Sermon Notes — May 3, 2026
“People of God”
May 3, 2026
Acts 7:55-60 (RSV)
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
When Dann and I were talking about this week’s text, I remembered some words that I learned as a kid. You probably learned them, too.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but…
(names will never hurt me)
It was bad enough having red hair, but I was also always one of the tallest kids in the class until about junior high – I was one of the few girls who stood on the back row in class pictures. Adults couldn’t understand why I was upset when people teased me about my hair. “But it’s so pretty,” they’d say, which was nice but it didn’t make the teasing any less painful.
Since I’ve never had a stick or a stone thrown at me, I have to assume that if being teased hurt me as much as it did, sticks and stones must be much, much worse.
The story of Stephen in today’s text is a tough one. Not only do Stephen’s enemies throw rocks at him, but the story itself suggests that followers of Jesus might find themselves in a situation like Stephen’s – facing violence for the sake of their faith. One of the things that stands out in today’s text is the way that the end of Stephen’s life parallels the end of Jesus’s life. The crowds call out for Stephen’s death just as they cried out for the death of Jesus. As Stephen dies, he prays that Jesus would receive his spirit, just as Jesus surrendered his own spirit to God. And as he succumbs to death, Stephen calls for the forgiveness of his murderers, just as Jesus called for the forgiveness of his.
During Jesus’s ministry, he repeatedly tells his followers that if they want to be his disciples they must be willing to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him, and that those who lose their lives for the sake of the gospel will find them. And while these things confounded the disciples, the story of Stephen suggests that the message may have finally gotten through to them – Stephen gave up his life for the sake of the gospel.
Will you pray with me and for me?
We’ve skipped over a lot of Acts since last week, but here’s the short version. The early followers of Jesus continue to grow in numbers. They continue to follow the same pattern of life that we talked about last week – they learn together, they study together, they pray together, and they share life together. Their work becomes more diversified – some preach, some heal. Some of them have even gone to prison – more than once! – for preaching and proclaiming that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures.
And everything is peachy…until it isn’t. Grab a Bible and turn to the sixth chapter of Acts. We read there that this new community of apostles is having some growing pains, not the least of which is infighting. Your Bible might say that the conflict was between Greek-speaking Jews and Aramaic-speaking Jews or it might say that the conflict was between the Hellenists and Hebrews. What it’s really saying is that the conflict is between the homegrown folks – the Jews in Jerusalem–and the folks from away – the Jews who were from away but stayed in Jerusalem after Pentecost. It’s important to remember that at this point all of the disciples and the apostles and everyone in this brand new community are still Jewish – at this point the followers of Jesus are a sect of Judaism. They aren’t even called Christians yet. In Acts you’ll see them called Followers of The Way.
Anyway, the folks from away – the Greek-speaking Jews – are concerned because their widows aren’t getting their fair share of the daily food distribution, and so the original twelve disciples call together all of the disciples and tell them to choose seven from among themselves to oversee the food distribution so that everyone got the same amount. And these seven were to be well-respected and wise, and people who could be trusted to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Stephen was one of those seven, and Acts tells us that he even stood out among those who were chosen. His life gave evidence of God’s grace and he did great wonders and signs among the people. But somehow he got crossways with some other Jewish men who belonged to the Synagogue of Former Slaves – all we need to know about them is that they were not Followers of The Way. And so they accused Stephen of blasphemy – falsely, of course–which led to Stephen being brought before the Temple leaders and commanded to defend himself, which leads us to Acts chapter 7, Stephen’s speech. It is a long speech, longer than any other speech in the Book of Acts, which is famous for long speeches. And in this speech he recounts Israel’s history beginning with Abraham and concluding with King David. The speech offended the Temple leaders, and rightly so. Let it be said that if you earnestly want to persuade people of the love and salvation of Jesus Christ, do not do what Stephen did. He called them names. He called them stubborn and accused them of having no part of God’s covenant. He accused them of ignoring God’s Holy Spirit, and told them that though they had received God’s law they never kept it. Remember, again, that everyone in this argument is Jewish and they are arguing about distinctly Jewish matters like how to follow the Law of Moses and the role of the Jerusalem temple in Jewish religious life. Regardless, there was not one shred of diplomacy or grace in Stephen’s speech. I get why the Temple leaders were offended.
