Sermon: Easter, death and life

Acts 7:54-8:1; John 14:1-14

Durham Cathedral Holy Eucharist. Fifth Sunday of Easter. 20^th April 2008

I'm not sure that I could cope with watching someone being stoned to death. We will never know how we will react until we are in the situation but I think I can be fairly confident about that assertion because last Maundy Thursday when I walked round a corner and found a stabbing incident in process I learned about myself that my instinctive reaction was to try to stop it because I didn't want either man to be hurt. Which makes me wonder all the more about Saul who approved of the people stoning Stephen and was in the front row of spectators, letting the people who were killing Stephen put their coats at his feet while they did so: he wasn't going to run away from it. That's a disturbing picture of someone who later became one of the apostles and proclaimed the gospel to large numbers of people. But the gospel is disturbing in its implications.

I have to admit that this sermon today is the product of failure. All my normal sermon preparation processes failed me and by last Wednesday evening all I had to show for a lot of reflection since Easter on the set scriptures was a first draft which, when I read it, I realised I wouldn't want to listen to myself so could not hope to preach in a way that would engage you. Given the spaces in my diary that could be devoted to sermon preparation, my praying was a mixture of panic and urgency. Then I sat in Evensong on Wednesday evening and listened to the choir singing Goss's anthem based on Paul's words to the Thessalonians, "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, ev'n so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.  Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

"If we believe that Jesus died and rose again", which we do, "comfort one another with these words." Abandon Saul for a minute, watching the awful death of Stephen with satisfaction, and put yourself in the shoes of the other disciples who might have braved the crowd and their distress to watch. Where is the comfort for them? What words of comfort can you offer one another when your friend is being brutally and slowly killed in front of your eyes and you cannot help him? Where is God in that situation? What sense does the good news of the resurrection make? It's the same question that some Christians around the world still have to ask today; that our forebears faced when Cromwell's army desecrated this Cathedral and turned it into a prison for their Scottish prisoners, many of whom died as a consequence of their forced march. Where was the comfort for them? Where is the comfort for the victims and bereaved from the various holocausts in living memory?

In contrast to Saul there is Stephen. Luke tells us of the manner of his death, casting it very much in the mould of the death of Jesus - remember that Acts is the second half of Luke's two volume account of the story of Jesus and the church. Luke makes several connections between the two deaths. There are the accusations against both men which were made by the populace at the instigation of some of the leaders; then there is the assurance both men had that they were in God's hands and were going to be with God - when one of the men crucified with Jesus asked him "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" Jesus' response "today you will be with me in Paradise" indicates clearly his confidence of where he was going and that the thief would go with him; while, just before the stoning began, Stephen saw the heavens opened and the glory of God with Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Finally, there is the prayer of both men, Jesus and Stephen, for forgiveness for those causing their deaths. So Luke clearly wants his readers to understand that Stephen, the first Christian martyr, went to death following his Lord not only in his commitment but also his conduct. Luke is making a significant point in giving the church the assurance that anyone going through such events is walking in the way of Jesus who was crucified, died and raised from the dead. Hence the vision of Jesus in glory - this is not just about Stephen's death, it is about the assurance of resurrection. That would be a vital message for the early church as it faced the severe persecution that began after Stephen's death.

In contrast to this vivid and bloodthirsty story which is followed by the scattering of the church in the face of severe persecution, we have the measured calm of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. When we hear the reassuring words, "Do not let your hearts be troubled" we are immediately in calmer waters, in danger of seeing this as little more than a leisurely theological and philosophical debate about heaven and the vision of God. We can forget that this is the beginning of Jesus' last proper conversation with his companions in which John summarises all Jesus has been trying to get them to understand all he has taught them over the last three years, and it takes place amidst the tension of the threat to Jesus' life.

