Thursday Evenings at All Hallows (Thursday, December 26, 2024)
In the Church calendar a number of holy days occur during the Twelve Days of Christmas, all of which fall closely on the heels of Christmas Day—the Feast of Saint Stephen the first martyr, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and the Feast of Saint John the evangelist. Today, the day after Christmas Day, is the Feast of Saint Stephen. This evening’s reading is Luke’s account of Stephen’s martyrdom from the Acts of the Apostles. (The bulk of Stephen’s address to the Council has been omitted.) In this evening’s message we unpack the implications of Stephen’s death for twenty-first century Christians.
Some psalms like Psalm 36, the variable psalm chosen for this evening’s service, are best spoken by a single voice. As well as expressing the particular character of the Psalm, this enables the speaker and those who may be listening to reflect upon its words. Instead of the Gloria Patri at the end of the Psalms, a prayer is provided for Psalm 36 in order to express in words that the individual or group’s prayer is in Christ.
GATHER IN GOD’S NAME
Behold, the dwelling of God is with mankind. He will dwell
with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will
be with them, and be their God. Revelation 21:3
Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.
Silence
Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.
Almighty God have mercy on us, forgive us all our sins
through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us in all
goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep us in
eternal life. Amen.
O God, make speed to save us.
O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as
it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.
Alleluia.
Open this link in a new tab to hear John Mason Neale’s “Good King Wenceslas Looked Out.”
1 Good King Wenceslas looked out
on the feast of Stephen,
when the snow lay round about,
deep and crisp and even.
Brightly shone the moon that night,
though the frost was cruel,
when a poor man came in sight,
gathering winter fuel.
2 “Hither, page, and stand by me,
if thou knowest it, telling:
yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”
“Sire, he lives a good league hence,
underneath the mountain,
right against the forest fence,
by St. Agnes’ fountain.”
3 “Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
bring me pinelogs hither;
thou and I will see him dine,
when we bear them thither.”
Page and monarch, forth they went,
forth they went together,
through the rude wind’s wild lament,
and the bitter weather.
4 “Sire, the night is darker now,
and the wind blows stronger;
fails my heart, I know not how;
I can go no longer.”
“Mark my footsteps, my good page,
tread thou in them boldly.
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
freeze your blood less coldly.”
5 In his master’s steps he trod,
where the snow lay dinted;
heat was in the very sod
which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christians all, be sure,
wealth or rank possessing,
ye who now will bless the poor,
shall yourselves find blessing.
Psalm 36
Sin whispers to the wicked, in the depths of their heart;
there is no fear of God before their eyes.
They flatter themselves in their own eyes
that their abominable sin will not be found out.
The words of their mouth are unrighteous and full of deceit;
they have ceased to act wisely and to do good.
They think out mischief upon their beds
and have set themselves in no good way;
nor do they abhor that which is evil.
Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens
and your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness stands like the strong mountains,
your justice like the great deep;
you, Lord, shall save both man and beast.
How precious is your loving mercy, O God!
All mortal flesh shall take refuge
under the shadow of your wings.
They shall be satisfied with the abundance of your house;
they shall drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the well of life
and in your light shall we see light.
O continue your loving-kindness to those who know you
and your righteousness to those who are true of heart.
Let not the foot of pride come against me,
nor the hand of the ungodly thrust me away.
There are they fallen, all who work wickedness.
They are cast down and shall not be able to stand.
Silence
O God, the well of life,
make us bright with wisdom,
that we may be lightened with the knowledge of your glory
in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD
A reading from the Acts of the Apostles
Acts 6:8-15; 7:1, 51-59
Stephen, a man richly blessed by God and full of power, performed great miracles and wonders among the people. But he was opposed by some men who were members of the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), which had Jews from Cyrene and Alexandria. They and other Jews from the provinces of Cilicia and Asia started arguing with Stephen. But the Spirit gave Stephen such wisdom that when he spoke, they could not refute him. So they bribed some men to say, “We heard him speaking against Moses and against God!” In this way they stirred up the people, the elders, and the teachers of the Law. They seized Stephen and took him before the Council. Then they brought in some men to tell lies about him. “This man,” they said, “is always talking against our sacred Temple and the Law of Moses. We heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will tear down the Temple and change all the customs which have come down to us from Moses!” All those sitting in the Council fixed their eyes on Stephen and saw that his face looked like the face of an angel.
