EASTER 5 - The martyrdom of Stephen

ACTS 7: 51-60


It’s a story of religious violence, a story of the violent death of a religious dissident. A death brought about through the brutality of stoning!

Indeed our story leads us into the difficult subject of such a brutal method of killing being not merely suggested but actually commanded by religion.

Now today we think of stoning as being a punishment that belongs to the world of Islam. Indeed, the only countries I know of in which stoning is carried out are some of the countries in which Islam is the dominant faith. These include Saudi Arabia, Iran and parts of Afghanistan. Having seem a part of a video of this atrocious barbarity, I can only describe it a sickening and evil. Yet, it is worth noting that there is no endorsement of stoning within the Quran - rather it is the Hadith collections concerning the way of the Prophet that endorse this method of killing.

Today, there is a debate concerning such Hadiths within Islam. Indeed, amongst others, Tariq Ramadan the Muslim academic who has written extensively on an interpretation of Islam within modern society and who is currently lecturing at Oxford, has called for a moratorium on capital and corporal punishment in the Muslim world. And he is certainly far from alone in pursuing such an argument.

Now, I hope that Muslim reformers are successful. But before we think that stoning is simply an Islamic problem, it is possible that its acceptability in early Islamic society may owe something to the fact that its religious roots can be seen in the Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament. Within the Arabian Peninsula at the time of the Prophet, there were both Jewish and Christian presences. And indeed many of our Old Testament prophets are to be found within the Koran, people such as Abraham and Moses. So there would have been an exchange of religious ideas going on.

In this we learn much of stoning being promoted as an act required by God. The crimes for which the first five books of our Bible endorse stoning include;

- touching Mount Sinai

- cursing or blaspheming

- adultery (which includes urban rape victims not screaming loudly enough)

- preaching the wrong religion

- breaking the Sabbath

- cursing the King

- and my favourite which I occasionally remind James of, being a disobedient son.


Thank God that nowadays not even the most extreme, unbalanced Christian, in this country anyway, demands that those scriptures are adhered to.


Indeed, I cannot reconcile any teaching of a religion of love with such a practice of execution with maximum suffering as is the reality with stoning.

Actually, I would go much further. I cannot reconcile execution or indeed killing of any sort with following a religion of love. The five countries reported by Amnesty International as being responsible for 88% of known executions - China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the USA - merit pariah status in those parts of the world that claim to be civilised. Indeed, Amnesty’s estimate that at its current rate of executions, approximately 370 people will be executed by a bullet in the head during the Olympics makes all the excitement generated by people hopping, skipping and jumping, seem somewhat tawdry.

You see, as Christian, we have a particular interest in this subject. We follow a Lord and Saviour who was publicly and brutally executed by the powers of his day. And in his living and dying we are granted a picture of one whose perspective and values are as different as can be from those of the executioner. Indeed, the only time other than his own execution that we find Jesus near such an event, is the occasion recorded in John’s Gospel where a woman caught in adultery is brought before him. By the law of Moses, albeit that capital punishment was a matter for Rome, she merited stoning to death. Yet the response of Jesus was to challenge whoever was without sin to throw the first stone. And when the accusers melted away, he dismissed her with;

“Go now and leave your life of sin.”


See, at the heart of Jesus’ approach was the desire that people should learn from their failings and live better lives. Always at the core of his being was not a longing for law or justice but the unfolding of grace, that which is kinder to us than we can ever deserve - grace which the cross shows us being directed at us even when we are at our most vile. Oh may we never forget that we would be without hope in encountering a holy God were it not that the chief characteristic of that God is grace. But that grace is for us even when we are at our worst. As Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher put it;

“Nothing in man can be an effectual bar to God‘s love.”


Anyhow back to our Bible reading. It is as much a story of religious inspired violence as the Inquisition or those who fly planes into buildings. It is as much a case of mob violence and hatred as any example we see in the world today. And it is centred against a man called Stephen. This man was of those who had been set aside to take care of the needs of the most vulnerable people such as widows. He seems to have been diligent in this task. He seems also to have been a powerful witness on behalf of Jesus Christ. And so in response to this, a plot began amongst those within the synagogue who felt threatened by the new Christian movement. And so Stephen was tried for blasphemy - along with heresy the time old accusation that religious people have used against those with whom they disagree. But Stephen demonstrates great courage. Facing the Sanhedrin that had not so long before condemned Jesus, he gives it to them straight. He recites a history of his and their own peoples’ disobedience to God. One can imagine the heckles rising. But then as if he was the first person to contemplate writing a book entitled “How to lose friends and alienate people” he ends with a furious denounciation;

“You stiff necked people, with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are just like your fathers: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him - you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.”


Strong stuff! And it sure brought great fury upon him. For his religious judges drag him outside the city walls and there they stone him to death. And Stephen dies bravely with the prayer that Jesus should receive his Spirit and the entreaty that echoes that of Jesus on the cross, that this violent deed should not be held against the perpetrators.

And that is the end of the story. Or is it? You see, one of those present at this stoning was Paul or Saul as he then was. We do not know what impression the martyrdom of Stephen made on him. We know that at the time he approved - in other words he accepted a religious understanding that dehumanised him to the dignity of those who were other than him. And yet, one wonders if what he saw, might not have touched him somewhere in his soul even if it would take some time before he could identify with Stephen. But we know that heroic self sacrifice can bring great effects. Over a century later, when there had been many more Christian martyrs in the tradition of Stephen, Tertullion the African Christian leader who became Bishop of Carthage, would observe;

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

And down through history those words have been abundantly true. For the history of Christianity is a history in which many have suffered the ultimate penalty out of their adherence to Jesus Christ.

And why is this so powerful? In part it is because there is in the Gospel a pattern of death not being the end. We see it in Jesus Christ who was well and truly killed yet raised more alive than ever. We see it in the saints of history and even in our own age. Who can forget Archbishop Oscar Romero whose courageous stand against economic injustice and paramilitary violence led to his being slain as he celebrated the Mass - a man who had prophetically proclaimed just a week before that fateful gun shot;

“I have been frequently been threatened with death. I should tell you that as a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me I will come to life again in the Salvadorean people. If they kill me from the moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador, my death will be for the liberation of my people and as a testimony of hope for the future.”

How right he was, for today Oscar Romero remains a huge inspiration for Christians not just in El Salvador but throughout the world. You just cannot censor love. You cannot censor grace. You cannot censor the Gospel.

We are meeting in the season of Easter. We know only too well how we can devalue the lives of others and become persecutors just like the crowd calling for Jesus to be crucified or the mob that dragged Stephen to be stoned. We need to guard against the tendencies within ourselves to treat others as lesser, as expendable. We need to guard against the tendencies within ourselves to feel that our understanding is so right that we must stamp on those who see the world or even faith in a way that is different from us. For all of us have within us the possibilities of being persecutors for persecution is not just done by monstrous characters.

But also we need to live within the Easter hope that sees death giving way to resurrection. Sure, we may not have the courage of the army of martyrs whose blood has been shed but from the we can learn that violence, hatred and deaths are not last words. For they give way to peace, love and life. For the victory of all that is beautiful is ensured by the resurrection of Jesus - and so the triumph of the stone throwers is but a temporary aberration. The defeat of what they represent is truly inevitable.



ALWINGTON METHODIST CHURCH SUNDAY APRIL 20TH 2008