At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. – Acts 7:57-58

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 11, 2017): Acts 7

Plato wrote, “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” The play on the word “light” sums up much of our existence. As kids, we are afraid of the monsters that lurk in the dark as we are heading for our beds. We need light. Maybe not too much light, but some. As we get older, we begin to recognize that those monsters are real. But rather than fearing the monsters, we begin to fear the light that reveals them. We want to be kept in darkness so that we don’t have to confront the monsters that often reside inside of us.

I have to admit that I struggle with the story of Stephen on every side. It is a story that is filled with darkness. Stephen speaks truth to the Sanhedrin, but the religious leaders of the first century run from that truth, eventually stoning this saint of the early church. But as I read the story, I can’t put all of the blame on the religious leaders. Stephen may have been filled with the Holy Spirit and enjoying the favor of God, but the story makes him sound petulant and antagonistic. Not once does he place any blame for the death of Jesus on himself, even though the whole Jesus incident had villains that inhabited every corner of the event. The Jewish leaders and the mob were guilty as they clamored for Jesus’s death and the Roman leaders were guilty because they were willing to kill Jesus just as a way to attempt to keep the peace. But the early Jesus followers disappeared. Their guilt was in preferring to stand in the dark rather than confronting the monsters that threatened the nation and everything in which they believed. As Stephen stands in front of the religious leaders, it seems that a recognition that even he had failed at the time of the crucifixion might have changed the whole tenor of the proceedings. Instead of poking his finger at the religious leaders shouting “You killed him,” a change to “We killed him, and now we have a chance to make up for what we have done” might have made all of the difference. Even Stephen’s comment about the way the Jews had received the prophets of history could have, and maybe should have, reflected the fact that our general reaction when confronted with the light of truth, which the prophets brought with them, was to hope for darkness.

But if there is a light in the story, it is in this thought; approving all that was going on was a young man named Saul. Saul is not a light yet, but this is our first introduction to the man who will shape the theology of early Christianity with his letters written to the various churches all across his known world. As stones are being hurled at Stephen, we are still about three years from his conversion experience on the Damascus Road, and it will still be almost twenty years before he will become a Christian evangelist and letter writer, yet still the hope, and the light, is present in the story. This man left guarding the coats is a future light for the truth and a man who will find himself executed for trying to share that light, instead of letting us hide from our monsters in our darkness.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Acts 8