The High Priest asked Stephen, “Is this true?”
“How stubborn you are!” Stephen went on to say. “How heathen your hearts, how deaf you are to God's message! You are just like your ancestors: you too have always resisted the Holy Spirit! Was there any prophet that your ancestors did not persecute? They killed God's messengers, who long ago announced the coming of his righteous Servant. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. You are the ones who received God's law, that was handed down by angels—yet you have not obeyed it!”
As the members of the Council listened to Stephen, they became furious and ground their teeth at him in anger. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw God's glory and Jesus standing at the right side of God. “Look!” he said. “I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right side of God!”
With a loud cry the Council members covered their ears with their hands. Then they all rushed at him at once, threw him out of the city, and stoned him. The witnesses left their cloaks in the care of a young man named Saul. They kept on stoning Stephen as he called out to the Lord, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” He knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord! Do not remember this sin against them!” He said this and died.
The Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
Silence
Lessons from the Martyrdom of Stephen, Christianity’s First Martyr
In this evening’s reading we hear Luke’s account of the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian Church. A martyr is a person who suffer a great deal or is killed because of their religious beliefs. Stoning is a form of punishment in which a person is killed by throwing stones at them. It is a particularly cruel and unpleasant way of killing a person and is the practice in a number of Muslim countries where Sharia law prescribes it for a range of offenses. The victim is battered to death. At least one extreme Christian Nationalist group advocates for the introduction of the practice in the United States and broadcasting stonings on TV and livestreaming them on the internet.
Stephen was one of seven men who were chosen by the first community of Christians at Jerusalem and set apart by the apostles with prayer and laying on of hands to care for the poor and distribute food and other forms of assistance to those in need (Acts 6: 1-7). Because Stephen’s name appears first on the list, some Christian traditions assume that he was the leading deacon, or minister, amongst those chose and set apart for this ministry and even give him the title of "archdeacon," or head deacon. Whether this is an accurate assumption is debatable.
If we read further on in the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that the ministry of the seven was not limited to these works of mercy. They also defended the faith against those who disputed the saving truth of Jesus Christ and his teachings, as well as preached the good news and baptized new believers. It was Stephen’s ability to successfully defend the faith which prompted those with whom he contended to pay false witnesses to make false accusations against him.
Stephen’s stoning was an extra-judicial killing, a lynching, an act of an angry mob infuriated by what he had said. While the Council, chaired by the high priest, could determine the guilt or innocence of the party brought before it, the Council did not have the authority to sentence that party to death and to carry out that sentence. Jerusalem had a Roman governor, and it was the Roman governor who under Roman law had that authority. Stephen’s death was an act of mob violence.
In our times Christians have been the victims of mob violence in Pakistan and other Muslim countries, mobs often incited by false charges of blasphemy and egged on by local imams, leaders in the Islamic religion.
Christian have also been the victims of mob violence in India, seriously beaten and even killed, their homes burned, and their land seized. In India the perpetrators of this violence are Hindu Nationalists, adherents of a extreme form of religious nationalism which rejects Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as outside the limits of Hinduvata, or Hinduness, and “consider only native religious denominations as Hindu.” One wing of this movement which dominates politics in several Indian states, also rejects the animistic religion of at least one Indian tribal group as not Hindu.
In Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka where Buddhism is the dominant religion, Buddhist nationalists have persecuted other religious groups, at times resorting to mob violence.
