One of my favorite people is Bill LeCato. Bill talks to me almost every morning. He probably talks to you, too, from WESR. When I hear Bill’s voice in the morning I know that all is right with the world.
Part of the reason I relate to Bill is that he is doing something that I did and loved once in my life. For a couple of years after college I was a disc jockey and news guy for WPED radio in Crozet, Virginia – “Spanning the nation with 3 powerful watts.” It was a great job and I really thought that I would be doing something like that my whole life. But God intervened and well, let’s just say I’m broadcasting in an entirely different way now.
Here was the toughest part of my transition, though: I really had to figure out what to do with my voice and I’m still working on it. Bill has got about the best radio voice I know of. It’s deep and warm and smooth – all the qualities that radio station owners love and that radio listeners want, too. And he uses it well. Bill LeCato makes every event he promotes sound like it’s going to a really wonderful time. He makes you want to go there. Bill could say, “The Wachapreague Fire Department is having its annual Scrapple and Seaweed Dinner down at the fairgrounds next Friday at 9 PM. Entertainment will be provided by the Tone Deaf Quartet. Come on out.”
Then I’d say, “You know, that sounds like something I’d like to go to. Hey, Suzanne, what are we doing Friday night?”
This was my problem – having used that radio voice to give life to everything, even those things that ought not to have life, it was very difficult for me to decide what to do with my voice when I became a minister…what to give my voice to. Because what preaching demands is that you only give voice to the truth. At the age of 24, when I went to seminary, I only had the faintest hint of what truth was. I knew God had called. I knew about Jesus. But I had only a vague sense of what more I had to say. And when I did hit the truth I had to let folks know, through the way that I spoke, that this news was of an entirely different order than anything else I might say. This news shatters the world as we know it. This news makes every other news trivial. This news is not about the superficial things we often say to one another. This news is about my soul and therefore about your soul.
How often have you had the urgency of knowing that there was a truth you had to share like that? To ask it more dramatically – when have you been in touch with a truth that you would give your life for? Most of the time we’re aware that our sense of truth is kind of muddied. It’s so shaded that we’re hesitant to spell truth with a capital ‘T’, much less stake our life on it.
I was at the Festival of Faith and Writing for the past three days in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If your idea of a great day is hanging out in lecture halls with poets and authors giving readings and lectures, (guilty), this is about the most stimulating place you can be. There were about 2,000 writers from all over the country and all over the world there.
Now, I’ll admit that we were an odd collection of folks. The thing about writers is that while they have these incredibly rich interior lives, they are not particularly good at people skills. That’s why they’re writers. You can say something provocative to them and they won’t respond verbally but instead they’ll pull out a notebook and write something down. They also read a lot, which makes walking difficult. I was avoiding people all through the conference who were walking across campus with their nose in a book. And they were trying to do the same for me.
One of the speakers was the novelist Mary Gordon. She gave the opening address on whether fiction could make people more moral. Her answer was ‘no’ because literature doesn’t get a predictable response out of people. It’s not direct enough for people to read a story and then know how to live. She talked about her disappointment when someone she met told her some terribly offensive thing and then found out who she was. “Oh, your book changed my life,” the stranger said. How disappointing! Of course, the same thing happens with sermons, too, but they are usually a little more direct. Or at least you can have somebody give a commission at the end of the service to interpret it.
Mary Gordon said it partly has to do with the nature of truth. The truth about something, she says, is often not clearly before us. It’s usually several truths combined. When we hear something that requires us to think about what’s true it’s combination of “the first thing we thought, its opposite, and something in between.” It’s complicated.
For Stephen this is definitely not the case. In the book of Acts we meet this early Christian, Stephen, and he is willing to go to the mat for a truth. Stephen is willing to pick a fight with the ruling religious council for a truth. Stephen is willing to die for Jesus and he does.
As a youth I really related to Stephen. I wanted to be as passionate as Stephen. I wanted to believe in something so much that I would stand up to the powers that be. I wanted to condemn those in authority and tell them how wrong they were. I wanted to be Stephen.
Hearing this story again now as an adult I think he’s obnoxious. Who did he think he was claiming all truth for his side alone? Surely there was another side. If we just had the recorded thoughts of the council I’m sure we’d see that they were not the evil people this passage makes them out to be. These are the things I wonder now as an adult who knows how dangerous religious zealots can be.
