms eat? (Which we usually respond to with, “Alexa, what do worms eat?”) Medium questions, like, “Why did Martin Luther King, Jr. have to march to tell people that kids shouldn’t go to different schools based on their skin colors?” And big, usually unanswerable questions, like, “What happens when we die?” and “What does God look like?” I would say that questions comprise about 60% of their verbalizations. And that’s not including the frequent filler sentence of, “Mommy, I need to ask you something.” Or as my youngest says, “Mommy, I need to tell you a question.”

I have learned that I am not alone in experiencing this reality. In 2013, a study in the UK noted that 4 year-old girls are the most inquisitive of all children – asking 390 questions per day! They average a question every 1 minute and 56 seconds during their waking hours!

Questions are a powerful thing. They represent one of the main ways we gain insight and knowledge. They often help us to shape our realities and allow us to better define the parameters of our lives. And yet, I can assure you most adults do not ask 390 questions per day. Something happens as we get older. We learn more, know more, we gain the ability to seek answers for ourselves. And perhaps we even learn how to ask the “right” questions. The questions that really get at the heart of the information we are seeking.

I was discussing the subject of questions with a fellow pastor recently and we noted how some of the most powerful lines in the Bible, are questions. Some of the most powerful teachings, are not proclamations, they are questions. Questions like:

Am I my brother’s keeper?
If mortals die, will they live again?
From where will my help come?
Who shall I send?
For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their lives?
Who do you say that I am?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
Why do search for the living among the dead?

This is just a sampling of the list that my friend and I started rattling off to one another. Questions are powerful. They open up abundant possibilities. They cater to the complexities of life and often invite us into deeper pondering than statements.

Our text today, tells the story of the stoning of Stephen, who became the first martyr of record in the early Christian movement. It’s a very heavy text, hard to read. It tells of the public murder of a man sharing his faith with the religious leaders of the day, with those who were unmoved by the Jesus story his was telling. And it all begins with a question… In the beginning of Acts chapter 7, the high priest asks Stephen, “Are these things so?” This launches Stephen into a long discourse – nearly 1300 words – explaining why Jesus IS the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures, the one they had been waiting for.

And, I suspect he realizes his passionate speech is not winning over any listeners because he gets a little sassy at the end, calling his listeners “stiff-necked” and “uncircumcised in heart and ears.” And then he asks them a question – “Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute?” In other words, of course it makes sense that the Messiah would suffer a fate like Jesus. This is what humans always do. We always get it wrong.

But it doesn’t work. The text tells us, “They became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen.” They don’t just dismiss him as crazy, or simply tell him he’s wrong and move on. The anger that these folks had for Stephen led them to drag him out of the city, and stone him to death. And just like Jesus, as his injuries are mounting, as his body is being broken, Stephen calls out to God, saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And the last thing he says right before he dies, “Lord, do not hold this thing against them.”

As I worked with this text this week, I kept feeling pulled into the horror of stoning someone to death. Much like the crucifixion of Jesus we explored again a few weeks ago, the idea of killing someone while a crowd looks on, is so profoundly horrific to me. And as I imagined this situation with Stephen in my mind, I couldn’t help but find myself thinking about an event earlier this year that evoked the same feelings of horror in me.  

We all can recall that on Janaury 7th of this year, Tyre Nichols was beaten to death while a crowd of folks either participated directly or looked on, saying and doing nothing. It feels an interesting coincidence to me that the same week that the lectionary text is the stoning of Stephen is the same week that Tyre’s name is in the headlines again after the results of his official autopsy were released, indicating his cause of death was blunt force trauma, no doubt the same injuries that took the life of Stephen those many years ago.

When Memphis and the entire world became aware of what had happened to Tyre on the night of January 7th, our whole community seemed to become fixated on one particular question – Who was there? We wanted to know who participated in this beating, who participated in the unwarranted traffic stop, who were the officers who arrived and stood by, who were the paramedics that responded and failed to render aid. For several weeks, we heard new names, as folks lost their jobs and some were charged with crimes. Who was there?

And what about at the stoning of Stephen, who was murdered for challenging the religious authorities of the day? Who was there? We only know one name for sure. The text tells us, “ 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.” Saul. From Tarsus. The same bad guy Saul who will encounter Jesus on the Road to Damascus just two chapters later. The same Saul, who will become the Apostle Paul, arguably one of the greatest architects of the early church. The same Paul to whom half of the books of the New Testament are attributed. Who was there? Paul was there! Paul participated in the horrific stoning of the very first Christian martyr, either actively or passively. He was there. What are we to make of that?

When I read about how Stephen died, sharing the story of Jesus, and then imitating the death of Jesus – calling on Jesus to receive his spirit, and asking God to forgive those who were killing him – I think of how powerful it must be to be a witness to someone willing to die for something they believe in. We hold a special place in our hearts and our histories for martyrs – for those who know that they are doing God’s work in this world and, like Jesus, follow that mission to the end, knowing it will cost them their lives.

There are so many who have died for the sake of their religious convictions - for working to advance the rights of the enslaved, the rights of the poor, the rights of women, the rights of people of color, the rights of LGBTQIA folks. We know so many of their names and their stories, and what we know is true of martyrs is that their ultimate sacrifice of life for the sake of something they believe to be true and just is frequently a significant event in any movement.

Martyrs amplify a message. Martyrs can be a climax or a turning point in a movement. Martyrs become part of how we tell the stories of our history. Martyrdom gets our attention because there are so few things on this planet that any of us believe in so strongly that we would willingly step forward and die for.

We talk about the conversion of Saul to Paul on the Road to Damascus as an instantaneous shift. Right before God appears Paul is said to be muttering threats of death against Christians as he rides along. But knowing that he was there, that he was a participant in the stoning of Stephen, really raises a question for me about the condition of Paul’s heart on that road to Damascus.

I have to believe that any human being who sees another human being willingly lose their life for a cause, especially when praying for forgiveness for their murderers as they are being killed, that a witness to that, is forever changed. Human beings are wired for self-preservation. It’s one of our primal instincts, to avoid harm and increase chances of survival. So to witness another human willingly lose their life over something changes us. It raises questions about our perceptions of truth and reality.

I wonder if by the time Christ encountered Paul on that Road to Damascus, his heart was no longer completely hardened. I wonder if his process of conversion actually began on that day when he stood by and watched Stephen being stoned to death. I wonder if his participation in the death of Stephen created the conditions which led to God choosing Saul to become Paul, in one of the most drastic conversions of all time. And what a twist this adds to our Christian story – that Paul, who was once happy to murder followers of Jesus, is later murdered himself for being a follower of Jesus, becoming a martyr as well.

We remember the martyrdom of Stephen as significant because he was the first person killed for the sake of our faith following the death of Jesus. But he was certainly not the last.

What I want to leave you with today is two more questions. What are you willing to die for? In a world that feels scarier and more violent all the time, what are those things you believe to be true so deeply that you would step out and risk everything for their sake?

Or, perhaps a better question – What are you willing to live for? In many ways the world that we inhabit is already dead. Our collective inaction following each and every mass shooting like the one yesterday in Texas tells me that. We are dead to sting of death, the pain of oppression, the hurts of our neighbors. The angels at the tomb asked the women, “Why do you search for the living among the Dead? He is not here. He has risen.” So what are you willing to live for? What compels you strongly enough to live in a culture characterized by death, indifference, and inaction.

So many questions, but two above all others today?

What are you willing to die for?
What are you willing to live for?

Stephen knew his answer. And in his fidelity to God, he and countless others, changed the course of human history.

May we all die and live with the same knowledge, confidence, and faith. Amen.