My therapy office is on the fifth floor of an office building in downtown Frankfort. The McClure Building was built as a “skyscraper” in 1907. It is the tallest building in the historic neighborhood “old downtown.”
I use the view from my large windows to help people understand the power of perceived danger to prevent taking bold actions for change in their lives. The way I do it sometimes is this imaginary walk:
I begin: “See the red area rug here in the center of the room. Walk from one end of it to the other.” (The person does.) I continue, “You might have felt a bit silly, because you don’t know where this is going, but did you feel in danger?” (The answer is no.) “Now imagine that rug is extended the length of the hall—a red carpet to the bathroom. Would you feel afraid to walk it?” (The answer is no.)
Now comes the clincher. “Imagine that this 3-foot wide rug is on a concrete walkway that extends from the window of this room across some lower rooftops to the three-story roof of that white building down the block. The ground is solid, but there are no rails on the sides. Would you be afraid to walk it?
People pause, most of them recognizing that yes, they would have some fear, because now, they could be seriously hurt if they fell off the edge. With the potential for falling and the lack of supports, we mostly prudent folks would hesitate.
Stephen’s Witness
Both readings today are stories of people who are spiritually already walking without protections across the rooftops. Their courage and confidence in truth have put them in danger. Yet they are confident in the Truth and Grace that is their red carpet walkway. They walk the walk.
Today’s first reading stands between Stephen’s selection as one of the first deacons and his martyrdom in tomorrow’s reading. Stephen was Jewish with a Greek name, a Hellenized Jew, which made him a perfect selection to help resolve the early threat of racism in the church. He was full of the Spirit and a powerful apologist and preacher. In today’s reading Stephen makes the choice to walk the carpet out the window: he makes the choice to proclaim Jesus in the temple area and to the Sanhedrin.
Tomorrow we will hear of his martyrdom. Missing in the mass readings is the text of Stephen’s proclamation of the Kerygma (the wonderful story of Jesus, God’s love, and salvation) to the Sanhedrin in Acts 7—very similar to Peter’s proclamation on Pentecost.
Peter’s proclamation added 3,000 people to the infant church. He walked the red carpet high road safely. Stephen’s proclamation got him martyred before the day was over.
Does that mean it was a mistake for him to take that walk of bold change? Hold that thought for a few paragraphs.
Jesus’ Decision
Today’s Gospel comes from John 6—the chapter that provides the foundation for Catholic understanding of the Eucharist. Jesus has fed the 5,000. Many of those 5000 qualified as disciples, followers.
But what did this feeding mean? Was Jesus going to be a “Bread king”? Did following Jesus mean you would always have enough to eat? Did it mean he would solve common problems, like an attentive audience that had no place to go to get food, with a miracle?
Jesus is Truth, and he spoke truth. “No,” he said. “Following me does not mean God will keep you well fed, nor does it mean that God can be counted on to use a miracle to solve ordinary problems (though sometimes he does!). The meaning of feeding 5000 is not full bellies.”
The meaning of feeding the 5000 could not be fully realized until after the resurrection. The meaning of feeding the 5000 is that Jesus’ followers post-resurrection will live his resurrected life and sometimes do great things as he did—because he makes himself present to them through the Eucharist. He makes himself known through the ages by his resurrected ability to be in the Eucharist in my church and your church and churches all over the world. Thus he feeds us all.
In today’s reading, Jesus begins to tell his disciples about this. They do not understand. Is he advocating cannibalism? He makes no sense! He is showing his disciples a red carpet runway out the window to the world below. In the process, he proclaims clearly, “Do not follow me from selfishness. Do not follow me to be comfortable.” All week we will follow John 6 as Jesus explains the Eucharist in terms that can’t quite make sense pre-resurrection.
Today, the reading ends with disciples looking out the window at the high walkway without guard rails. Their curiosity is piqued. “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” they ask. Jesus answer to them remains God’s answer for us today: “This is the work of God, to believe in the one whom he has sent.”
Invitations to Change Today
There are many invitations to change for us today as some places endure a third spike in COVID cases, as some places have high percentages of vaccinations and begin to emerge to some kind of a new normal, and as some places wait in quarantine. Pandemics invite change–maybe radical change–in the ways we live our lives and faith.
We stand at the window. Do we take the challenge to walk in what would be very safe within the walls of a building, but which may not be safe out above the street? What do we do? It worked for Peter, at least for thirty years or so. It cost Stephen his life—probably about three years after the resurrection, in 36 AD. Stephen was the first Christian martyr.
Gospel scholars say the feeding of the 5000 happened about two years into Jesus’ active proclamation of the kerygma. When he made it clear in the discussions we read this week that he was not going to establish an earthly kingdom, many of his Galilean disciples left him. He began to turn his focus to Jerusalem and the death that would lead to resurrection. Disciples might leave, but he would walk the Truth-solid, but unguarded walkway that ended at Golgotha.
There are costs and dangers that come from making choices for change—whether that change is to proclaim the Truth of what they had done to the Sanhedrin, to ask disciples to trust when they can’t understand, or to emerge from isolation full of fervor.
Just as people in my office have to make deliberate choices before entering fully into change to recover from addiction, parent differently, or reconstruct their marriage, so we must make deliberate choices for any changes we make in our faith life. Some people sail through changes. Some do not.
The point to those words of Jesus that speak to me so powerfully today is: “The work of God is to trust in the one he has sent.“
Stephen died, but his death was a part of the conversion of Saul, who became St. Paul. Many disciples left Jesus, but the ones who remained became the first Apostles. “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord:” sometimes the good accomplished is not the good we expect.
How do we keep our eyes on Jesus, to believe in him, maybe even hold his hand, so we have the courage to take the walk and let God work good from whatever happens because the resurrection and the Good News of the kerygma remains true today–even in our world without guardrails.
Prayer: (from Ancient Irish sources)
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
