We don’t know whether Mark Twain said it, but it sounds like him: The past does not repeat, but it rhymes.

We have a case of that rhyming in our texts today. Stephen was one of the church’s first deacons in Jerusalem. He was also the first Christian martyr. We haven’t had a recent case of a martyred deacon in these United States. Usually it’s the deacons who do the martyring of the pastors, don’t you know?! Thank God our deacons here don’t throw stones.

The Stephen story is tragic but instructive. As the early church was getting its start in Jerusalem, an old prejudice reared its head. Jews struggled under the occupations of the Greeks and then the Romans. Some Jews persisted in their Jewishness by resisting the alien culture, while others adopted much of it, learning to speak Greek and adopting Greek customs. Conservative Aramaic-speaking Hebrews viewed these Hellenists as compromisers. And when some of each accepted Jesus as the messiah and formed one church, the old rivalries and biases did not disappear. So when it came time to transfer the care of widows and orphans from Temple to church, the church retained some of this preference for the Hebrews who left Greek-speaking Jewish Christians neglected in their Meals-on-Foot food-distribution program.

Fifteen years ago, Alvin Burns and I were sitting in a Jerusalem church reading these passages of Scripture. We were on an interfaith trip to the Holy Land, and when this Sunday came, I was to lead the Bible study. The lectionary texts for the day were these as we Christian and Jewish clergy and laypersons sat down to pray and learn together. You can imagine the interest as we looked at a text of how a Christian was stoned by those who did not accept Jesus as messiah. And outside that church, Palestinian Arabs were throwing stones at Israeli Jews, who fought back to the death. History rhymes.

We have seen this kind of thing recur in the church through the ages, too. In Rwanda the Tutsis viewed themselves as spiritually superior to their Hutu brothers and sisters. This was partly the tragic result of Christian colonialism, in which the Roman Catholic Church there saw Caucasian genetic roots in the taller, lighter-skinned Tutsis and favored their leadership skills over the shorter, darker Hutus. Although the church later tried to correct that teaching, it was so ingrained that when it came to a boiling point in the early 1990s over the inequities of Rwandan society, the killing was all about ethnicity. Fellow churchgoers were killing each other, even though they had worshiped side by side in church.

This has been true too often, whether you look at Nazi Germany or Northern Ireland or any number of examples in history. We’ve been able to avoid death by stoning in our Baptist-on-Baptist battles these last years, but there has been a lot of stone-throwing. History rhymes.

Well, in order to eliminate this kind of injustice in the early church, deacons were elected from among both the Hellenists and the Hebrews. It’s also why we say today that one of the chief duties of deacons in our church is to make sure that our practices of ministry are just, that no one is overlooked because of things like race or gender or wealth or poverty or marital status or age or whatever. Deacons exist in part to promote the unity of the body of Christ, to keep it healthy by making sure we foster loving care in equal measure to all.

Oddly enough, if Stephen had stuck to doing that work, he might have avoided stoning. The apostles actually charged deacons to look after the welfare of the church while they went about preaching and teaching the word of God. But Stephen got it into him—or rather the Holy Spirit got into Stephen—that he should be out there witnessing for Christ also. I can’t tell whether that made him more like a Baptist deacon for not just minding his own business or less like one for being such a passionate witness. (I’m afraid the same can be said for Baptist preachers, though. For all our talk, we could be better witnesses ourselves. I missed a great opportunity just the other day.)

The more important thing I take from this story, though, is how Stephen died. I don’t mean that he was stoned to death. I don’t even mean why he was stoned to death. I mean how he understood what was happening to him in light of Jesus when he was being stoned to death.

Listen again to what he saw and what he said as he was dying. He looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. Then he said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Doesn’t that have a familiar ring to it? Or, shall we say, rhyme? When Jesus was dying on the cross, he looked up to heaven and cried, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Interesting. And then Stephen prayed that the sins of those who were stoning him would not be held against them. Sounds suspiciously like Jesus, doesn’t it? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

But where did Jesus get his words? Did he invent them, or was he rhyming the past, too? Our psalm of David recalls a moment in David’s life when he was being unjustly pursued by King Saul. Into your hand I commit my spirit, David prayed. Jesus would have known that prayer by heart.