But at the end of the speech, the names that Stephen called the Temple leaders turned into stones. The tension that had been building between the followers of Jesus and the other Jews finally broke, and the crowd dragged Stephen outside of the city gates and threw rocks at him until he died.
Here’s my favorite church visual again. We are right here on the cusp of Pentecost, which is May 24 for those of you who are planning your outfit, and on the other side of Pentecost, our scriptures focus on the Story of the People of God. But as I also mentioned last week, these last few weeks of Eastertide give us a sneak peek into Acts where we begin reading about the Story of the People of God.
What is the story about the People of God that this text tells us today?
Here’s what it’s not telling us…
A whole bunch of us spent several hours after church last week in the Banquet Hall learning about child abuse and neglect, and how we can better ensure that no such harm ever occurs in our church or by our people. So hear me say that this story does not justify harm of any kind. No sticks, no stones, no names. This story does not justify allowing other people to harm us. Jesus already suffered and died for our salvation. No one else – not us, not anyone else – ever has to suffer or die again for our salvation. Suffering and death happen, but our salvation has been taken care of once and for all. By Jesus.
This story does function, in part, to show us how the earliest followers of Jesus started going into the world to share the good news. In the first chapter of Acts, after Jesus’s resurrection and before he ascends into heaven, he says to his disciples
you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
The Holy Spirit that Jesus promised in Acts 1 comes on the Day of Pentecost while the disciples are in Jerusalem, and up until today’s text they are only preaching and healing and teaching in Jerusalem, but in Acts chapter 8, right after Stephen has been murdered, we read
At that time, the church in Jerusalem began to be subjected to vicious harassment. Everyone except the apostles was scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria.
I wonder if those first converts, the three thousand who professed faith in Jesus Christ on Pentecost, and the others who joined The Way in the days and weeks and months afterward – I wonder if they ever imagined that they would be forced out of Jerusalem by harassment and persecution – that they would have to leave in order to be safe. And yet that is how the early church grew. That is how the People of God ended up leaving their homes and scattering throughout the region of Judea and even into Samaria – which was still enemy territory – and into all the world. It wasn’t what they signed up for, but it’s how they shared the good news in increasingly widening circles until one day it came to you and to me.
This story functions, in part, to demonstrate God’s grace and redemptive power. You noticed who was holding everyone’s coat while they were throwing rocks at Stephen, right? In verse 58? Saul will eventually be known as Paul, and he will take the gospel even further than those first followers did. The Story of the People of God is a story of God’s power to change anything. To change everything. To change the hardest and most hateful of hearts – Acts 9:1 describes Saul as a man who was “spewing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples,” – to change that heart into a heart that would do literally anything for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
This story is a reminder that God is always doing something that we – that God’s People – can’t see. There is this moment in the story of Stephen – it’s in verse 55 if you still have your Bible open – when we read that
Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
The Greek word that is translated gaze in our text is atenizo. Atenizo is not just physical sight – it is a perception that is beyond physical sight, beyond what our senses tell us. In the midst of the violence and the anger that surrounded him, Stephen was able to look beyond his own physical circumstance and see the glory of God.
People of God are invited to have this kind of sight. A perception that is able to see beyond our actual circumstances to see the glory of God – and what God might be doing. People of God trust that God is always doing something we don’t know about, something good and life-giving and abundant, something that affirms the holiness and dignity of all of creation, even when all evidence is to the contrary.
Several months ago we heard a financial report that made a lot of us anxious. Today we heard a report that reminds us that God is always making a way where we didn’t see a way. And that’s because the People of God – that’s you – looked beyond the actual circumstance and perceived what God might be doing, what God could do. And you responded.
The prayer that we gave you last week is a prayer for the People of God as we learn to trust God beyond what seems logical and feels comfortable. It is a prayer for the People of God to learn to turn our attention to the work of God rather than turning our attention to the chaos and the noise that can be so disruptive. It is not a prayer for living with our heads in the sand or ignoring breaches of justice in our world that allow real harm to God’s children. It is a prayer of trust that God is up to something.
On the night when Jesus sat down with the disciples for the last time, he asked them to see beyond what was in front of them – to see beyond the bread and the wine and instead see his body and his blood. He invited them to believe that by offering himself in death, he could bring life to all of creation. From brokenness could come healing, from betrayal could come reconciliation, from death could come life.
You are invited to this table this morning, People of God, to experience God’s glory and goodness once again.