Several years ago, I read a story about a high school golfer from Florida named Chelsee Richard. Many people thought she had a chance of winning the state championship. On the second hole of the qualifier, she hit her tee shot into the rough. Not a great start, but she calmly went and hit the ball out of the rough and finished the hole, determined to do better on the next hole. As she waited her turn to tee off on the third hole, she realized she had made a mistake. The ball she had played out of the rough on the second hole was not her ball. That might not have been a problem if she had realized it right away, but the rules stated that a golfer must declare that they had hit the wrong ball while on the same hole, before finishing that hole, or they are automatically disqualified. Now, no one had noticed her mistake except her. She could very easily have kept it a secret and finished the round. But Chelsee decided she needed to do the right thing and tell the truth. So she did, and she was disqualified. Her dreams of competing for the state championship and the final season of her senior year were over. She did the right thing and was punished anyway. It seems pretty unfair.

In our story for this morning from Acts chapter 7, we read a rather disturbing story about a man named Stephen. Before we get into this story, let’s look a little bit at who Stephen is and how he got to this point in the story. If we turn back to Acts chapter 6, we learn that Stephen was one of seven Hellenistic Jews who were appointed by the apostles to serve as deacons in the early church to help distribute food to the widows so that the apostles could continue to travel and spread the good news of Jesus. Now, in case you were wondering, Hellenistic Jews were Jews who had assimilated the Greek culture and language that had been brought into the region with the conquest of Alexander the Great. Acts also tells us that Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He performed signs and wonders among the people and spoke often in the Greek-speaking synagogues. While at the synagogue, it seems that Stephen liked to engage in debates with many of the Jewish leaders, and quite often, he won those debates, which the leaders didn’t like very much. So they began to incite the people against Stephen, to the point that they got him arrested and taken before the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin was the court of Jewish law. The charges against him were presented. The leaders were claiming that Stephen had spoken blasphemous words against Moses and against God. To strengthen their claims, they brought false witnesses to testify against Stephen. They said of him, “This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.” After these claims are made, the text says that “all who sat in the council (those are the judges who will determine the ultimate outcome for Stephen) looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” Remember that because we will come back to it later.

After all of this, the council asks Stephen if these accusations are true, and Stephen responds with a sermon. You’ll be interested to know that Stephen’s sermon here is Acts 7 is the longest sermon recorded in the New Testament not given by Jesus. In the original Greek, it is around 1,100 words. For reference, this sermon is at right about 650 words so far, but don’t worry, I’ll catch up. An 1,100 word sermon, for a typical preacher, would last about 8-9 minutes. Greeks and Hebrews must not have been as verbose as us American preachers. Stephen did however follow the strategy in many Presbyterian churches of a three-point sermon.

Stephen began the sermon with some history about the Hebrew people, a history that would have been familiar to his listeners. Then he used that history to make three points that each went against what many of the Jews at that time would have believed. Firstly, Stephen argued that God did not dwell in human-made structures. This argument would have angered those who believed in the need for a temple, because the temple is where God dwells with God’s people. But Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians that our bodies are temples and Jesus spoke of his own body as a temple that would be torn down and then raised back up in three days.

Stephen’s second argument is that Israel has been disobedient to God. But that couldn’t be. Israel was God’s chosen nation, God’s holy people. And yet, how many times do the prophets of the Old Testament call out Israel for their disobedience? Jesus spends a whole chapter in Matthew offering woes to the scribes and Pharisees about all their disobedience and ends with “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.” Israel is often called out for her disobedience, but being the “chosen people” made many of the leaders feel above reproach. God was surely on their side.

Thirdly, Stephen tries to show that Jesus was not the abolishment of the law of Moses, but actually the fulfillment of it. Jesus, who had been killed because he was viewed as a threat to Israel, a breaker of important Jewish laws, a false teacher who spoke out against injustice and went out of his way, even if it meant breaking some laws, to right those wrongs as much as he could. Stephen argued that Jesus was the fulfillment of the law of Moses. Jesus was everything the law was supposed to be and more. This was not the belief of the Jewish leaders or of many of the Jews in Israel at the time. But it was the truth that Stephen had experienced and the truth that the early church believed. Stephen spoke the truth about Jesus. And what was the final result? Death. The text says, “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. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.” Stephen did what was right. He spoke the truth of God. Yet his reward was being stoned to death.

Now, for most of us who’ve grown up in a nation where the majority of people have shared our same faith traditions for a very long time, we’ve had it pretty easy. But a time is coming, and perhaps is even here, when we will be forced to make a tough decision. Will we stand up for the things we believe to be right, the things we believe Jesus lived and calls us to live? Or will we kowtow to the powers that be in order to save ourselves? Jesus told his followers that this is what following him would be like. He said to them, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you… If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” In the second letter to Timothy we read, “Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” For living as Christ lived, with love for all, being a defender of the oppressed, welcoming the stranger, the reward is persecution and derision.

I want to add two quick caveats to this though. First, we must be careful not to assume that the reverse is then also true. If we are being persecuted or derided, that DOES NOT mean that we are living rightly and following the example of Christ. As human beings, we have a tendency quite often to view accountability for our actions as persecution. It’s a bit like some of the arguments April and I have. I will spend most of the argument vehemently defending my position because I am clearly correct and am being persecuted for it, only to find out later that I was actually completely wrong the whole time. “I didn’t take your keys.” “Oh wait, here they are…in the pocket of my jacket.” Oops. Just because we are being challenged on something that we think is right, doesn’t mean that it actually is right. The second caveat is that we need to be careful not to associate ourselves too closely with the victim. Many times, we are more like the stone-throwers. We are pretty good at looking at what is wrong in others, rather than dealing with what is wrong in us. When the people drag a woman into the temple to stone her for committing adultery, Jesus says to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Condemning others may make us feel righteous, but it does not make us right. If we are too quick to associate ourselves with the victim, we will start to ignore the times when we are the perpetrator, the stone-thrower.

This story of Stephen’s death is unpleasant. It shows the cruelty of humanity, that doing the right thing doesn’t mean you will be rewarded for it. In fact, we very often see wrongdoers receiving much more of the reward. But as followers of Christ, we know that our reward comes not from the world, but from God, and God has promised us eternity. So, let us do our best to serve as Stephen served, faithfully and full of the Holy Spirit. And may we find the strength to stand up for the truth even when the world fights against it. God grant us your grace to know the truth and grant us the courage to stand up for it. AMEN.