11th Day of Easter, Wednesday April 22: Acts 7:30-60

Stephen’s story continues and ends today. Did he really say all this speech, or would a camera have caught his speech in the midst of stoning just this way? This is idealized, hagiography, heroic legend-making – and a great teaching technique for equipping our own discipleship and witness.

God appears in a burning bush to Moses after he has been 40 years in Midian in the desert. The Exodus brings him back to the desert with a people and a tent of testimony, but Stephen celebrates the tent, not the arrival 40 years later in the promised land. Stephen points out that even David was told God didn’t need a temple from him, and quotes Isaiah among the prophets looking beyond the physical temple. That’s good news, for folks living after 70AD, with their temple in rubble, remembering Stephen preaching 40 years before!

Stephen’s martyrdom is operatic, shaped and modeled on Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus may have died ‘once for all’, but some followers in every generation have made their own sacrifice. I’m often derisive of ‘WWJD’ piety, ‘what would Jesus do’, since Jesus is not a role model for me to imitate while claiming ‘god in me’, but Christ for me. Better to ask ‘what would Stephen do’, or what would a faithful disciple do and say, a hero, a source and authority for my own ethical choices.