SERMON SPOTLIGHT: Sunday, May 3rd, 2026: The Rev. Aron Kramer
Did you all notice the small offhanded note in the Acts reading today? Not the vision of heaven Steven has at this moment. It’s not the stones being prepared to be thrown. Not the prayer of forgiveness that ends the story. It’s the coats, the coats given to one of the most important biblical characters in all of the New Testament.
Acts tells us that when the crowd rushed Stephen, the witnesses, the men who had testified against him, the men whose job it was to throw the first stones, these men laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. It seems like such a small detail in the middle of a murder.
I tried to do a little research about stoning, because as we hear over and over, the Jews did not put people to death. They did not have a method of capital punishment. However, stoning was not a chaotic mob throwing whatever was at hand. I am not sure what you all know about this process, but it is much more methodical and intentional than we think.
Stoning was a procedure. It had steps, it had a location, it had to happen outside the city walls, because the Torah required it. Leviticus 24 says you take the blasphemer outside the camp. So they did, they dragged Stephen through the gate. They had a place prepared, outside the walls, outside the center, outside the holy city, the place of execution, the place of this expression of violence was outside.
The witnesses, the ones who had accused Steven, cast the first stones. That was the law. Deuteronomy 17 says the hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him. It put them on the hook. If they lied, if they were wrong, the blood was on their hands first. It was a safeguard built into the system. You couldn't accuse someone of a capital crime and then stand back and watch, you had to be willing to throw the first stone.
Most of the men of the time wore these big, somewhat baggy outer garments, they came off because throwing takes your whole body. You can't hurl a rock with accuracy while wrapped in a heavy cloak. So they removed them. Carefully. Deliberately. Almost like they were scanning their tickets before entering a stadium to watch a game, or a concert, or an art exhibit. As they walked outside the city, they laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Saul was not a bystander in all this, he was the authority figure. When you lay your coat at someone's feet in that world, you are acknowledging their rank. You are asking for their approval. Saul later says, in his own words as Paul, that he cast his vote against Stephen. He was the legal presence. He was overseeing this execution with full conviction that what was happening was right, was necessary, was holy.
This was not a lynching by strangers. This was a community of sincere, devout, well-trained people doing what they believed God required of them. They had witnesses. They had a process. They followed the law. They went outside the city. They took off their coats.
Here is the thing about Stephen's vision that I don't think I have sat with long enough. He sees the glory of God. He sees the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. This is what the disciples had been praying for, waiting for, longing for in the upper room. This is what Thomas and Philip were asking Jesus for in today’s Gospel, show us the Father, tell us the way, give us something solid to stand on.
For them it hadn’t yet come, but for Steven, the vision arrives, the sky breaks open. But this vision does not happen in the temple. It doesn’t happen in the upper room. It doesn’t happen in any place that has been designated as holy. The heavens open in a street outside the city walls as stones fly through the air and blood begins to fall. God shows up in the wrong place. Again.
I preached at Easter about the resurrection appearances. About where Jesus went after he rose. He didn't go to Jerusalem. He didn't go to the temple, to the Sanhedrin, to the center of religious power to say “look, I told you so”. He went to Galilee. He went home. He went to the margins, to the north country, to a place of no particular reputation, and he met people there.
God shows up on the margins, in the world, off-center, away from our expectations. God keeps appearing in the places we never thought to look. God has a habit of being where the institution isn't. Stephen's vision is that same pattern, on the margins, in the world, off center, unexpected.
The holy did not stay in the building. It moved outside the walls. And it moved not because the church planned it that way, not because a committee voted to expand the mission, but because the institution that had housed the presence of God for generations looked at a man filled with the Spirit and started throwing rocks.
The Spirit left Jerusalem the day they stoned Stephen. The book of Acts never goes back. From this moment forward, the narrative pans outward, to a place called Samaria, to the roads, to a chariot in the desert, to Antioch, to Athens, to Rome. Always outward. Always toward the margins. Always away from the center that kept trying to contain what couldn't be contained.
Remember the Gospel, where the Disciples are, in the upper room, safe, indoors, with Jesus. Physically present to the Son of God. And they are asking for a map, for directions. Thomas says, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Phillip asks, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Thomas wants a map. Philip wants a vision. They are sitting with Jesus, and they need more certainty before they will move.
