A Homily for the Feast of Saint Stephen the Deacon
The twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.
Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint . . . .
And when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.
—Acts of the Apostles 6: 2,3,6
The first person to die as a martyr (or witness) to the Christian faith was
Stephen, and Stephen was a deacon. He was one of seven men chosen by the
members of the Church in
The Apostles, the first bishops of the Church, said, “It is not reasonable that we should neglect the word of God to serve at tables.” And so they ordained the first deacons to serve at tables. The name “deacon” is from the Greek word for waiter or server at tables. In Greek, there is a corresponding verb (diakanēo), meaning to serve at tables, which we might render in English as “to be a deacon” or just “to deacon.” And there is also a noun for the business of being a deacon or of the diaconate (diakonia).
Both the nouns and the verb, deacon, deaconship, and “to deacon,” occur with surprising frequency in the New Testament. Together, they are used more than one hundred times; but this goes unnoticed, because they are translated into English by a variety of other words: servant, minister, ministry, administration, office, service, to serve, and, of course, to wait on tables.
A better sense of what it means to be a deacon could perhaps be attained if the
original Greek were put back into some familiar passages of Scripture. As
the chief example, in a famous passage, Jesus says: “The Son of Man came
not to be deaconed unto, but to deacon.”
We, then, as workers together with [Christ], beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain. Giving no offense in anything, that the diaconate be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as deacons of God.
Everyone is familiar with the Church doctrine called the “priesthood of all believers.” In his first epistle, Saint Peter, echoing the words spoken to Moses in the wilderness, writes that Jesus has made us, the Church, “a royal priesthood” and “a holy nation.” In the contemporary Roman liturgy, this is rendered as “a kingdom of priests.” All baptized persons share in the priesthood of Christ, although not in the same way that bishops and priests do.
All Christians share in offering to God the sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving, and we join with God the Son in offering to God the Father “our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” The common priesthood of the baptized is a sharing in the one priesthood of Christ himself, manifested in the unfolding of the grace infused in us at our baptism, of faith, hope, and charity, led by the Holy Spirit. The Church expects each of us to exercise a priestly ministry by the witness of a holy life and of practical charity.
The Church does not have an explicit doctrine of the diaconate of all believers, but that is implicit in what it means to be a Christian. Although the Church has an ordained diaconate with special functions, both in the liturgy and in Church administration, the fundamental business of deaconing is shared by all baptized persons.
In the twentieth chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is recorded is saying:
[W]hosoever will be great among you, let him be
your deacon; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your
servant: even as the Son of man came not to be deaconed unto, but to
deacon, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Thus, Jesus refers to himself as a deacon, and says that his followers must become deacons of one another. Just as we speak of the “priesthood of all believers,” and yet have among us some men set apart as priests; so there are in the Church men set apart to be deacons.
As is true of the priesthood, there are in the Church both a common diaconate shared by all baptized persons and an ordained diaconate. In the preface to the Ordinal, found on page 529 of the Book of Common Prayer, we read that
It is evident unto all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church: Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
Scripture records the ordination of the first deacons in the
sixth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The apostles ordained deacons
before they ordained either bishops or priests. And, although Scripture
tells of the ordination of deacons only at
In the Book of Acts, we learn that the diaconate was originally established for the administration of charity (such as the distribution of alms to the widows) and for the tasks that the apostles called “serving at table.” But we also learn that Stephen and Philip, two of the first seven deacons, also preached, taught, and baptized. The functions performed by the original deacons were not very different from those of deacons today. As the Prayer Book says:
It appertaineth to the Office of a Deacon, in the Church where he shall be appointed to serve, to assist the Priest in Divine Service, and specially when he ministereth the Holy Communion, and to help him in the distribution thereof; and to read Holy Scriptures and Homilies in the Church; and to instruct the youth in the Catechism; in the absence of the Priest to baptize infants; and to preach, if he be admitted thereto by the Bishop. And furthermore, it is his Office . . . to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people . . . that they may be relieved.
Every bishop and every priest is also a deacon; they do not cease to be deacons when they are elevated to loftier ministries. It is often said that most of the work performed from day to day by a parish priest is really deacon’s work.
But, as
We live out the diaconate of all believers when we serve others, even in little things. We live out the diaconate of all believers when we perform acts of charity, or when we give alms for the relief of the poor. We live out the diaconate of all believers when we exhibit what Saint James, in his epistle, called “true religion.” “True religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep [ourselves] unspotted from the world.”
We must also be a little bit like Saint Stephen, the deacon whose feast day we
observe today. Stephen was not just a deacon, he was also a martyr.
Having defied the
Saint Stephen is called a martyr because he died for the faith. Martyr is a Greek word that means “witness.” Around the turn of the third century, the theologian Tertullian wrote that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” The witness of people like Stephen, who was willing to die rather than to renounce the Faith, brings others to the foot of the cross.
One of those present at the stoning of Stephen was a young rabbinical student
named Saul of Tarsus. It was he who watched over the coats of those who
actually cast the stones that killed Stephen. Some thirty years
later, that same man, christened Paul in the meantime, and called to be an
apostle, himself died as a martyr at
Not everyone has either the vocation or the opportunity to be a martyr for the faith. But every Christian is called to be a witness. Not all witnesses are martyrs, most are “confessors,” and the witness that most of us are called to give is the “confess[ion] of Christ crucified.” This witness we may give with our lips, but must also be shown in our lives. And we most show forth the love of Christ when, like him, we come not to be deaconed unto, but to deacon.
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