Jesus warned his disciples that they would face opposition, even violent opposition, and that belief in him and his teachings would divide families and communities. This said, I believe that we need to make a distinction between genuine opposition to belief in Jesus as God incarnate and what he taught and the kind of negative reactions that we trigger with our words and actions and which upon close analysis have more to do with sinful huma nature than they do the Christian faith and way of life according to Jesus’ teachings. It is tempting to regard any disagreement with our own particular views on a subject as opposition, making our opinion the final word on that subject.
What was represented as faithfulness to God in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was sometimes an obstinate disregard for the heath and safety of others, which was rooted in a refusal to recognize the seriousness of the disease. The church leaders concerned chose to characterize as persecution the understandable reaction of the public health authorities to their refusal to change their opinion or behavior. When one compares what happened with what is happening in places like Pakistan and India, it was far from persecution. It was a difference of opinion over the right course of action in a particular set of circumstances. In a few cases the public health authorities were applying more stringent rules to churches, but in the larger number of cases the measures were warranted to slow if not contain the spread of the virus and to reduce the number of severe cases and fatalities.
A point the apostle Peter makes in his first letter, in 1 Peter 4:15, is relevant to this situation and similar ones: if we suffer, let it not be as a murderer, thief, evil-doer, or meddler. As Peter states earlier in the letter, in 1 Peter 3: 17, it is better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. What Peter wrote may prove very relevant in the coming year.
While Christians tend to focus upon the growing influence of secularism in the United States, they also need to pay attention to other developments, particularly the developments within the ranks of those who call themselves “Christians.”
A number of politicians have appointed themselves the protectors of Christianity. Some may have done so to garner votes for their election or re-election, as the case may be. Their words and actions strongly indicate that they have no inkling of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, and their lives do not embody his teachings. Indeed, their lives starkly contrast with what he taught and exemplified.
Others appear to be wed to a particular brand of “Christianity,” one which gives more weight to a selective reading of the Old Testament than to the teachings of Jesus, to Law more than grace, emphasizing those passages that appear to support their cultural prejudices and political views. Those subscribing to this brand of “Christianity,” reject the separation of church and state enshrined in the US Constitution and seek to impose their religious values upon Americans, Christians and non-Christians, through political action.
In a blog post titled, “Christians have no one to blame but themselves,” Joe McKeever, a retired Baptist pastor and a former director of missions, writes:
“The greatest mistake of the past generations of Christians in this country was trying to Christianize the culture without evangelizing the people. We put prayer in the schools, made the church the social life of the community, instituted blue laws so that no liquor could be sold on Sundays, and basically shut down secular life on the Lord’s Day. We protected the morality of the cities and towns. The citizens were no more Christian than previously, but we were making them behave like it.’
You can read his entire post here (https://joemckeever.com/wp/christians-have-no-one-to-blame-but-themselves/).
The only way to make disciples is do what Jesus commanded. This entails recognizing Jesus as the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted. If we are to be genuine disciples of Jesus, we must give the greatest weight to what Jesus taught and exemplified as found in the Gospels. This may lead to taking a principled, even unpopular stances against these self-appointed protectors of Christianity. The members of the Council who stoned Stephen to death saw themselves as protectors of their own religious beliefs and values. We now recognize that they were wrong, and it was Stephen who was upholding what the Bible taught.
Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a commandment of Jesus to take over the reins of government and to force people to conform to a particular set of values. What we do find is clear instructions to spread the good news to the four corners of the earth and to evangelize the peoples of the earth. If we desire a nation over which Jesus is Lord, we must evangelize its peoples. We must put our trust in the power of God’s grace, the power of the Holy Spirit working in people’s hearts, minds, and lives.
Silence
Open this link in a new tab to hear Carl P. Daw Jr.’s metrical paraphrase of the Magnificat.
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
1 For God has looked with favor,
on one the world thought frail;
and blessings through the ages will echo
the angel's first "All hail."