So Jesus saw himself in the midst of the same story of God that was still being played out, a story that requires each generation to add its verse, too, a song that invites every individual to contribute a verse.

In the movie Dead Poets’ Society, you might remember Mr. Keating introducing his boys to the poetry of Uncle Walt, as he called him—Walt Whitman. Whitman wrote during a horrendous time of American history, when South and North were divided against each other. In his poem “O Me! O Life,” he recounts the “endless trains of the faithless,” the recurring themes of foolish men doing foolish things, “the plodding and sordid crowds” up to no good as they turn to mobs. He closes with these words: The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?/Answer./That you are here—that life exists, and identity;/ That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

The powerful play goes on. The gospel story is still being told. And you get to contribute to it.

Stephen came to that moment in his life when he was trying to make sense of what was happening to him, and he saw himself as part of that very story of God that David played, that Jesus played, and now that he was playing. When he added his voice, it wasn’t a cry of blame. He commended himself to God and asked forgiveness for his killers.

Where do we learn this? I am afraid that many of us suffer from being oldest children in this regard. Since I am one, I can speak as one. Whom do we have to learn from? We are born into our families and have no siblings to look up to. My brother used to get this self-righteous look on his face all the time when I would get into trouble. He would shake his head at me as if to say, Man, that was dumb. I’m never making that mistake. He kind of skated through, watching me. Of course, I hope he learned some good things, too, from watching me.

But the key thing spiritually for us all is whether we have the right role models that ensure we play the right role in the right play when it comes time to add our part. Or, said another way, we have to make sure that when we contribute our verse, we are still singing the same song.

Stephen knew what to do when his time came. He understood that he was part of the same story as Jesus, which was the same story as David, which was the same story of what God was up to in the world. And let’s not forget that Saul was standing there watching all of this. He would soon become the Apostle Paul after his conversion on the road to Damascus. But it was this moment that probably haunted him all his life. When Christ spoke to him on that road, he quoted David again from the Old Testament when King Saul was pursuing David. Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me? And once again we see how the story goes on; how history rhymes.

But how will you know whether you are rhyming the Christ story? How will your children make sense of their lives if they don’t know the story themselves?

I know I pound on you from time to time about your faithfulness in attendance and in attentiveness to the things of God. I make absolutely no apology for that, because I believe our very souls are at stake, and at the very least our joy. We come here week by week to study the Bible together, listen to preaching, sing hymns, pray with and for one another, welcome strangers, greet friends in Christ, and renew our commitments to God and the world that we will do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. (A peanut butter drive to feed hungry children is just one example.)

These are spiritual practices that reinforce our identity in Christ and our role in what God is up to in the world. When we go back into the world, then, we are less likely to rhyme the story of someone other than Jesus. We will not be so easily suckered in by the vanity of imagining something like What Would Britney Do? Or What Would the Donald Do? instead of What Would Jesus Do? There are so many story lines that compete for our allegiance. If we are not constantly reoriented to Christ and the way of Christ, we are liable to slip into some other role that will take us down a slippery slope to ruin.

We are all going to die. The question is whether what you die for or whom you die for is worthy of your sacrifice. In this Easter season I want to remind you that the only one who has ever come back from the dead is Jesus. And only by living in the kind of close union with him that Stephen did can you find the courage to give up your life for one who can give it back to you. But you have to know the story. You have to learn the role. You have to master the music.

One of my favorite moments in pop music history occurred when Natalie Cole produced her recordings of her father’s songs. She gave new life to those wonderful lyrics and tunes, and in doing so she introduced Nat King Cole to a new generation. My favorite song on the album was the title song, “Unforgettable.” Through the miracle of modern technology, they were able to record Natalie singing what sounded like a duet with her late father. The effect was, well, unforgettable.

The martyrdom of Stephen was unforgettable, not only for itself but also for how he made Jesus unforgettable in his life and time. What about you? The same song is playing. Will you add your verse to make it unforgettable, too?