The Cost of Deaconing

NOTE: This sermon was prepared for delivery during an on-line Service of the Word at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, Rye Brook, N.Y., on April 18, 2021. (Acts 6:1 - 7:2a, 44-60, Narrative Lectionary.)

When I was 17 I began exploring the possibility of Christian ministry. I consulted my pastor – a young man barely ten years older than me – and he pulled a worn paperback book off his bookshelf.

It was The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“Read this,” my pastor said, “and we’ll talk.”

I was too young and uninformed to realize what a scary thing my pastor had done. 

I did not realize, at 17, that for Bonhoeffer the cost of discipleship had been severe. He had left a tenured position at Union Seminary to return to his native Germany to oppose the Third Reich. On April 9, 1945, barely a month before the war in Europe ended, Bonhoeffer was cruelly executed by the Nazis for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Piano wire was wrapped around his neck and he was strung up until he slowly strangled to death.

For those who ponder discipleship, this account should be kept in mind. When Bonhoeffer decided to become a Lutheran pastor he may have anticipated a quiet life of writing and teaching. Instead, he died a martyr at 39.

As we read today’s text in Acts, we might suspect that when Stephen decided to join his fellow Greek Christians in a worshipping congregation he was looking forward to a life of sweet prayer, worship, and social service. 

He was probably aware that tensions were rising in the Christian community between the original Jewish coverts and the more recent Hellenist converts. When the Hellenists complained that their widows were being short-changed in the daily distribution of food, Stephen may have welcomed it when he was one of seven Hellenists chosen to make things fair. 

Stephen and the others, whose names are remembered in today’s scripture but nowhere else, became the first deacons of the church. The disciples defined the role simply: they needed deacons to wait on tables while they attended to the word of God.

That arrangement was not intended to minimize the deacon role.

Whatever your view may be of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – AOC – I think she made a great point when one of the learned GOP lawyers in Congress taunted her for being a mere waitress and bartender.

She replied:

“I’m proud to be a bartender. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

She added: 

“There’s nothing wrong with working retail, folding clothes for other people to buy. There is nothing wrong with preparing food that your neighbors will eat. There is nothing wrong with driving the buses that take your family to work. There is nothing wrong with being a working person in America and there is everything dignified by it.”

Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing more office holders who think of their role as one of diaconal service rather than opportunities for power.

When the disciples named seven deacons, they made it clear they saw the diaconal service role was as important a calling as the pastoral role. This is something for the vast majority of us who are not pastors to keep in mind. Whatever role we are called to fill in the church – usher, reader, knitter, lector, mechanic, electrician, editor, zoom host, scholar – that is the ministry to which God has called us. And we are all ministers.

According to Luke, in his role as deacon, Stephen “full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.”

At least at first. Perhaps he was doing too good a job. He may have made some of his fellow Hellenists jealous because resentful members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen began to challenge him.

Years ago, when I was a young magazine editor, I began receiving scores of angry letters from readers who thought the magazine was devoting too much space to social issues and too little to spiritual issues. I mentioned this to George Cornell, religion editor of the Associated Press, and asked him how he handled angry letters. George stroked his chin and said, in his Oklahoma drawl, “I tell ’em, ‘You may be right.’”

Perhaps it would have been safer for Stephen to take this approach with his critics. But instead he angered them even more with arguments so smart that they knew they could not refute them. So they began making up lies about what he said. They took him to the Council and accused Stephen of threatening the most holy entity the Council could imagine: the Temple. 

Luke writes: 

“They stirred up the people as well as the elders and the scribes; then they suddenly confronted him, seized him, and brought him before the council. They set up false witnesses who said, ‘This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us.’ And all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.”

But – alas for him – Stephen did not just sit there looking angelic. When the high priests ask him if the accusations were correct, he strikes back.

It is of particular interest to us as we move with hope toward the end of our pandemic-imposed isolation from our beloved church building that in his rant Stephen questions the importance of the Temple. In the midst of our own separation from our church building, we can almost welcome Stephen’s reminder that “the most high does not dwell in houses made by human hands.”

“Heaven is my throne,

   and the earth is my footstool.

What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,

   or what is the place of my rest?

Did not my hand make all these things?”

‘You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.’

That did it. Outraged, the people dragged Stephen out of the city and began to stone him.

But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!’ But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him; and the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ When he had said this, he died.

Deacon Stephen, speaking truth to a power that refuses to hear it, becomes the church’s first martyr.

For Deacon Stephen, as for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the cost of discipleship was high.

For most of us, and for many pastors in many traditions, the cost may not be so high.

But here’s the thing: if there is no cost at all, it is not discipleship.

Throughout my forty years as a reporter, editor, layperson, and guilty bystander in church circles, I’ve observed many disciples who paid large and small prices for their discipleship.

Over the years I’ve known more than one pastor fired from his or her congregation for taking pastoral or diaconal stands they believed to be right:

For preaching against what they believed to be this nation’s immoral war in Vietnam;

For removing the U.S. flag from the church sanctuary on the grounds that God is the God of all nations and all peoples;

For participating in Civil Rights marches;

For presiding over the marriage vows of same-sex couples;

For preaching against the ownership of powerful assault rifles.

I’ve known married women pastors who have been dismissed from their congregations for getting pregnant, or for requesting a one-month leave to recuperate from a mastectomy. 

Today, in our hypertense environment, the moral questions we face cause many of us to ask whether we dare risk the cost of discipleship. Do we dare declare unequivocally:

That war and violence are always sin;

That Black Lives Matter; 

That Islam is a religion of peace;

That no person is illegal;

That no religious views should be forced upon anyone;

That everyone is entitled to express their sexuality in their own way without social prejudice or government imposition. 

That God is love;

And the greatest commandment is always to love one another as we love ourselves.

Two millennia ago, the first Christians established the role of deacon to reach out to all persons to assure they are sheltered, fed, cared for when disabled or ill, protected from prejudice or hatred, and treated with love, fairness, and justice. 

This is a role we all share.

Deacon Stephen reminds us that it is not a role to be taken lightly and that it may come with costs.

But it is a role we must assume with faith in God’s grace; 

Because God’s work requires all our hands.

We are marked with the cross of Christ forever; we are claimed, gathered, and sent for the sake of the world.

Whatever the cost.