
St. Stephen’s Day falls on 26 December, the
You may remember
In the ancient Hebrew culture,
The first church still consisted only of Jews: Christianity was still considered a Judean religion—the obvious difference being Christians believe
Unlike Jesus,
More than one person has pointed out it’s almost like Stephen was trying to get himself killed. Me, I figure he was young and overzealous and naïve, and had adopted the American myth (centuries before we Americans adopted it) that if you’re on God’s side, no harm will ever befall you. You can bad-mouth your foes, and
Well, that’s not at all how things turned out.
Stephen’s martyrdom.
Seeing a vision of Jesus at God’s side, and utterly tone-deaf to how he’d infuriated the senate, Stephen shared this vision.
I say illegally ’cause the Romans had made it illegal for anyone but Romans to enact the death penalty. That’s why the senate
In a stoning, the usual practice was to drop the victim off a cliff, and that would usually kill you. Then they’d drop heavy rocks down on the body to finish the job. It wasn’t like the movies depict it, where people just throw fist-size rocks at you till one of ’em finally cracks your skull.
Seems the fall didn’t kill Stephen, because Luke recorded his last words: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”
Stephen’s death triggered the first serious persecution of Christians. It drove most of them out of Jerusalem, where the first church was headquartered, and they began to spread Jesus wherever they went. Plus it brought Saul of Tarsus into the story as a persecutor—and after Jesus got hold of him and repurposed him into
To persecutors’ annoyance, they began to discover how killing Christians didn’t stop us from spreading. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” was a famous statement of second-century church father Tertullian of Carthage. Getting killed for Jesus makes heroes of us. People admire heroes.
Stephen’s death was a big deal because Stephen was a big deal. He “did great wonders and miracles among the people.”
Contrast this to how people presume martyrdom works. They figure the big deal, the huge impact, comes from making that dying confession; of claiming to trust Jesus right before
’Cause dying for Jesus requires us to live for Jesus. The life makes the witness. The death only draws attention to it.
Bad martyrdoms.
But the easy way out is the dying or defiant declaration. You can actually go your whole life long without following Jesus whatsoever, and because you confess him on your deathbed, you imagine this’ll gain you sainthood.
And Christians with this kind of rotten,
True, getting killed for any cause—even a wrongheaded or evil cause, as we see with suicide bombers—means certain people are gonna see you as heroes. But don’t assume martyrdom automatically makes a Christian right. It doesn’t in the least. Loads of Christian martyrs didn’t die for Jesus so much as die due to their own ignorance, stubbornness, arrogance, and stupidity. Some of ’em were even mentally ill.
We actually see some of this in certain church fathers. They pursued death for Jesus’s sake. They sought out persecutors. They did nothing to stop pagans from killing them. Sometimes ’cause they decided a quick death was far better than being sold
But ordinarily? Those who wanna get martyred have a screw loose.
The words
Same as Stephen. Look at him: He testified he knew Jesus, saw Jesus, and recognized Jesus as an important influence in his life. What made Stephen’s death relevant was how his short life reflected this relationship. Now if you aren’t known in life for having anything to do with Jesus—if in fact you’re a rotten bastard, and were hoping a glorious death in his name redeems you—it doesn’t; it won’t. People may not recognize hypocritical martyrs for their hypocrisy, but God certainly does. Means nothing to him.
Yep, it’s a mockery of martyrdom, just like the suicide bombers who think blowing themselves up in God’s name will make up for a lifetime of sin, and get them into heaven.
And we don’t even earn heaven! Even Islam, which those ignorant suicide bombers think they’re dying for, teaches this: We’re saved entirely because
So too many Christians figure
Another phenomenon I’ve seen is when Christians unexpectedly lose a loved one—a kid, a parent, a good friend, whatever—and try to convert the loved one’s death into a martyrdom. The kid got murdered, so the parents begin to claim (sometimes with evidence, sometimes with none whatsoever) the murderer was only out to kill Christians, and their kid died “standing up for Jesus.” Or a Christian’s on vacation, dies in a traffic accident, and because she’s a Christian in a foreign land somehow this gets bent into “she was on the mission field” somehow, and died “in the field.” As happens every time someone dies, all good deeds get eulogized, all sins get forgotten, and they’re made to sound as saintly as possible. True, deaths can be tragic, but swapping real people for fake versions and mourning that? People grieve and seek comfort all sorts of ways, but lies and delusion is hardly a healthy method.
Well. You don’t have to be killed for Jesus in order to be a martyr. Remember, the word means “witness.” Live for Jesus.
Working people up till they kill you in a fit of rage? Arguably Stephen wasn’t a proper martyr either. But he’s our first, and he was otherwise a good guy, so he at least merits a day on the calendar.
