We could be forgiven for wondering if those who devised the church calendar were party poopers. Yesterday we sang gentle lullaby carols to the baby Jesus lying so peacefully in his manger cot. We turned up the volume when we joined in with the angels to sing loud songs of hosanna and gloria. Today we are given some very hard and heavy rocks being hurled with murderous violence at Stephen as he dies. On the second day of Christmas our true love gives us the first martyr and the cute scene is disrupted.

The stones are not small pebbles, that might sting but aren’t going to kill you, these are large rocks intended to do serious damage. The intention is to kill; to literally smash his head in and do away with him. Following Jesus beyond the crib is not always the way of peace. Some have to suffer deeply for their faith because some others are so filled with hatred that they can’t cope with the love that kindles its fire within his followers. They can’t cope with the life changing power that calls out for justice and truth; that opposes oppression and the things that squash people, the things that keep people locked up in fear.

These days that follow Christmas Day have some very sharp edges to them. On Tuesday we remember the Holy Innocents, the children put to the sword by Herod in his attempt to stamp out any rivalry. We remember the evil that will act with spine-chilling terror. We are made to focus on the horror of child murder. The next day we remember Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered in his cathedral in 1170. He’s a bit more difficult to get an angle on because his story is somewhat odd to our ears. But he has become a symbol in recent years of churches being prepared to speak out on social and political issues. That often brings a backlash, attempts to silence and to rubbish the comments, so the stones of Stephen are not far in the background. There have been more people martyred for the Christian faith in the last 100 years than in any previous century.

So I am going to place some stones next to our crib set to remind us of the cost that following Jesus can bring, of the hostility it can bring, of the attempts some can make to be rid of turbulent priests and people who speak hard words.

[Place stones next to crib]

Then, when I look further at the account of Stephen’s martyrdom in the Acts of the Apostles (7:51-end), our first reading, there are those coats that were laid at the feet of none other than Saul. He is described as a young man, who looks after their coats while they do the actual killing. Was he already a rabbi? If he was then the coats being at his feet take on another connotation. Disciples are said to sit at the feet of their teacher, so placing their coats at his feet has a resonance of this being seen as a religious act, it is an act of putting their study into practice.

We have here the evil that is done sometimes under the guise of defending faith. Christians, who experience persecution, are not themselves exempt from behaving in some horrible ways to others in turn. And they can be oblivious to it, even strongly deny that is what they are doing, or come out with all sorts of justifications that just leave others feeling sick.

So there are those coats that speak of righteous, or so called righteous, violence and hatred. This is the distortion of what religious faith should engender and so I am going to place this coat next to the crib to remind us of our need for repentance and to seek the healing grace that this child brings.

[Place coat next to crib]

That rather takes us to this man Saul. We know that the Acts of the Apostles has a shock in store in a few pages time. This man experiences a dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus and is transformed from a hate filled zealot wanting to stamp out the Christian Church into a champion of the gospel actively helping it grow. He even changes his name from Saul to Paul. How much did the experience of Stephen and other murders play on his mind? We can almost hear the thought gnawing away at him: “These Christians are even prepared to die for their Lord, may be there is something in it?” It makes us ask what true victory looks like. Does it rest in the rocks and squashing people, expunging them, or rather is it found in the victory of turning the one who looks after the coats and urges on the murder into the church’s champion?

As we look at this child in the manger, we begin to find that true victory is transformative; it changes people and with them situations that previously looked impossible. It is this child, the one who grew up, was himself killed cruelly on the cross, and gloriously rose for us and our salvation, it is him who transforms us. No one comes away from encountering him without feeling themselves changed. The shepherds went away praising God and Paul, as he becomes, does the same.

So perhaps we should put a warning notice on our crib scene: ‘Looking at this child could seriously change you’. But then, that’s the point.

Today our celebration of Christmas is deepened. It moves from the safe nursery scene to touch some of the hardest and painful aspects of life. With the death of Stephen and the transformation of Paul we begin to see just what salvation can have in store. This child will get under your skin and that is the most powerful victory that there is, even more so than rocks that squash and the hatred that holds coats.

© Ian Black 2004

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