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Acts 7:55-60, I Peter 2:2-10, John 14:1-14
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, West Valley City, UT
The Rev'd W. Lee Shaw
We have today the poignant and powerful story of our patron St. Stephen and his martyrdom. St. Stephen is the proto-martyr, or first martyr, of the church. His death helped to galvanize the faith at a time when the opposition to this new faith was beginning. It is interesting that from last week’s very idealized view of how the church was growing in Jerusalem, that it takes only five chapters until we have the death of the first Christian at the hands of a mob and our first glimpse of Saul aka St. Paul.
St. Stephen’s death did what the death of so many after him has done: it built up the community of faith through the blood of the martyrs. His death, like those after him, have only served to strengthen the faith and witness of the community of faith.
Our readings today point to the formation and the strength of community: from St. Stephen’s death, to how we are built up as a spiritual house, to the ultimate community promised by Christ in the heavenly dwelling places prepared by him for us.
This past weekend the Diocese of Utah experienced community in a very unique way: community with our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. Through our gatherings on Friday and Saturday we had a renewed sense of being built up as a royal priesthood and as God’s people.
Prayer and conversation, as well as expansion of understanding, and the opening of new meanings of familiar topics marked our time together. It really was an incredible time for all of us who were part of it.
Our Presiding Bishop led us in conversations about the threats to the environment and the threats of violence about us. Her presentation on the environment brought a certain edginess to it through her training as a scientist, an oceanographer. Her own spirituality and training in theology brought a perspective and outlook too often missing in this very current topic.
Her thoughts on violence began with a very interesting meditation. She asked us to sit and meditate on the words of God to Jesus at his baptism: You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased. Our conversation, and it was a lively one, looked at how we love ourselves, love the “other” and how violence is generated in our society when that does not happen.
Saturday she preached on the various fears and other things that can hold us hostage. In her public lecture she reviewed the need for the voices of people of faith as part of the public discourse in the marketplace of ideas. We will have a larger conversation on her visit and presentations at WOW this week.
Saturday afternoon she and Bishop Irish blessed the new Episcopal Church Center in Utah, an incredibly beautiful and functional, as well as green architecture building. There was one particular prayer I found especially moving, for it spoke to me of our vocation as Christians:
O God, whose presence is known in the structures we build, and also in the open places outside of them; establish in us a community of hope, not to contain your mystery, but to be led beyond security into your sacred space, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
We are called, invited, challenged to move as a community of hope
beyond security into [God’s] sacred space.
St. Stephen was
called to move beyond that security by giving up his life for his Lord.
We are called to move beyond that security by living our lives into
the promises we made to our God and each other in baptism, as stated
so eloquently in our epistle reading: …you are a chosen race, a
royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you
may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into
his marvelous light.
This past weekend I felt that as a diocese we were being called into the marvelous light of a new awareness of our unique place in the life of our communities and state. We have a new physical center from which our ministries can grow and flourish. We have the opening for a new spiritual center for each of us as Christians as we live into the promises we make at baptism as God’s own people.