+But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him…. dragged him out of the city and began to stone him.
Today we hear the story of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church. Annually Stephen is remembered on Dec 26. Now Christmas time seems like a tough time to commemorate a horrific execution, but it makes sense. We musn’t forget what Christianity is: a radical, counter-cultural movement which, when practiced to its fullest, shakes believers and non -believers to their core. To remember this the day after Christmas, when we commemorate the birth of the biggest social agitator of all time, is actually timely.
Being a Christian means standing up to injustice and intolerance. It means speaking our mind when the dignity of another human being is being violated. It means going against the grain, against the crowd, against popular opinion. Doing this bugs other people—they just want us to stop! They, like Stephen’s tormentors, don’t want to hear it.
Stephen didn’t stop until he was stoned to death. Killed because his message hit at a truth deep within them, a truth they weren’t ready to hear. They covered their ears to block out his voice and when that didn’t work? They killed him. It was a brutal silencing. When someone tells us a truth we’re not ready to hear, we don’t listen. If they persist in talking, and our ignoring them fails, we turn on them. If we aren’t ready to hear we go to great lengths to not listen. If we can’t or won’t tolerate the message, then, as in the case of Jesus, Stephen, Ghandi, Martin Luther King and countless others, they’re silenced forever.
In the spirit of those silenced, our Christian faith demands that, as long as there are needy people in our world, as long as children go without adequate health care, as long as young girls in many countries are denied education, as long as people can’t worship the God of their choosing or love the partner of their desire, or speak their mind without fear of being silenced… as long as the dignity of every human being isn’t being honored then we, as followers of Christ, can’t be satisfied, can’t rest, and must never, ever stop listening, stop hearing. We must hear their cries and we must respond.
This is a tall order and one, which frankly, goes against the cultural norms of society. Anthropologists tell us that since the beginning of society we have gotten something out of having people below us, of having people on the outside looking in.
The theory goes something like this:
We live in fear of being without, of being left out, of being in need and having nothing and no one to care for us. So in striving to NEVER be the one on the outs, the one who’s in need, the one who is vulnerable we look for scapegoats, for people who are “out”, who are less than, who are the “other” . People worse off than us.
After 9/11 when it became clear that we weren’t going to capture Osama Bin Laden in short order, our focus changed to Iraq and to Saddaam Hussein. All sorts of assumptions were made about Saddaam’s intentions and capabilities and soon we were engaged in an all out war to avenge the murder of thousands on 9/11. A murder this man did not commit. Of course he committed plenty of other murders and was a horrific tyrant, but the fact of the matter is that he wasn’t who attacked us on 9/11.
But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that we were so scared, so rocked to our core so suddenly vulnerable, we had to do something---someone had to pay for what had happened…because only by lashing out, only by an eye for an eye would our fear, our vulnerability, our grief, be relieved.
Why?
Because it’s easier to be mad than to be sad. It’s easier to be mad than to be afraid. It’s just easier to be mad.
When shaken, when nothing makes sense anymore, we look for a scapegoat-- someone or something to receive our sadness, our terror. We do this because living with that sadness, living with that fear is too uncomfortable.
So we off load it on another.
It’s easier to lash out in anger than to settle in and feel deep sadness or to sit with tremendous fear.
But, although we do it all the time, this off loading of our sadness and our terror on another doesn’t work. Because the relief is only temporary. Soon enough something else comes along to shake us, and the cycle begins all over again: We feel vulnerable and we look for someone to victimize someone upon whom we can take out our feelings of anxiety---our sense of dis-ease.
[On a smaller scale, we do this in our daily lives. When feeling pressure at work how often do we pick a fight with our spouse, needing to off load our anxiety we take it out on those closest to us. Not because we want to hurt them, but because we need to relieve the pressure of uncertainty and worry which has built up within us. And for a moment, for a few moments, this may work.]
But what always works, when we let it, what will work forever, is God.
The solution to vulnerability is not bullying, not picking a fight, but to place all the fear, all the sadness, all the vulnerability and yes all the anger—at the foot of the cross.
We forget: we’re NOT IN THIS ALONE. This is the Easter message—God can take it all.
It’s a counter cultural message, which, although hard on our ears, is the quintessential Christian message. We hear it in our liturgy, we hear it in the scripture, we hear it from the pulpit, and today we hear it from the psalmist:
God is our crag and our stronghold. God is the castle that will make us safe. We needn’t cover the vulnerability of sadness and fear with bravado and scapegoating. We needn’t make ourselves feel bigger by picking on the smaller: God is our crag and our stronghold, God is the castle in which we are safe.
The message we’re so resistant to hear is this: God will never be shunned, God will not be ignored, God will not give up until we, finally and forever, listen. God won’t rest until we—all of us, uncover our ears and, once and for all hear. +
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