If you had an hour, under the pressure of ambient fear at what is about to happen, to say all you wanted to your family and friends, what would you say? Jesus' demanding instruction was a command to be active in stopping their hearts from being afraid and the assumption has to be that there was good reason for fear. He then answers Thomas and Philip's questions about how they can be sure of the way to God's house and how they can see the Father. The question of seeing God is a key one throughout John's gospel, from the prologue on in which we are told that no one has ever seen God, it is God the only Son who is close to the Father's heart who has made him known, to the end when we have various accounts of the disciples seeing but not always recognising the risen Jesus, seeing God in Jesus is an important theme. Again and again Jesus returns to it, at times using physical sight as a metaphor for spiritual sight: only he has seen God but in him the disciples can see God.

Luke probably wrote his two volumes a few years before John's gospel was written and their places of origin are uncertain. But given their different provenances, it is interesting to note how both today's readings say something similar in very different ways: one gives us Jesus' teaching and the other a story of the first martyr. In John, Jesus reminds the disciples that "The one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these because I go to the Father. ... No one comes to the Father except through me." Luke gives us the same thing in story form as Stephen, following his Lord's example in death, dies strengthened by seeing Jesus who is standing at God's right hand in heaven. For some people - the Ts in Myers Briggs terms - it is easier to engage with this when it is presented as John's series of propositions and teaching. For others, it is easier to engage with this through Luke's story - to hear the anger of the crowd and imagine the vision of Stephen. Thank God that the bible gives us both options.

Either way, what are we doing in this Easter season of resurrection and joy, with the story of an angry crowd, a nasty martyrdom, a young man who positively wants to see another stoned to death, the onset of severe persecution, Jesus commanding fearful disciples not to let their hearts be afraid, and teaching about seeing the Father and doing greater works than Jesus did? What if we put Stephen's martyrdom, or any terrible contemporary event, in dialogue with Jesus' words in John's gospel?  After all, that is a challenge we must rise to on a regular basis as Christians.

I suggest the answer lies in the choir's text on Wednesday evening, "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, ev'n so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.  Wherefore comfort one another with these words." Easter gives a different frame of reference to stories that, on their own, justify fear and despair. Reframed by the Easter story, while the horror of what is wrong is not diminished - stoning can never be made right or sanitised - the power of Jesus' resurrection brings the hope of new life for us in the midst death. Stephen's vision of God's glory is the outworking of Jesus' promise to his disciples "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself so that where I am, there you may be also." And he could add that "you know the way to the place where I am going" because he himself is the way: all Stephen had to do at the moment of death was pray, as he did, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." By showing us the first martyr having this assurance, Luke is putting flesh on the bones of Jesus' promise to the disciples before he died and thus giving us the assurance of the reliability of our hope.

But we can't abandon Saul, the young man with the desire for the blood of his enemies, just as I can't forget the violence of stabbing incident I got involved in. The bible does not prettify Saul's past just because he becomes a hero in the future. Easter is about new life coming out of death, and Saul is clearly dead wrong at the time of Stephen's death, his religious zeal may be sincere but it is totally misdirected. Only the gospel of resurrection can free Saul from his spiritual death and reframe his actions. For me, in the days after Maundy Thursday last year, that incident and the whole passion story as it unfolded until Easter Day reframed each other and I was given new insights by the juxtaposition of experiences of violence, a wound in a man's side, blood, onlookers and human vulnerability.

This Easter - and it is still Easter - the challenge we face is to let the story of Stephen's horrific death belong with the comfort that Jesus offered his disciples before he died. The only way I know to reconcile the two, and to let each add profound depth to the other, is to see them both through the lens of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the disturbing comfort that brings. How else can we hold together life and death in our own stories or the stories we hear in the news? On the same day I heard the choir sing that anthem, I heard of the birth of a new baby to members of this congregation and the death of someone who has served this cathedral for about 40 years through her skills in embroidery. How else can we hold together the joy of Catherine's new life and the sadness of Dorothy's death? How else but to say, with profound Easter conviction, "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, ev'n so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.  Wherefore comfort one another with these words." Or, as we will affirm in our celebration of the Eucharist in a few minutes, "Alleluia. Christ our passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia."