Text: Acts 7:1-2a, 44-60
There’s a classic arc that almost every fairy tale follows, and a similar path can be traced in stories of all sorts. Whether you go to a movie or open a book, this natural progression in the plot means that you have certain expectations for how the story is going to go. There’s going to be a hero—and a villain—and the hero is going to face some tremendous obstacles, so many and so great in fact that you are going to doubt if it’s all going to turn out well in the end. Then, when things seem their worst the hero will triumph over evil and live happily ever after. Modern stories have tried to mess with that formula, sometimes leaving endings ambiguous or even letting the bad guys to win—there are countless examples of this but the ones that come to mind for me are No Country for Old Men and The Usual Suspects. But even in those modern-day twists on the proven method it isn’t so much that the definition of happily ever after changes as it is that the authors decided to give the happily ever after to the person who was less deserving, and in doing this they made a point about the way the world works.
Regardless of the moral, we are taught from an early age that the winner is the one left standing at the end of the story. Sacrifice is fine but not for our main characters. Instead, sacrifice is something somebody else does to lift the hero up; we are taught, in short, that sacrifice is something that somebody else does for me. The quicker we get past the characters who die for the sake of the hero the quicker we can all get to the happily ever after; the happily ever after is what gives purpose to the sacrifice. Without it, killing off a good character does not tell a good story.
I started thinking about this narrative arc after reading through the story of Stephen’s arrest and death by stoning when a pastor at our text study asked: “So, what’s the good news?” What could possibly be the good news in a story whose entire plot is Stephen getting arrested for confessing his faith and killed when he does not recant? When we read a story that ends with “and so he died” that is not a story where we expect much good news. And when we ask the question, “What is the good news?” what we are really asking is “Where is the happily ever after?” The happily ever after is not immediately evident.
There is good news in Stephen’s story. It’s just harder for us to see it because it doesn’t take the happily ever after form that we are accustomed to. The good news is that there was a Stephen; the good news is that there are people who are willing to stand up for what is good and true and right in the world even when it means they will die an otherwise senseless death. The good news is that there are people who care enough about the future to sacrifice their present. That’s the good news. It’s not in the words—it’s what lies beyond the story.
For those of you who know me pretty well, you know my love for the Harry Potter series, and it is stories like Stephen’s that are why I think the Harry Potter books are the best works of the 21st century. In most ways, Harry Potter follows the same classic arc of any good story. You have a hero beset with many difficulties supported by a wide cast of other good characters who make sacrifices for his sake, and in the end he rises up to overcome evil and live happily ever after… or at least that’s almost what happens. Instead of a simple happily ever after, J.K. Rowling understood that death is an ever-present reality lurking at the end of the story. Even a character who lives happily ever after only does so for a time. All people must eventually succumb to the slow decay of time. Happily ever after is always temporary in our world.
This is why it is so important how Harry Potter comes out victorious. It is two parts: one part the sacrifice of his mother, giving her life for him; and one part his sacrifice, giving up himself for the sake of the people he cares about. Seven years in school taught him one of the most important lessons any of us can learn in this life: “Death is not something to fear.” Martyrs like Stephen learned that lesson. Heroes who die in war defending their families and homes learned that lesson; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose feast day we celebrated this past week and who was executed in a prison camp during World War II for his part in the Confessing church, speaking out against the Nazis and his role in the attempted assassination of Hitler, knew this well. Death is not worthy of fear. As Harry first hears from Professor Dumbledore in his first year at Hogwarts, “Death is but the next great adventure.”
That’s the good news. When a story ends with a line like “When he said this, he died” that doesn’t fit our happily ever after mould, but that doesn’t mean it is devoid of good news. That mould is an outrageous simplification and overstatement anyway. Nobody lives happily ever after, and even if they did it would only be until death comes to part them from their happiness. Death and good news are not polar opposites. J.K. Rowling proves how well she knows this in the tale of the Deathly Hallows in the final book of the Harry Potter series where we have a story within a story. In the fairy tale Rowling tells there are three brothers who meet Death on a bridge and are granted whatever they desire. The first two ask for powerful objects—one to kill, the other to resurrect—but the third brother asks for an invisibility cloak to hide from death. The first two find that those powerful objects lead to their demise, but the third brother charts another path. He feared death and hid from him, but over time he came to learn an important lesson; over time he came to see that Death was not something to hide from forever. When he became old he took off the invisibility cloak, gave it to his son, and “then he greeted Death as an old friend, and went with him gladly, and, equals, they departed this life.”
For each of us there comes a time when death is no longer the greatest thing to be feared. For some it is after a good long time on earth, for some it is when we are overcome by the struggles of life, and for others it is when injustice makes standing up for the right thing more important than self-preservation. Death is also sometimes senseless. We experience moments that make the happily ever after out to be a lie, but all of this dependent on a lie that we have told ourselves, a lie that the resurrection makes bare for us to see: Death is not the end. It is only the next great adventure. That changes everything. It means that Stephen’s sacrifice was not without gain (even for himself); it means that Dietrich Bonhoeffer and countless other martyrs did not die just so we could live better lives but also so that we can experience a little glimpse of eternity. It means that death has lost its sting; that the winner is not the one left standing but the one who faithfully gives their self even to the point of death.
Thanks be to God for all those who sacrifice their lives to remind us that death is not the end. It is, after all, only the next great adventure.
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