I have good news and bad news. The good news is the rapture was supposed to happen yesterday, and we’re all still here!
The bad news is… we’re all still here.
All the people that ditched church today get a free pass, because you never know. At least not until we see them in church again, and then let the guilt trips begin!
I’m kidding. Why wait until next week? Call them up after church. “Just checking to see if you’d been raptured, since we didn’t see you in church this morning.”
That’s only funny because some little church lady somewhere is having that exact conversation right now.
E. Stanley Jones was a Methodist missionary who knew Mahatma Gandhi. When the Rev. Dr. Jones asked Gandhi what Christian missionaries could do to reach India, Gandhi said, “I love your Christ, but I dislike your Christianity. First, I would suggest that all of you Christians live more like Jesus Christ. Second, I would suggest that you practice your Christianity without adulterating it. The anomalous situation is that most of us would be equally shocked to see Christianity doubted or put into practice…” Did you catch that last line? Gandhi said the people of India would be just as shocked to see us doubt our faith as to see us actually live it.
Our reading today is about someone who took his faith seriously, so seriously that he was willing to die for it. The church honors Stephen as the first martyr, and often holds him up as an example, but today I’m offering a different interpretation. My advice this morning is, don’t be like Stephen. Don’t get stoned. Good advice no matter which way you take it.
The disciples, guided by the Holy Spirit, chose Stephen as the leader of the first Deacons. Scripture says he was full of God’s grace and power. He performed wonders among the people and taught all who would listen about God’s love. Whenever someone argued with him, scripture says they could not stand against him because the Spirit gave him wisdom as he spoke. So far so good. Go and do likewise and the world will be a better place.
But if you do, expect trouble. The powers that be benefit from the way things are. Run around freeing slaves and shining light in dark corners, and you undercut their power. You take money from their pockets. And just because you’re trying to live sin-free doesn’t mean anyone else agreed to play fair.
Stephen’s enemies met secretly. They planted false witnesses. Same thing happened to Jesus. Everybody loves Jesus, right? Jesus loves everyone. He makes wine for weddings and forgives the adulterous woman. He eats with terrorists and tax agents. Everyone loves Jesus… Well, obviously not everybody or they wouldn’t have killed him. You know what they said about him? “He’s a glutton and a drunk. He hangs out with a bad crowd.”
Don’t think it will be any different for you. They will take your actions and twist them. They will take your words out of context and put new ones in your mouth. If you honestly try to live like Jesus, like Stephen tried to do, they will crucify you. Metaphorically, hopefully.
So far, no problems. Follow the example of Stephen up until this point, because up until this point he has followed the example of Christ. But then he does the one thing Christians are so prone to do, and it almost never turns out well. He starts to preach.
Actually, he tells a story. Which, if you have to preach, is not a bad way to go. He tells a story they already know, which is a great way to build rapport. He tells them their own story, because remember, he’s a Jew too. He’s establishing common ground, very smart.
But he takes the story, and adds little twists, little jabs. It’s all in what part of the story you emphasize, right? He says, “the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles.” No big deal. It’s not a nice thing to say about the patriarchs, but it’s true.
Stephen continues, “When Moses was forty, he decided to visit his people. He saw one being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and killed the Egyptian. Moses thought his own people would realize God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day Moses saw two Israelites fighting. He tried to stop them, “You’re brothers! Save it for the real enemy.” But the man pushed Moses aside and said, ‘Who made you ruler and judge? Are you going to kill me too?’ So Moses fled to Midian, where he live as a foreigner and had two sons.
So the Jews rejected their greatest hero. He lived in a foreign land, married a foreign woman, and had half-breed babies. At this point in the sermon, people are probably starting to get uncomfortable. It’s all true, but that’s part of the story you usually skip. Stephen keeps pushing. “This is the same Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up a prophet like me from your own people.’… “But our ancestors refused to obey him.” Then he brings up the Golden Calf, the most embarrassing story in the entire history of Israel, and he waves it in their faces. He has their complete attention.
Then closes with a killer twist. He springs the trap. “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him…”
It’s an amazing sermon. And it got him killed. Jesus stood silent before his accusers, but Stephen had to preach. Jesus said love your enemies, but Stephen used his eloquence to rub their faces in their own guilt.
You could make an argument that Stephen was speaking by the power of the Spirit, that a message of guilt was exactly what they needed to hear before they could repent. To support that argument you could point to Stephen’s vision. Why would God grant him a vision of heaven if he wasn’t doing God’s will?
That’s possible. But it’s also possible that Stephen’s vision is proof that no matter what mess you’ve gotten yourself into, God is there with you. No matter how badly your best intentions have mangled God’s message of love, God’s love is still true for you.
We have all said one thing and done another, and we will all do it again. That’s a problem, but we make it worse when we speak as if this self-evident fact weren’t obvious. The problem doubles when we speak with such arrogant, self-righteous certainty.
“You stiff-necked people,” Stephen says, “Was there ever a prophet your ancestors didn’t persecute?” As if he weren’t a Jew, as if those weren’t his ancestors. As if he bore no guilt. If he was so certain that Jesus was the Christ, then why did his savior have to die alone? It’s not like it was hard to get crucified. All he had to do was speak up. Jesus could have died with a friend at his right hand instead of a thief. But he didn’t.
Every time we stay silent in the face of evil, we condone it. And every time we speak with self-righteous certainty, our own words condemn us. One of my favorite preachers, Brennan Manning, put it this way: “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle.”
Ghandi went a step further. Remember, he said they would be equally shocked to see us doubt our faith as to actually live it. The problem isn’t just hypocrisy, it’s arrogance.
Photo by Arty Smokes
This is why humor plays such a large role in what we try to do here. Our ad in the paper says, “We take God seriously, not ourselves” because humor is the opposite of self-righteousness. Humor shines a light on things everyone else wants to ignore. Humor deflates pride, especially our own, and humor is our best chance to win our enemies instead of just yelling at them.
The real tragedy of this end times rapture prediction is not that it failed. The real tragedy is that for a surprising number of people it came true. For them, world ended at 6pm local time. They had one more day to make things right, and most of them blew it. Those who remain should take that as a warning, but we won’t because some preacher was certain he was right and turned the whole thing into a joke.
Next time someone predicts the end of the world, remember this. The unified witness of scripture is clear and simple. No one knows the day or the hour, only that it comes. One day, the wrong will be put right. Life will conquer death. Love will defeat hate. One day, each of us will answer for our lives, for the words we spoke and the ones we didn’t. We can pretend that day isn’t coming. Or we can start living the life God promised us now. What are you waiting for?
Closing Prayer: Every time we stay silent in the face of evil, we condone it. And every time we speak with self-righteous certainty, our own words condemn us. Lord forgive us where we have failed, by what we have done, or left undone, and by the power of your Spirit, lead us in new and right paths for your name’s sake.
A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Easter
First preached at First Congregational Church of Saugatuck on May 23, 2011.
Texts: Acts 6-8:1
It’s the End of the World! Or not… is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Link to revsmilez.com.