Jesus's answer is quiet and, if you listen carefully, a little devastating. "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?" He is not angry, he is not scolding, there is something tender in his words. Jesus is saying: you have everything you need. You have had it all along, the problem was never information. The problem was never a lack of vision or a missing map. The problem is that you are waiting for enough certainty to feel safe enough to move.
And remember, the thing that breaks open the movement, the thing that pushes the church out of the room and into the world, is not a moment of certainty. It is a stoning. Stephen didn't have more information than Thomas and Philip. He had the same Jesus. The same Spirit. The same promises. What he had that they didn't yet, what the church would slowly discover, is that the safety they were looking for in the upper room was already available outside it. That the God they were waiting to see would meet them in the street.
The church, not just the church in Jerusalem, but the church across twenty centuries, including us, has a powerful instinct to stay in the room. To build walls around the experience of God. To assign seats and times and proper procedures for how the holy is accessed. To take what is centrifugal and make it centripetal. To say: come here, to this place, and God will be present.
We didn't invent this. Peter wanted to build booths at the Transfiguration. They wanted to stay in Jerusalem. They wanted God to restore the kingdom on a timeline they could plan around. The instinct to contain and locate and domesticate the divine, it's ancient. It's even human. It may even be understandable.
But the witness of the texts we have been given, this Easter season, your own witness in our Alleluia Booklet, is that God keeps moving outward. The Spirit keeps flinging people toward the margins. The resurrection keeps appearing in Galilee instead of Jerusalem, in streets instead of sanctuaries, in the faces of strangers in cities we haven't visited yet.
The coats laid at Saul's feet are a monument to the last moment the church tried to manage this. To keep it in. To stone the movement back into submission. It didn't work. It never works. You cannot stone the Spirit. What you can do, what I am going to ask us to sit with this week, not solve, just sit with is this: What if the God you are waiting to meet is already outside?
Not up in the sky, where the disciples eventually will be staring at the Ascension. Not in the center, where the institutions keep pointing. Not behind the wall we've built to keep the holy safely located. Already outside. Already in the streets. Already in the places you haven't thought to look; the wrong places, the off-center places, the Galilees of your life.
Stephen saw this. Not because he was superhuman. Not because he had better training or stronger faith or a special gift that the rest of us lack. He saw it because he had been pushed outside the room. And in that exposed, dangerous, unprotected place, he looked up.
And the sky opened.
Acts tells us that when the crowd rushed Stephen, the witnesses, the men who had testified against him, the men whose job it was to throw the first stones, these men laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. It seems like such a small detail in the middle of a murder.
I tried to do a little research about stoning, because as we hear over and over, the Jews did not put people to death. They did not have a method of capital punishment. However, stoning was not a chaotic mob throwing whatever was at hand. I am not sure what you all know about this process, but it is much more methodical and intentional than we think.
Stoning was a procedure. It had steps, it had a location, it had to happen outside the city walls, because the Torah required it. Leviticus 24 says you take the blasphemer outside the camp. So they did, they dragged Stephen through the gate. They had a place prepared, outside the walls, outside the center, outside the holy city, the place of execution, the place of this expression of violence was outside.
The witnesses, the ones who had accused Steven, cast the first stones. That was the law. Deuteronomy 17 says the hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him. It put them on the hook. If they lied, if they were wrong, the blood was on their hands first. It was a safeguard built into the system. You couldn't accuse someone of a capital crime and then stand back and watch, you had to be willing to throw the first stone.
Most of the men of the time wore these big, somewhat baggy outer garments, they came off because throwing takes your whole body. You can't hurl a rock with accuracy while wrapped in a heavy cloak. So they removed them. Carefully. Deliberately. Almost like they were scanning their tickets before entering a stadium to watch a game, or a concert, or an art exhibit. As they walked outside the city, they laid them at the feet of a young man named Saul.
Saul was not a bystander in all this, he was the authority figure. When you lay your coat at someone's feet in that world, you are acknowledging their rank. You are asking for their approval. Saul later says, in his own words as Paul, that he cast his vote against Stephen. He was the legal presence. He was overseeing this execution with full conviction that what was happening was right, was necessary, was holy.
This was not a lynching by strangers. This was a community of sincere, devout, well-trained people doing what they believed God required of them. They had witnesses. They had a process. They followed the law. They went outside the city. They took off their coats.
