A PLACE WITH GOD
One thing that gets international disasters and wars off the front pages of local newspapers is
tragedy that is closer to home. Somehow every time I get to preach on this reading another
serious calamity occurs. This week being the tragedy of 6 students and a teacher in New
Zealand from the Auckland based Elim Christian College. It is particularly significant that a
smaller school community with a strong Christian emphasis now needs to come to grips with
finding meaning in such an awful loss of life among these young people and to ask
themselves where is God in this? We can only pray that they find helpful answers in their
search.
Today we read in the book of Acts of the Apostles, about the last thing we want to see: the
violent death of an innocent man. It is the martyrdom of a man, whose only crime is to
proclaim his faith in Jesus Christ. Stephen faced a mob of angry people seething violence.
“They cried out in a loud voice and stopped their ears”. They were not prepared to listen to
argument or restraint. They laid into him with a typically Hebrew and cruel form of
execution – stoning.
Stephen recounted their ancient failings: their determination to continually repeat the mistakes
and cruelties of the past. They resisted God’s Spirit. Their forefathers did so with the ancient
prophets by rejecting them and stoning them. They killed those who announced the coming
of “The Righteous One”. They betrayed and murdered Christ. As Stephen said this - they
murdered him too. Stephen, a principle and remarkable leader of the early church is killed.
One of the things I continually find offensive in many of the media reports about this and
other tragedies are their associations with past occasions. The NZ report was filled with
references of the “Canyon drownings”, reminiscent of those Australians drowned in
Switzerland several years ago. It seems that the media believe that we can only take in the
enormity of this tragedy by comparing it to past ones. It seems that we must have a reminder
that we as a society are doomed to continually repeat the experience of these disasters. We do
not learn, we do not prevent, and we are unable or unwilling to prevent the future loss of
innocents. This somehow seems particularly true of some of the school shootings and acts of
violence that seem to continually plague many countries.
There is however one detail that stops this story in Acts from being just another account of a
death of an innocent. Saul was present. Saul who was later to become known as Paul,
witnesses Stephen’s prayer of forgiveness at the point of his death. Saul being a leading
Pharisee was one of the most ardent persecutors of Christ’s church. It was Paul who was later
to have one of the most amazing conversion experiences.
In Acts 8, we read of many persecutions happening all over the region, Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, and people being imprisoned. But the implication, as in Jesus death is, this is not the
end. In brokenness there is healing. In death, there comes life. In Stephen’s death, this is not
the end of the fledgling Christian Church, but a beginning. There is life. He, who would
stand over and witness its destruction, becomes the one who would be its greatest worker and
inspirer. It is a powerful image when one thinks of those who would declare the church dead
or dying today. When we consider there is no hope for the fleeing refugees from war-torn
regions of the globe. No hope from continually repeating the senseless violence of centuries.
The gospel reading reinforces the worries of the disciples about world affairs and those close
to home. The cross of Christ is the climax of the world’s hostility against God, and that
hostility will continue against those who follow the Son of God – who see the resurrection.
The future can be frightful that even the apostle Peter became so broken at one point to deny
Rev John Mann
20 April 2008
the One he had confessed to being the Christ. It is not surprising that the followers of Christ
might become troubled or worried and upset. It is in this fear that Jesus gives us the
reassuring family image of the home with many rooms, of being “at home with God”. Yes
Christ is gone and we are left behind to face a broken world. Jesus allays fears by the
pledging of his return. It is the hope of the church for today that we may go on in this hope,
which inaugurates the new heaven and new earth – the age to come. The problem of course as
Thomas complains in verse 5 is that we seem to be on our own in the anxiety producing
meanwhile. Evil and violence are still all around us.
The image of the road, the return, suggests to our present experiences in the way the Scripture
calls Christian discipleship “the way”. Jesus as the way is the primary focus, and ‘truth’ and
‘life’ are somehow related to Jesus as the way. The emphasis may be the goal of where we
believe God is calling us. The emphasis may be on the way/the path itself. What we know
about Jesus suffering and compassion for humanity is the way of knowing God’s love for us.
Even in the midst of evil and unexpected tragic death that we experience, we are reminded
that God has not forgotten or abandoned us. The call is to us to live out that conviction.
It says something when faced with the difficult problems of today’s world. We should not
and cannot throw our hands up in the air and say ‘there is nothing I can do’. We cannot be
fatalist and say it will happen anyway. Troubles do return again and again but if Jesus is the
way we are following, then God’s life-giving options are there too. Believe not in an
impotent God but a God who is working in the world for the life of humanity.
Rev John Mann
20 April 2008