For Stephen, however, and for that early group of Christians who were just trying to be faithful to what Jesus and the Holy Spirit had done to them, they clung to this truth because it was life itself. The leaders couldn’t stand it. Partly because Stephen was accusing them of not enforcing the law they were supposed to be upholding and partly because Stephen was claiming that he was standing in the long line of God’s prophets and they were standing in the long line of those who rejected the prophets. At any rate they are furious at Stephen and the Bible says they were grinding their teeth.
That’s where the lectionary reading for today picks up. Stephen is facing this angry mob of religious leaders and suddenly he has a vision. For the whole chapter before this he has been telling the story of Israel’s history and how God has continued to speak to the people in each new generation and called them to something new, from Abraham leaving his home to travel to a new land, to Joseph going to Egypt and saving his family, to Moses leading the people out of slavery, to David and Solomon. That’s where Israel had been, but now Stephen has a vision of where God’s people were going. He looks up into the heavens and he sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
Now this language is so familiar to people who have grown up in the Church that we just gloss right over this. It’s like Stephen starts quoting the Apostle’s Creed. “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and who shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.” But we forget what this image meant to the early Church and what it ought to mean to us.
It’s not just abstract language and a formulaic way of saying things. This was the vision that kept the persecuted Church alive in the midst of its darkest days. Not a therapeutic Christianity that talked about how Jesus is my best friend. Not a militant Christianity that talked about destruction. The image that the early Christians took with them was of God in glory and Jesus standing or seated at God’s right hand.
This goes beyond reason. It goes beyond history. The comfort that Stephen got when he faced the mob was a vision of God and Jesus. That’s what the universe hangs on. It’s the love of the Trinity. That’s it. And it is far more about beauty than it is about reason. There was no philosophical system on earth that could explain why a human being should be elevated to stand at God’s right hand. Only the beauty of the incarnation and the promise of the resurrection could do that.
This, of course, is too much for the crowd and when Stephen tells them about his vision they stop their ears so that they don’t have to hear this. They cry out in a loud voice and they run at Stephen and grab him and drag him out of the city. They take up stones and they start to pelt Stephen with the stones, but even while he’s being beaten to death by these stones, Stephen kneels. It doesn’t seem to be the stones that make him kneel, he just kneels. And his last act is to imitate Jesus. He prays that God will not hold the sin of his murderers against them. Even as he dies, he wants them to know the beauty that he sees. Even as they give in to the evil that consumes them, he knows what they can be in God’s eyes.
There’s one other character in this small story, though. He’s standing there as the crowd drags Stephen out for his execution. He’s watching with approval as they do the deed. They throw their cloaks at his feet – he’s the coat clerk for the first Christian martyrdom. It’s a young man who stands in for us. His name is Saul and later his name will be changed to Paul, the great apostle who will take the message of Jesus to the whole world.
He’s the one who gives me hope in this story. The crowds are too cruel and too possessed by their hatred for me to relate to. Stephen is too pious – I pray that I could respond as well to such a thing, but how many of us could? But Saul – there I see myself. Witnessing the word that the world can do to assault truth and beauty and heaven itself, but still harboring the possibility of change.
I know that I can be captivated by the violence and destruction and disappointment that the world metes out on a daily basis. I know that I can be prone to despair. But every so often the heavens will open to reveal something amazing about this world. Even though things are bad, God is in the heavens and Jesus is standing at God’s right hand – no longer confined to the cross, but awaiting the consummation of all things when those who can handle life will join him at a great feast. That’s what sustains us when the going gets tough.
Lisa Stevens has introduced me to a folksinger who has become one of my favorites. Ellis Paul is his name and he has a song called “Angel in Manhattan” in which he imagines what would happen if a visible angel showed up in New York City. He imagines the disbelief of all of the people and a hostile press conference in front of reporters. “What do you say to detractors who say you’re just some actor?” the reporters ask.
The angel responds, “The question is, ‘Do I believe in you?’” Of course the answer is that she does. God does. The chorus goes on, “Spread the news, I saw an angel fly from Manhattan in front of paparazzi, in front of television crews. And me I choose, I know a little faith wouldn’t harm me despite what they print in the New York Daily News. It was just another day/Like any other, other day/Like any day.” Any day, the world is a miraculous place filled with the presence of God.
You want the truth? I am convicted. I will not speak anything but the truth. And the truth is that something is terribly, terribly right with the universe and it sees the best in us. If only we could see the same. Thanks be to God.
Acts 7:55-60
Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and he looked into the heavens and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He said, "Look, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Humanity standing at the right hand of God!"
But they cried out with a loud voice, clapped their ears shut and rushed against him as one. They took him out of the city and began to stone him. The witnesses threw their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
While we they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not let this sin stand against them." And with that he died.
