The celebration of Christmas lends itself to expressions of sentimentality. The gifts, the tinsel, the cookies and nog, the family gatherings around the tree, all work together to draw us out of the harsh reality of life and create a winter wonderland of nostalgic escape. Even our Christian worship focuses on the crèche with its smiling babe in a manger, surrounded by gently lowing animals and worshipful shepherds and wisemen. “Silent night! Holy night!” we sing, never minding the groans of Mary in labor nor the wails of a healthy newborn boy.
The architects of the church calendar, however, gave us a powerful antidote to these tendencies in this feast appointed for the day following the birth of our Lord. The description of brutal violence suffered by St. Stephen jolts us out of any sentimentality found in the crèche. His martyrdom, with its resonances of Jesus’ crucifixion, takes us from the manger to the cross before we become too attached to the sheep gathered around.
As the first martyr recorded in the Book of Acts, Stephen has become paradigmatic for what it means to speak the truth of the gospel and suffer for it. But he merely points to a greater paradigm. As he died, he said two things: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” These reflect the statements Jesus made while hanging on the cross as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, thus making a clear connection between Stephen and Jesus. Both ran afoul of the religious authorities, leading to their deaths, and both offered themselves into the care of God while forgiving their murderers. However, while Stephen died for speaking the truth of the gospel, Jesus died for embodying the truth of the gospel, that is, for being the truth.
It is the Gospel of John that shows most clearly Jesus as the embodiment of truth. While not a source of Luke’s, John’s perspective will deepen our understanding of Stephen’s martyrdom and of martyrdom in general. During his trial before Pilate, Jesus called himself a witness to the truth when he said, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” (18:37b). The Prologue gives context to this when it calls Jesus the Word of God, full of grace and truth. Jesus as the embodiment of truth shows us God the Father, whom we cannot see or know without the incarnation of his only Son. As the Word of God, Jesus does not merely proclaim the truth, but rather he is proclamation itself, testifying to God’s truth in everything he is, does, and says.
This embodiment of truth led Jesus toward the cross, seen in his increasing conflict with the religious authorities that culminated in his arrest and trial. However, to say that Jesus died simply as one speaking truth to power is to miss both the agency Jesus had in his death and the essential connection between truth and grace hinted at in the Prologue. In his self-offering on the cross as a truth-teller, he brought grace to the world. He died because he testified to the truth, with the purpose of bringing forgiveness to humanity. His suffering came from proclaiming truth and created the good news of the gospel of grace. Grace and truth are both intimately bound up in his suffering on the cross.
The truth that Jesus embodies as the incarnate Word of God will always threaten worldly power structures, because it is a truth that pours itself out in intense suffering, to offer forgiveness and grace. Worldly power structures are inherently self-focused, grasping at what is not theirs, always taking more. As such, they cannot tolerate the truth of Jesus, because it shows so clearly God’s self-offering love that gives instead of takes. This love reconciles God to his creation at his expense as he indwells a broken world to heal it from the inside out. These power structures crucified Jesus Christ, not realizing that in doing so, they carried out the will of God and created their demise.
This is the Jesus who threatened the power of the council in Jerusalem, after his death and resurrection. His followers worshiped him as the Son of God. Their numbers were increasing rapidly and the religious authorities could not contain them. So the council took action and arrested Stephen. In his trial, he recounted the Israelites’ history, from Abraham leaving Mesopotamia to Solomon and his temple, ending by accusing the council of betraying and murdering the Righteous One. But for members of the council to admit this would be tantamount to saying they were no better than their ancestors, who were exiled for their unwillingness to follow God. Threatened by the truth, they murdered the messenger and created the fledgling church’s first martyr.
Jesus warned his followers that this would happen. If they persecuted Jesus as the very embodiment of truth, then they will persecute those who speak that truth. Stephen participated in Jesus’ suffering, speaking truth to power and then offering his murderers the same grace that Jesus accomplished in his suffering on the cross. This triad of truth, suffering, and grace has played out myriad times in the past 2,000 years, as faithful Christians have faced the consequences of preaching the gospel. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” as Tertullian wrote, because each act of martyrdom shows once again how suffering for speaking God’s truth leads to the grace found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Rev. Molly Jane (MJ) Layton is the associate rector for congregational care and worship at the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s in Manhattan.