Scripture/Sermon of the Day

55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him, and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died.

8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

I. In our fifth week after Easter, Jesus continues to make his post-resurrection appearances, but now through other people.

During its earliest days, the church was split into two groups, the Hellenists, who were Greek-speaking Jews, and the Hebrews, who were Hebrew-speaking Jews. Stephen was of the Greek-speaking Jewish group, the Hellenists.

He was one of the earliest young men chosen to be a Christian minister — he and six others. For some reason that’s not clear, people from his own Hellenist group took offense at him. Why? Were they jealous? Did they disagree with Stephen’s interpretation of the Bible?

Stephen was picked to be a minister because he was “of good standing, full of the Spirit and or wisdom.” We’re also told that he was “full of grace and power and did great wonders and signs among the people.”

III. But people in his Hellenist community didn’t like hi and spread false rumors about him, the way false rumors were spread about Jesus when he was alive. They said Stephen had blasphemed against God and Moses, a charge that if found guilty, carried a sentence of death. The false rumors stirred up the people and Stephen was brought before the Temple council. The chief priest told Stephen to defend himself and Stephen gave a long speech, critical of the Jewish people who, Stephen said, continuously rejected God’s work spoken through Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the prophets — all the way up to Jesus.

IV. The speech enraged his audience — they “ground their teeth” at him. Then picked up stones to kill him. Just before they started throwing their stones, Stephen had a glorious vision of God and Jesus and he told the enraged crowd what he saw. But they covered their ears, dragged him out of the city and stoned him to death.

V. That’s an interesting detail Luke tells us — the people covered their ears because they didn’t want to hear anything to challenge their view of reality.

We still do that today. Like children cover their ears and yell, “I can’t hear you….I can’t hear you….la, la, la, la, la…..I can’t hear you….” BUT WHEN WE GROW UP 1. we silence our enemies with a news channel that tunes out the other channels — we just want to hear what we believe. Or 2. we silence what we don’t like with an assault rifle. Even if what we don’t agree with is a beer company. If the company does something we don’t like, we can take a few cases of their beer and shoot them to pieces with an assault rifle — and we can film ourselves doing it and post it on social media so we can influence and try to prejudice 50 million other people.

VI. That’s what the musician Kid Rock did a few weeks ago. Anheuser-Busch made a commercial that featured a 26 year old trans woman, social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who held a can of Bud Light with her picture on the can. Anheuser-Bush gave her that can to celebrate the first anniversary of her transition to girlhood. And when the commercial aired, according to one article, “All hell broke loose.” That’s a great word for what happened — hell — if we accept the idea that hell is a place where there isn’t love. Hell — the opposite of Jesus and the kingdom of love that he called heaven.

Hell is the place where love isn’t — where people different from us are hated. So we shoot them, or stone them to death, or just cover our ears to not listen to them. When we believe we are superior to others, all hell breaks loose.

VII. Jesus gave the remedy for hatred — love. So when Anheuser-Busch makes an ad that includes people who may be different from us, we can stand with Jesus and celebrate that.

Phillip asked Jesus: “Show us the Father — show us God.” Jesus said “Here I am.”

Many people who call themselves Christians don’t listen to Jesus — THEY COVER THEIR EARS. We have other ideas of God. Maybe ideas our parents gave us when we were children. Maybe we learned at church, or from a television or radio evangelist. That’s not way to learn about Jesus. We have to go to the source and see for ourselves — go to the gospels. The Jesus we find there is probably different from the one we hear about. It’s a Jesus who loves everyone, straight people, trans people, black and white, Asian and Russian and indigenous people.

What makes us Christian, is our love for everyone —

especially those we don’t agree with — especially those who aren’t like us. So let us make a toast right now, with our imaginary can’t of Bud Lite in our hand — to Jesus and to love, to Kid Rock and Dylan Mulvaney — to you and to me.