Here is the thing about Stephen's vision that I don't think I have sat with long enough. He sees the glory of God. He sees the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. This is what the disciples had been praying for, waiting for, longing for in the upper room. This is what Thomas and Philip were asking Jesus for in today’s Gospel, show us the Father, tell us the way, give us something solid to stand on.
For them it hadn’t yet come, but for Steven, the vision arrives, the sky breaks open. But this vision does not happen in the temple. It doesn’t happen in the upper room. It doesn’t happen in any place that has been designated as holy. The heavens open in a street outside the city walls as stones fly through the air and blood begins to fall. God shows up in the wrong place. Again.
I preached at Easter about the resurrection appearances. About where Jesus went after he rose. He didn't go to Jerusalem. He didn't go to the temple, to the Sanhedrin, to the center of religious power to say “look, I told you so”. He went to Galilee. He went home. He went to the margins, to the north country, to a place of no particular reputation, and he met people there.
God shows up on the margins, in the world, off-center, away from our expectations. God keeps appearing in the places we never thought to look. God has a habit of being where the institution isn't. Stephen's vision is that same pattern, on the margins, in the world, off center, unexpected.
The holy did not stay in the building. It moved outside the walls. And it moved not because the church planned it that way, not because a committee voted to expand the mission, but because the institution that had housed the presence of God for generations looked at a man filled with the Spirit and started throwing rocks.
The Spirit left Jerusalem the day they stoned Stephen. The book of Acts never goes back. From this moment forward, the narrative pans outward, to a place called Samaria, to the roads, to a chariot in the desert, to Antioch, to Athens, to Rome. Always outward. Always toward the margins. Always away from the center that kept trying to contain what couldn't be contained.
Remember the Gospel, where the Disciples are, in the upper room, safe, indoors, with Jesus. Physically present to the Son of God. And they are asking for a map, for directions. Thomas says, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" Phillip asks, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Thomas wants a map. Philip wants a vision. They are sitting with Jesus, and they need more certainty before they will move.
Jesus's answer is quiet and, if you listen carefully, a little devastating. "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?" He is not angry, he is not scolding, there is something tender in his words. Jesus is saying: you have everything you need. You have had it all along, the problem was never information. The problem was never a lack of vision or a missing map. The problem is that you are waiting for enough certainty to feel safe enough to move.
And remember, the thing that breaks open the movement, the thing that pushes the church out of the room and into the world, is not a moment of certainty. It is a stoning. Stephen didn't have more information than Thomas and Philip. He had the same Jesus. The same Spirit. The same promises. What he had that they didn't yet, what the church would slowly discover, is that the safety they were looking for in the upper room was already available outside it. That the God they were waiting to see would meet them in the street.
The church, not just the church in Jerusalem, but the church across twenty centuries, including us, has a powerful instinct to stay in the room. To build walls around the experience of God. To assign seats and times and proper procedures for how the holy is accessed. To take what is centrifugal and make it centripetal. To say: come here, to this place, and God will be present.
We didn't invent this. Peter wanted to build booths at the Transfiguration. They wanted to stay in Jerusalem. They wanted God to restore the kingdom on a timeline they could plan around. The instinct to contain and locate and domesticate the divine, it's ancient. It's even human. It may even be understandable.
But the witness of the texts we have been given, this Easter season, your own witness in our Alleluia Booklet, is that God keeps moving outward. The Spirit keeps flinging people toward the margins. The resurrection keeps appearing in Galilee instead of Jerusalem, in streets instead of sanctuaries, in the faces of strangers in cities we haven't visited yet.
The coats laid at Saul's feet are a monument to the last moment the church tried to manage this. To keep it in. To stone the movement back into submission. It didn't work. It never works. You cannot stone the Spirit. What you can do, what I am going to ask us to sit with this week, not solve, just sit with is this: What if the God you are waiting to meet is already outside?
Not up in the sky, where the disciples eventually will be staring at the Ascension. Not in the center, where the institutions keep pointing. Not behind the wall we've built to keep the holy safely located. Already outside. Already in the streets. Already in the places you haven't thought to look; the wrong places, the off-center places, the Galilees of your life.
Stephen saw this. Not because he was superhuman. Not because he had better training or stronger faith or a special gift that the rest of us lack. He saw it because he had been pushed outside the room. And in that exposed, dangerous, unprotected place, he looked up.
And the sky opened.
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