CHRISTMASTIDE · 26 DECEMBER
Saint Stephen, Protomartyr
The First Martyr · Deacon · He Whose Face Was as an Angel’s · The Death That Changed Paul
Stephen — STEE-ven · Protomartyr — proh-toh-MAR-ter · Sanhedrin — san-HEE-drin · Gamaliel — gah-MAY-lee-el · Saul — SAWL
Grant, O Lord, that in all our sufferings here upon earth for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and being filled with the Holy Ghost, may learn to love and bless our persecutors by the example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate.
The feast of the first martyr falls the day after Christmas — the Child born in the manger and the first death for the Child’s sake on consecutive days — and the juxtaposition is the most theologically charged in the entire Calendar. The Church places Stephen (STEE-ven) on 26 December not to diminish the Christmas feast but to show immediately what the Incarnation costs. The God who enters the world as a vulnerable infant in a stable is the God whose followers will be killed for saying so, and the first of them dies within a year or two of the Resurrection, stoned by a crowd that included the young Saul of Tarsus, who would become Paul, whose conversion was the fruit of the seed that Stephen’s blood planted. Christmas cannot be understood without its immediate sequel. The manger leads to the stoning as directly as it leads to the cross.
Stephen was one of the seven men chosen to serve at tables in the Jerusalem community. He did not stay at the tables long: the Acts of the Apostles records him performing great wonders and miracles among the people, arguing in the synagogue with such power that his opponents could not withstand him, and finally being brought before the Sanhedrin (san-HEE-drin) on charges of blasphemy. His sermon before the Sanhedrin — the longest speech in Acts, a panoramic review of Israel’s entire history as a history of the people’s rejection of God’s messengers — ended with a denunciation so fierce that the council stopped their ears and rushed at him together. But as they stoned him, he saw the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God, and he cried: Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
The two things Stephen sees in that moment — the open heaven and the Son of man standing — are both theological statements of the highest order. The Son of man standing, not sitting, at the right hand of God: the posture of one who has risen to receive his servant, who stands to honour the witness of the first martyr as a human host stands to honour a guest. Stephen sees Jesus standing for him as he falls, and the prayer he prays as the stones strike him is the prayer Jesus prayed on the cross: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The martyr dies in the image of the Master. And Saul of Tarsus, holding the cloaks of those who stone him, sees it all. Augustine wrote that the Church owes Paul to the prayer of Stephen: if Stephen had not prayed, the Church would not have had Paul. The blood of the first martyr is the seed of the greatest Apostle.
Stephen stands in the cloud of witnesses as the first of the uncountable multitude who have died for the Name since that day outside Jerusalem. His feast immediately after Christmas is the Church’s testimony that it does not sentimentalise the Incarnation: the God born in a manger is the God whose servants are stoned, whose followers are crucified and burned and beheaded in every generation. The joy of Christmas is real and undiminished; and the face of Stephen, shining like an angel as the stones fell, is the Christmas face of the Church that knows what the Incarnation costs and offers itself anyway, in the image of the one whose birth it celebrates on the day before.
O Almighty God, who by the death of thy servant Stephen didst plant the seed of Paul’s conversion and show the Church the cost and the glory of faithful witness; Grant that we may pray as he prayed for those who wrong us, and look as he looked, through every falling stone, to the open heaven where thy Son stands to receive us; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.
Amen.