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
2. God's mercy shields the faithful
and gives them safe retreat
to arms that turns to scatter
the proud in their conceit.
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
3. The mighty have been vanquished;
the lowly lifted up.
The hungry find abundance;
the rich, an empty cup.
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
4 To Abraham's descendants
the Lord will steadfast prove,
for God has made with Israel
a covenant of love.
My soul proclaims with wonder
the greatness of the Lord;
rejoicing in God's goodness,
my spirit is restored.
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.
THE MINISTRY OF PRAYER
The Lord be with you
and also with you.
Let us pray.
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
That this evening may be holy, good, and peaceful,
We entreat you, O Lord.
That your holy angels may lead us in paths of peace and
goodwill,
We entreat you, O Lord.
That we may be pardoned and forgiven for our sins
and offenses,
We entreat you, O Lord.
That there may be peace to your Church and to the whole
world,
We entreat you, O Lord.
That we may depart this life in your faith and fear,
and not be condemned before the great judgment seat
of Christ,
We entreat you, O Lord.
That we may be bound together by your Holy Spirit in
the communion of all your saints,
entrusting one another and all our life to Christ.
We entreat you, O Lord.
We give you thanks, O Lord of glory, for the example of the
first martyr Stephen, who looked up to heaven and prayed
for his persecutors to your Son Jesus Christ, who stands at
your right hand; where he lives and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Be our light in the darkness, O Lord, and in your great mercy
defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love
of your only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
O God, you manifest in your servants the signs of your
presence: Send forth upon us the spirit of love, that in
companionship with one another your abounding grace may
increase among us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Christina Georgina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.”
1 In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone:
snow had fallen,
snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter,
long ago.
2 Our God, heaven cannot hold him
nor earth sustain;
heaven and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign:
in the bleak mid-winter
a stable-place sufficed
the Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.
3 Enough for him whom cherubim
worship night and day,
a breast full of milk
and a manger full of hay;
enough for him whom angels
fall down before,
the ox and ass and camel
which adore.
4 What can I give him,
poor as I am?
if I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
if I were a wise man
I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him,
give my heart.
Grant, O God, that your holy and life-giving Spirit may so
move every human heart and especially the hearts of the
people of this land, that barriers which divide us may
crumble, suspicions disappear, and hatreds cease; that our
divisions being healed, we may live in justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Almighty and most merciful God, we remember before you
all poor and neglected persons whom it would be easy for us
to forget: the homeless and the destitute, the old and the sick,
and all who have none to care for them. Help us to heal those
who are broken in body or spirit, and to turn their sorrow
into joy. Grant this, Father, for the love of your Son, who for
our sake became poor, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Look with pity, O heavenly Father, upon the people in this
land who live with injustice, terror, disease, and death as
their constant companions. Have mercy upon us. Help us to
eliminate our cruelty to these our neighbors. Strengthen those
who spend their lives establishing equal protection of the law
and equal opportunities for all. And grant that every one of
us may enjoy a fair portion of the riches of this land; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
O God our Father, whose Son forgave his enemies while he
was suffering shame and death: Strengthen those who suffer
for the sake of conscience; when they are accused, save them
from speaking in hate; when they are rejected, save them
from bitterness; when they are imprisoned, save them from
despair; and to us your servants, give grace to respect their
witness and to discern the truth, that our society may be
cleansed and strengthened. This we ask for the sake of Jesus
Christ, our merciful and righteous Judge. Amen.
O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love
our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth:
deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in
your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
O Lord our God, accept the fervent prayers of your people; in
the multitude of your mercies, look with compassion upon us
and all who turn to you for help; for you are gracious, O
lover of souls, and to you we give glory, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.
THE SENDING FORTH OF GOD’S PEOPLE
Let us bless the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
The Lord bless you and keep you. Amen.
The Lord make his face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you. Amen.
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you
and give you peace. Amen.
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