Read Acts 7:1-8
1 Then the high priest asked Stephen, “Are these charges true? 2 To this he replied: “Brothers and fathers, listen to me! The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Harran. 3 ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’ 4 “So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Harran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. 5 He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child. 6 God spoke to him in this way: ‘For four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. 7 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves,’ God said, ‘and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place.’ 8 Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. And Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
Okay, let’s recap the charges:
“We have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God…This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.”
In other words, they claim, Stephen is speaking against Moses, the Law, the Temple and the Jewish customs. As Wright points out, all of these things were important distinctives of the Jewish faith, thus of particularly high value to them whilst living in a pagan world.[1] Further, as Beverly Gaventa observes, “Since the beginning of Acts, believers have gathered at the temple…but resistance to the word of God has also come from those identified with the temple. Now the question emerges: Which group rightly identifies itself with the temple and its traditions?”[2]
How does Stephen respond? Well what he says is in effect something like: “Right, so I’m trying to destroy the foundations of the Jewish faith am I? Well let’s look at what those foundations actually are! In fact, let’s go right back to when the Jewish faith started, which you all know wasn’t with Moses, it was with a man called Abraham…” He then goes on to talk about Abraham and how, through Abraham, the journey of God’s people began – within which, however, “the focus is less on Abraham than on God, whose initiative is central to every point Stephen makes.”[3]
- Have a little audit of what aspects of your Christian faith and church life you see as incontrovertible. What would those things be and why?
- Are there aspects to your faith and church life that you recognize could legitimately be changed but which you really like? How would you react if someone started to challenge those things?
- How can you properly determine what aspects of your faith and church life you shouldn’t be willing to change even if challenged to do so and which it would be okay to alter?
No need to spend any longer ;-)
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