Part of the reason I relate to Bill is that he is doing something that I did and loved once in my life. For a couple of years after college I was a disc jockey and news guy for WPED radio in Crozet, Virginia – “Spanning the nation with 3 powerful watts.” It was a great job and I really thought that I would be doing something like that my whole life. But God intervened and well, let’s just say I’m broadcasting in an entirely different way now.
Here was the toughest part of my transition, though: I really had to figure out what to do with my voice and I’m still working on it. Bill has got about the best radio voice I know of. It’s deep and warm and smooth – all the qualities that radio station owners love and that radio listeners want, too. And he uses it well. Bill LeCato makes every event he promotes sound like it’s going to a really wonderful time. He makes you want to go there. Bill could say, “The Wachapreague Fire Department is having its annual Scrapple and Seaweed Dinner down at the fairgrounds next Friday at 9 PM. Entertainment will be provided by the Tone Deaf Quartet. Come on out.”
Then I’d say, “You know, that sounds like something I’d like to go to. Hey, Suzanne, what are we doing Friday night?”
This was my problem – having used that radio voice to give life to everything, even those things that ought not to have life, it was very difficult for me to decide what to do with my voice when I became a minister…what to give my voice to. Because what preaching demands is that you only give voice to the truth. At the age of 24, when I went to seminary, I only had the faintest hint of what truth was. I knew God had called. I knew about Jesus. But I had only a vague sense of what more I had to say. And when I did hit the truth I had to let folks know, through the way that I spoke, that this news was of an entirely different order than anything else I might say. This news shatters the world as we know it. This news makes every other news trivial. This news is not about the superficial things we often say to one another. This news is about my soul and therefore about your soul.
How often have you had the urgency of knowing that there was a truth you had to share like that? To ask it more dramatically – when have you been in touch with a truth that you would give your life for? Most of the time we’re aware that our sense of truth is kind of muddied. It’s so shaded that we’re hesitant to spell truth with a capital ‘T’, much less stake our life on it.
I was at the Festival of Faith and Writing for the past three days in Grand Rapids, Michigan. If your idea of a great day is hanging out in lecture halls with poets and authors giving readings and lectures, (guilty), this is about the most stimulating place you can be. There were about 2,000 writers from all over the country and all over the world there.
Now, I’ll admit that we were an odd collection of folks. The thing about writers is that while they have these incredibly rich interior lives, they are not particularly good at people skills. That’s why they’re writers. You can say something provocative to them and they won’t respond verbally but instead they’ll pull out a notebook and write something down. They also read a lot, which makes walking difficult. I was avoiding people all through the conference who were walking across campus with their nose in a book. And they were trying to do the same for me.
One of the speakers was the novelist Mary Gordon. She gave the opening address on whether fiction could make people more moral. Her answer was ‘no’ because literature doesn’t get a predictable response out of people. It’s not direct enough for people to read a story and then know how to live. She talked about her disappointment when someone she met told her some terribly offensive thing and then found out who she was. “Oh, your book changed my life,” the stranger said. How disappointing! Of course, the same thing happens with sermons, too, but they are usually a little more direct. Or at least you can have somebody give a commission at the end of the service to interpret it.
Mary Gordon said it partly has to do with the nature of truth. The truth about something, she says, is often not clearly before us. It’s usually several truths combined. When we hear something that requires us to think about what’s true it’s combination of “the first thing we thought, its opposite, and something in between.” It’s complicated.
For Stephen this is definitely not the case. In the book of Acts we meet this early Christian, Stephen, and he is willing to go to the mat for a truth. Stephen is willing to pick a fight with the ruling religious council for a truth. Stephen is willing to die for Jesus and he does.
As a youth I really related to Stephen. I wanted to be as passionate as Stephen. I wanted to believe in something so much that I would stand up to the powers that be. I wanted to condemn those in authority and tell them how wrong they were. I wanted to be Stephen.
Hearing this story again now as an adult I think he’s obnoxious. Who did he think he was claiming all truth for his side alone? Surely there was another side. If we just had the recorded thoughts of the council I’m sure we’d see that they were not the evil people this passage makes them out to be. These are the things I wonder now as an adult who knows how dangerous religious zealots can be.
For Stephen, however, and for that early group of Christians who were just trying to be faithful to what Jesus and the Holy Spirit had done to them, they clung to this truth because it was life itself. The leaders couldn’t stand it. Partly because Stephen was accusing them of not enforcing the law they were supposed to be upholding and partly because Stephen was claiming that he was standing in the long line of God’s prophets and they were standing in the long line of those who rejected the prophets. At any rate they are furious at Stephen and the Bible says they were grinding their teeth.
