No one likes to be told about their failings, faults, bad behavior, and inability to see the shortcomings at all – especially when the threat is not simply seen as a personal attack but experienced as an extreme criticism of the whole system that justifies the behavior in the first place. In today’s first reading (ACTS 7: 51–8:1a), we hear how the wisdom of Stephen confronts the elders and scribes to the point that they must retaliate and put this heretic to death. Stephen, who in yesterday’s reading was said to have the “face of an angel,” now resounds a wisdom that is scathingly honesty and frankly too much for the crowd:

“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the Holy Spirit; you are just like your ancestors. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They put to death those who foretold the coming of the righteous one, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You received the law as transmitted by angels, but you did not observe it.”

The conviction from Stephen is that the crowd “opposes the Holy Spirit,” and that this is just another installment of opposition in a long lineage of persecution, rejection and killing by the ancestors from the time of the prophets up to the present. Yet even at this point of extreme opposition there is hope…

Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God

It is the very point where this judgment. which sounds like a condemnation, hints to the judgment of mercy…

Stephen said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together

So Stephen is stoned by the crowd, and in his dying words proclaims the real judgment that just seems to gloss over our mind’s understanding…

…he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”;    and when he said this, he fell asleep.

The Gospel (JN 6: 30-35) picks up the this theme of the unrest of the crowd as they ask Jesus, “

“What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus’ reply is an emphasis on the Source of the manna that was given to their ancestors in the desert:

…My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world

I wonder what Stephen really saw when he looked up into the Heavens.   Did he see the mystery of mercy that is offered even at the very moment that it is being rejected? Did this paradoxical notion of judgment as mercy that insists on self-offering compel Stephen to ask that God not hold this sin against those who rejected mercy and killed the messenger? What kind of God is this that insists on the transparency of our actions while at the same time inviting us into reconciliation and healing? A God whose Holy Spirit offers a wisdom that holds us accountable not through condemnation and retaliation, but by healing our blindness no matter how systemic it is.  Indeed, the call to open the eyes of the ‘WHOLE.’

Still we pick up the stones of rejection to cast them at God, not realizing that our rejection and violence is itself a symptom of an inchoate hunger that we all share! We lash out at each other by justifying violence for protection never aware that we are committing self-mutilation in the Body of Christ. We cannot see that healing comes only in relationship rather than retaliation, listening with the heart rather than balancing fairness with brutality. The hunger is strong when it cannot recognize that for which it truly hungers!

The Gospel crowd wants bread, but they want it delivered within the structures that they have bolstered, understood, and unfortunately relied upon for so long. They want bread, but only recognize it as stone. The rigidity, as Stephen refers to as “stiff-neckedness,” dictates what can be seen and accepted. Despite the hopelessness of this scenario, we can see hope, perhaps in the distance. Stones can be turned to Bread, but not by any magical wand. It appears that only the mystery of mercy can effect the transformation from stone to bread, from rigidity to open-heartedess, from judgment to responsible compassion.

The stoning of Stephen ends with ..”Now Saul was consenting to his execution.”

It is no coincidence that the man, Paul, who will commit his life to the transformative spread of the Gospel, stands looking on and perhaps even participating in the stoning of Stephen in today’s scriptures. Who would have thought? Mercy is indeed a life-giving mystery that always seems to pass through death.

The Holy Spirit is our witness. We must see what we do to each other in blindness, before we can trade in our stones for living bread. And as we hear today, this Living Bread is a Person, , the Bread of Life come down from heaven, God present in our flesh…

…they said to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”…

This is an affirmation of who WE are.  As the philosopher and mystic, Beatrice Bruteau, tells us, the primary act of being a person is AFFIRMING the being of another.[i]    Personhood cannot exist as individual or separate – it always is plural. Person implies more persons and involves affirming (engaging and eating together) rather than negating or stoning others.  Jesus, as the Living Bread, is a Person who affirms all of us as persons  in His Person.  This is the true work of Mercy.   We hunger for real personhood in and through each other as Living Bread.

We need each other to awaken us to the real hunger and thirst that we have for True Life – Life in the personhood of God – that overwhelms us with this curious mercy that can transform our lives into something that may seem unimaginable at times. Like Saul, it can happen to us! When we can look out into the crowd and see the Christ who can feed us, we can throw down our stones of hatred and begin to affirm and share the bread of fullness in life and mercy that alone can satisfy our souls!

Peace,

Thomas

[i] Beatice Bruteau, God’s Ecstasy; The Creation of a Self-Creating World (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company: 1997), p. 28.

(Originally published May 2, 2017)