On the Feast of Stephen...When good intentions go wrong!

As soon as Christmas Day is done, with all that's so very pleasant about it,  the Christian tradition takes us straight into the story of one of the earliest members of the Church being killed for showing off his faith in Jesus Christ. We go from a birth one day, to a death the next.

Boxing Day is the Feast of St. Stephen, who was a Deacon in the new church and reckoned to be the first Christian martyr. I don't know what wisdom placed St. Stephen's day on the day after Christmas Day but it's not the only death we remember in Christmas week as we'll see in another couple of days time.

St. Stephen was no evangelist! In the Acts of the Apostles we read that he berated the Jewish council because they couldn't see Jesus as the one they were waiting for. Not only that, he said their ancestors had a history of persecuting the prophets among them. And just to add insult to injury, he accused them of not keeping the law of Moses even though they were the ones who received it. So it was inevitable in the climate of the times, that members of the council dragged him out and stoned him to death. Chillingly, the story tells us that the witnesses of all this 'laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul' who'll come to be one of the most feared persecutors of Christians. So you know that this won't be the end of it. Things will get much worse before they get better!

Not only was Stephen not an evangelist, he was no diplomat either. In his zeal for his faith, he did nothing for Christian/Jewish relationships! So it's no wonder they took offence.  Of course the writer of the Acts of the Apostles, to get his point across that this was a holy death, tells us that St. Stephen, like any religious zealot, took it all in his spiritual stride; and just like Jesus at his crucifixion who prayed that God would forgive his killers, so Stephen prays the same.

Today, we give thank to God for and celebrate Stephen's witness and martydom and quite rightly so. But it's a cautionary tale.  Even now, unremitting adherence to ideologies, especially by politicians is putting many more lives at risk, even in our own country, our own towns and streets. Zeal for any ideology, belief, idea, religion or simply, point of view, when not tempered with respect for other peoples' ideology, beliefs, religion, ideas and points of view inevitably, I think history shows us, ends badly both for individuals and nations.

Whilst St. Stephen's faith is an example to us all; the way he went about showing it, at least in this instance, I'm sorry to say, isn't. It might have been better if he'd stuck to what he was good and gifted at - being a deacon! There's a lesson there for all of us, especially our nations leaders I think.