That’s where the lectionary reading for today picks up. Stephen is facing this angry mob of religious leaders and suddenly he has a vision. For the whole chapter before this he has been telling the story of Israel’s history and how God has continued to speak to the people in each new generation and called them to something new, from Abraham leaving his home to travel to a new land, to Joseph going to Egypt and saving his family, to Moses leading the people out of slavery, to David and Solomon. That’s where Israel had been, but now Stephen has a vision of where God’s people were going. He looks up into the heavens and he sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
Now this language is so familiar to people who have grown up in the Church that we just gloss right over this. It’s like Stephen starts quoting the Apostle’s Creed. “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and who shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.” But we forget what this image meant to the early Church and what it ought to mean to us.
It’s not just abstract language and a formulaic way of saying things. This was the vision that kept the persecuted Church alive in the midst of its darkest days. Not a therapeutic Christianity that talked about how Jesus is my best friend. Not a militant Christianity that talked about destruction. The image that the early Christians took with them was of God in glory and Jesus standing or seated at God’s right hand.
This goes beyond reason. It goes beyond history. The comfort that Stephen got when he faced the mob was a vision of God and Jesus. That’s what the universe hangs on. It’s the love of the Trinity. That’s it. And it is far more about beauty than it is about reason. There was no philosophical system on earth that could explain why a human being should be elevated to stand at God’s right hand. Only the beauty of the incarnation and the promise of the resurrection could do that.
This, of course, is too much for the crowd and when Stephen tells them about his vision they stop their ears so that they don’t have to hear this. They cry out in a loud voice and they run at Stephen and grab him and drag him out of the city. They take up stones and they start to pelt Stephen with the stones, but even while he’s being beaten to death by these stones, Stephen kneels. It doesn’t seem to be the stones that make him kneel, he just kneels. And his last act is to imitate Jesus. He prays that God will not hold the sin of his murderers against them. Even as he dies, he wants them to know the beauty that he sees. Even as they give in to the evil that consumes them, he knows what they can be in God’s eyes.
There’s one other character in this small story, though. He’s standing there as the crowd drags Stephen out for his execution. He’s watching with approval as they do the deed. They throw their cloaks at his feet – he’s the coat clerk for the first Christian martyrdom. It’s a young man who stands in for us. His name is Saul and later his name will be changed to Paul, the great apostle who will take the message of Jesus to the whole world.
He’s the one who gives me hope in this story. The crowds are too cruel and too possessed by their hatred for me to relate to. Stephen is too pious – I pray that I could respond as well to such a thing, but how many of us could? But Saul – there I see myself. Witnessing the word that the world can do to assault truth and beauty and heaven itself, but still harboring the possibility of change.
I know that I can be captivated by the violence and destruction and disappointment that the world metes out on a daily basis. I know that I can be prone to despair. But every so often the heavens will open to reveal something amazing about this world. Even though things are bad, God is in the heavens and Jesus is standing at God’s right hand – no longer confined to the cross, but awaiting the consummation of all things when those who can handle life will join him at a great feast. That’s what sustains us when the going gets tough.
Lisa Stevens has introduced me to a folksinger who has become one of my favorites. Ellis Paul is his name and he has a song called “Angel in Manhattan” in which he imagines what would happen if a visible angel showed up in New York City. He imagines the disbelief of all of the people and a hostile press conference in front of reporters. “What do you say to detractors who say you’re just some actor?” the reporters ask.
The angel responds, “The question is, ‘Do I believe in you?’” Of course the answer is that she does. God does. The chorus goes on, “Spread the news, I saw an angel fly from Manhattan in front of paparazzi, in front of television crews. And me I choose, I know a little faith wouldn’t harm me despite what they print in the New York Daily News. It was just another day/Like any other, other day/Like any day.” Any day, the world is a miraculous place filled with the presence of God.
You want the truth? I am convicted. I will not speak anything but the truth. And the truth is that something is terribly, terribly right with the universe and it sees the best in us. If only we could see the same. Thanks be to God.
Acts 7:55-60
Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit and he looked into the heavens and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. He said, "Look, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Humanity standing at the right hand of God!"
But they cried out with a loud voice, clapped their ears shut and rushed against him as one. They took him out of the city and began to stone him. The witnesses threw their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
While we they were stoning Stephen, he called out, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not let this sin stand against them." And with that he died.
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