Overview:

Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

A Reflection for Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

“But they cried out in a loud voice,
covered their ears, and rushed upon him together.
They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him.” (Acts 7:57-58)

Find today’s readings here.

You probably read “The Lottery” in high school. Published originally in The New Yorker in 1948, Shirley Jackson’s short story opens with the citizens of an unnamed village gathering on a morning in late June. “The flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green.” The children are laughing and playing, the men “speaking of planting and rain, tractors and taxes.” 

Everyone somberly walks up and draws slips of paper from a black wooden box. The ritual goes through two rounds, and eventually Tessie Hutchinson draws a paper with a black spot on it. She wins the lottery. Her prize? She is stoned to death. 

The chilling final lines: “…and then they were upon her.” 

Why this lottery? The story never says. “The original paraphernalia for the lottery had been lost long ago,” readers are told, as if explaining the reason for the lottery itself: no one knows where it went. When he hears that other towns have stopped having lotteries, old man Warner scoffs, “There’s always been a lottery,” though he does not say why.

Did it originate as some kind of ritual to keep the population down? To create a random scapegoat that the village could “ceremonially” drive out? Who knows. There is no hero here, no martyrs, only dutiful people obeying an old custom. Mrs. Hutchinson is a victim not of her stirring ideals but of a disturbing tradition.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Stephen, one of the first deacons of the church, is also stoned to death. Not out of some mysterious tradition, but because he simply conformed his life to the life of Christ. Stephen has eviscerated the “people, the elders and the scribes,” declaring that they are behaving just like their ancestors, who consistently failed to listen to the Holy Spirit; who over and over again put to death the prophets. 

Stephen echoes the words of Christ who consistently reserved his most damning words for the religious and spiritual leaders of the Jewish people. Why? Religious leaders who wield a potent combination of social, spiritual and political power deserve to be eviscerated when we profoundly fail our people.

Stephen, in fact, creates a new tradition. If you do the deeds of Christ, care for the poor, speak on behalf of peace, call out the powerful, you will be attacked in one way or another. It happens over and over and over again. The most dangerous person in the world is a Christian who lives the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

As with the people of Shirley Jackson’s unnamed village, “they rushed upon him together.” They drove Stephen out of the city and began to stone him. And there Stephen gives his suffering its ultimate meaning by conforming it even more closely to the Passion and death of Christ. “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” he says, and then cries out in a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’”

Tessie Hutchinson’s death was a horrific cultural murder. Stephen’s death was a horrific consequence of true belief in Christ. A story as shocking as “The Lottery” calls us to question and even end “traditions” like that—the cruel things we do because we have always done them. The death of Stephen calls us, strangely enough, to continue traditions like his. To continue speaking the truth, proclaiming Christ as Lord, pointing to the prince of peace and declaring that, come what may, ultimately there is no one worth following more than him.

Joe Hoover, S.J., is America’s poetry editor and producer of a new film, “The Allegory.”