People of the Book: Stephen
Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, often seen as a companion volume to his Gospel proper, provides fertile ground on which to encounter various early leaders who shaped the first days of the Christian movement called at that time simply The Way. Such is undoubtedly the case with Stephen, the first disciple to die for the faith, for which reason he is called the proto-martyr.
Chosen as one of the seven deacons named by the apostles to help redistribute the community’s commonly held goods to widows and orphans, Stephen was instrumental as one of the ministers or servants (Greek diakonoi) of the first generation of disciples. Despite his obvious erudition and familiarity with Jewish religious thought and self-identity, and perhaps because of his integral role in the young Christian movement, Stephen has traditionally been portrayed throughout history as youthful and ruddy-faced by artists such as Carracci, Rembrandt, Rubens and Carpaccio (the painter whose vibrant colors supposedly provided the namesake for the perhaps more famous Italian appetizer).
Whether or not he was in fact young, he was certainly fearless and perhaps even brash in asserting his newfound faith. In Acts 7 and its account of his confrontational encounter with the Sanhedrin, Luke uses Stephen as a mouthpiece to summarize God’s actions throughout salvation history from Abraham through Moses and the patriarchs. It culminates with the following charge against his prosecutors:
“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your ancestors did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you now have become the betrayers and murderers. You have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it.”
It is important to take note of what this passage intends to tell us. What it most assuredly does not indicate is that the Jewish people taken collectively are in any sense more guilty for persecuting the prophets than any human being living in any century who turns his back on God’s repeated attempts to call us to a higher standard of living. Stephen is not condemning a particular race of people for the murder of the divine Just One, or implicating them in the loaded charge of deicide which has caused so much heartache over the centuries for God’s chosen people.
Pope Benedict’s second volume of “Jesus of Nazareth” comments on such a reading of the Passion, and thus sheds light on all scenes involving the Sanhedrin and the “crowds” (ochlos), presumably the same ones who clamored for the stoning of Stephen under the watchful and approving eye of Saul of Tarsus, later to be blinded by a conversion experience on the road to Damascus and take the name St. Paul:
“Now we must ask: Who exactly were Jesus’ accusers? Who insisted that he be condemned to death? We must take note of the different answers that the Gospels give to this question. According to John it was simply ‘the Jews.’ But John’s use of this expression does not in any way indicate — as the modern reader might suppose — the people of Israel in general, even less is it ‘racist’ in character. After all, John himself was ethnically a Jew, as were Jesus and all his followers. The entire early Christian community was made up of Jews. In John’s Gospel this word has a precise and clearly defined meaning: he is referring to the Temple aristocracy…. When in Matthew’s account the ‘whole people’ say: ‘His blood be on us and on our children’ (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus’ blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all.”
This is not a new “exoneration” of the Jewish people by the current pontiff as some media outlets have claimed, but rather the consistent teaching of the church. (For instance, note Nostra Aetate 4, a text nearly half a century old.)
Stephen stands as a model for courageously interiorizing the message of Christ in “Spirit and truth” beyond a legalistic dead-letter approach to the law. He teaches us not blame and condemnation of any person or group, but unwavering forgiveness. Being pummeled with rocks and collapsing in a bloody heap, his final words are a prayer for his accusers who obviously despise him and his prophetic witness (Greek martys): “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Do not hold this sin against them.”
As we know from the carol “Good King Wenceslaus,” the feast of Stephen is celebrated in the Christmas season, on Dec. 26 to be precise. Due to the manner of his demise, he was somewhat ironically held up as the patron saint of stonemasons in the Middle Ages. His name literally means “crown.” He was the first to receive the glory of the martyr’s crown, the blood of whom has traditionally been said to provide the seedbed of the church’s growth.
Michael M. Canaris of Collingswood is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.
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