Commentary on Acts 7:51 – 8:1

Today’s passage continues the story of Stephen, although most of his long discourse to the Sanhedrin on the history of the Jewish people has been omitted in our readings. This reading describes just the climax of the story.

Stephen calls those who have arrested him “uncircumcised in heart and ears”. Although they are physically circumcised, their behaviour is more like the uncircumcised pagans around them. They were resisting the spirit of God, who spoke through Moses and the prophets. Paul will speak later on of the ineffectiveness of bodily circumcision if there is not a corresponding circumcision of the heart. It is not circumcision which makes the Jew, but his commitment to following God’s will. And similarly for us, it is not just the pouring of water at Baptism that makes the Christian…to be a Christian means a lot more.

Stephen attacks his judges as doing what their predecessors did to the long line of prophets God sent to his people. Now they have killed Jesus, the greatest prophet of all. It is not Stephen, but they, his judges, who are not keeping the Law. This, not surprisingly, infuriated the council members, but Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, now had a vision of God in glory and Jesus standing at his right hand:

Look…I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!

This was the title that Jesus had used of himself to emphasise his links with Messianic prophecies and, in the New Testament, it is very unusual for anyone but Jesus himself to use this title. The Sanhedrin knew very well that the one he was speaking about was the one they had executed for his own blasphemies. To say that this executed blasphemer was now sharing God’s own glory was beyond the beyond. The religious leaders and trial judges could not stand hearing such ‘obscenities’ and:

…they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him.

At this point, all thought of a proper trial went out the window. Stephen was driven beyond the walls of the city and stoned there and then, just as Jesus, too, was crucified outside the city on Golgotha. It was the right of the hostile witnesses in a case (here, perjured witnesses) to initiate the execution of a sentence.

Almost as an aside, Luke tells us that the witnesses put their clothes at the feet of a young man called Saul, who “approved of their killing him”. It is believed that it must have been this experience which sowed the seeds of Paul’s future Christian faith. As Tertullian wrote:

The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.

As he saw Stephen dying with such dignity and grace, Paul must have been deeply moved – and disturbed.

Stephen, as he dies, follows the example of his Lord. He surrenders his life into God’s hands:

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.

Stephen prays also for his executioners and all their supporters:

Lord, do not hold this sin against them.

So many elements in Stephen’s death resonate with the experience of his Master:

All in all, Stephen is the paradigm of the perfect follower of Jesus, and hence a model for our lives. So too, we have here all the ingredients of a true Christian life: