Stephen’s Sermon in Luke-Acts

Someone recently referred me to Delbert L. Wiens’s Stephen’s Sermon and the Structure of Luke-Acts . It looks wonderful.

He has a triple thesis: First, that Stephen’s speech is “a politike in the broadest sense, a sociological and political account of the levels and developmental stages of the Kingdom of God”; it is “the constitution for the formation of a new people of God for Jews and Gentiles” (ix). Second, that the sermon’s structure is a microcosm of the structure of Luke-Acts as a whole. Third, that Luke writes in circles, which is to say, chiasms, and “the entire Lukan work is chiastically arranged” (x).

Wiens finds, for instance, parallels between the double visitation of Abraham mentioned by Stephen (Acts 7:2-8) and the visitations of angels in Luke 1-3 and Acts 1-4.

The “Joseph” section of Stephen’s sermon is replicated on a larger scale in Jesus’ confrontation with rivals in Luke 4-8 and the apostles’ clashes with the Jerusalem establishment in Acts 5-9. The story of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9-19) follows the acts of Moses’ life as presented by Stephen: “the threatened child, the rejected brother, the one who confronts God, the deliverer, prophet and ruler. In Luke, “Jesus is presented as ‘son’ of God, as ‘brother’ and rival to other teachers, and as the ‘ruler’ of a new people of God.” The apostles recapitulate Moses yet again, as Paul’s work as prophet, leader, and ruler presents him as a “Moses-like figure poised to make his last trip to Jerusalem” (143).

In this way, Stephen’s sermon constitutes “a new kind of family, households of faith within which the members subordinate themselves to the service and love of each other. These ‘families link to each other in city and regional groupings (‘tribes’) and into Jewish and Gentile ‘peoples’” (230).

Wiens is a Mennonite and follows Yoder in several respects. Reading his book alongside Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age would yield some rich dividends.