May 18-Jn 14, Acts 7, I Peter 2
In all of my years I do not recall working with this Stephen passage at all. Stephen is pictured as Jesus said as a prophet who then faces death in Jerusalem.Secure in our bastion of freedom of religion, we don't naturally flock to stories of martyrdom.Ensconced in a society that considers itself nominally Christian, we rarely see ourselves as outsiders who could be the victim of blind murderous hatred.Sure some of our sisters and brothers call mere disagreement oppression and discrimination, but that is a pale word compared to this religious lynching.
Stephen was one of the first deacons, as the early movement starts to organize for its growing numbers. Luke portrays him also as an extraordinary religious interpreter, given the length of his sermon that exceeds those of Peter and Paul in Acts. He has a vision of heaven itself before his death.Indeed after he has infuriated the crowd with a long recitation of opposition to God’s way, his vision of an exalted Jesus pushes the crowd to wrath. It is also an end time vision, as he sees the Son of Man in heaven, He dies like Jesus almost quoting the words of Father forgive them they know not what they do.His name means crown or victory wreath.We catch a glimpse of the early church emphasizing that Jesus was vindicated, not only by resurrection, not only by ascension, but as the creed says is seated at the right hand of God.
Our reading from John captures another sense of facing death with dignity. Jesus will soon be the victim of a religious and political foregone conclusion to his death. Jesus is just starting a long set of speeches that center on his impending death; this is a long goodbye’s beginning. While Stephen has glimpsed a heavenly throne room, Jesus speaks of an expansive place with many rooms. I like that Scripture just gives us hints of what heaven could be for us. It opens up our imaginations. It allows all sorts of projections into it that reflect some of our deepest desires.So i tend to side with the allusive quality of Scriptural visions more than the precision of some of hte near death experiences that capture our attention, in part, due to their sheer specificity, such as the book and movie heaven Is Real.
A minister’s son had near death experience catalogued or expanded in the book Heaven Is Real and now a movie with Greg Kinnear.I don’t see these types of experiences as proof of an outer reality, Personally, but I do sympathize with the desire to try to find additional warrants on heaven. Quite simply heaven makes space for us to be with God.the KJV spoke of mansions, or in the more accurate version, one house, God’s house with many rooms.Let’;s go a bit further and apply I Peter’s notion to God’s house. God’s house is composed of living bricks, us, in the church and in the world to come. The erudite theologian David Bentley Hart writes of christians being steeped in the bible so that their angles of vision can take in more than one reality.Last week Jesus is both shepherd and gate to the sheepfold. this week, Jesus is the living way, the living map that thomas seeks to life with God.Peter call him the living cornerstone of the new dwelling place on this earth, as we wait to move into a dwelling place with god.In oteher words, we build up the church and heaven brick by huiman brick, so tha thte whole strucutre is connected by and through us and God. Heaven is a living place, so the God of life uses life itself to build it.
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