Acts 7:55 to 8:3 reports the death of Stephen and the persecution of the church in which Saul participated. Underlying Chapters 6-7 is a criticism of the temple and law by Stephen and the Hellenists that caused a popular uprising in which Stephen suffered martyrdom and as a result, his followers had to leave Jerusalem. Historically, the death of Stephen is beyond dispute. His criticism of the law and temple are historical. The expulsion of those of like mind from Jerusalem is the best reason for such an assumption.
Stephen was among those chosen to assist in serving tables filled with widows awaiting their daily rations of food. Luke describes the seven as "of good standing" and Stephen as "full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” It might seem like drudgery, but the apostles saw it as spiritual work. Stephen comes to the attention of the authorities. Jewish leaders accused him of blasphemy, of God and Moses, as well as predicting the destruction of the Temple. He charges that his accusers are just the latest in a long line of "stiff-necked people" who have consistently broken God's law.
We are first introduced to Stephen in Acts 6:1-7. He is the first, and most prominent, of seven Greek converts to Christianity who are given the responsibility for distributing food to the widows and for making sure that the various factions of the community are treated equally. These seven are more than simply appointed to this work. They are "ordained" to it by the laying on of hands by the disciples and the confirmation of the community. Stephen's reputation among this group appears to be outstanding. He is described as "full of faith and the Holy Spirit" (6:5), "full of grace and power, [doing] great wonders and signs among the people" (6:8).
However, discontent soon began to grow up among factions within the community, and eventually those who disagreed with Stephen's teaching and leadership began to spread the rumor that his teaching was blasphemous (6:10-12). He was taken before a religious court in which false witnesses were arrayed against him and the charge of blasphemy was filed (6:12-14). In verse 58, the witness of 6:13-14 initiate the execution of a sentence, as one can also in Deuteronomy 17:7. Chapter 7 contains a marvelous sermon delivered by Stephen to the body that heard the charge of blasphemy against him, and he did not mince words. He bluntly accused them of having murdered Christ just as their ancestors had murdered previous prophets sent to them. By pointing their attention back to the murder of Jesus, Stephen finds the arrow of the charge of blasphemy pointed directly back at him. Stephen believing that the council and the crowd (6:12) continue to reject the prophets, just as they “betrayed and murdered” the Righteous One (7:52), whom the prophets foretold by their very lives (see how Abraham, Joseph and Moses all “foreshadow” Jesus in some way in this speech).
Acts 7:55-60 record an act of violence in the name of religious passion for God. How can one be passionate about his or her faith, without being violent? Since 9/11/01, those of us who believe deeply need to answer the question. Passages in the Bible that have violence affect me differently now, after 9/11. The practice of religion has long had a violent component. I think of child sacrifice as a particularly hideous example. Our time has seen dramatic ways in which religious devotion has led to disaster. Acts 7 is a reminder that such effects of religion are nothing new. People zealous to defend the tenets of their faith will go to inhumane lengths, including murder. The end justifies whatever means they choose to get there. This may be a time for religious people throughout the world to show that they can calmly reflect, consider the views of others, realize they may not know as much as they think they do, sacrifice what we want, and have an open heart for forgiveness. Today, we have a form of predatory martyrdom in which the martyr uses his or her own death to kill others, even the innocent.
55 But filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit affirming Stephen in his faith to the very end in the face of death. His speech has not addressed the charges of the council because they were never meant to be “true,” according to Luke (much like the charge of blasphemy at Jesus’ trial, Luke 22:70-71). Instead, his appointment as a servant of tables, his speech and his death show the continued work of the Spirit, moving throughout the world (8:4). He gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. God and Jesus, the Son of Man vindicating Stephen, for the narrative he relates about God’s work in the past and the prophecy he makes about his listeners. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man (Υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου) standing, rather than sitting as in Luke 22:69, at the right hand of God!” One should relate Steven's vision to the transfiguration in Acts 6:15. In Luke 9:32, Jesus standing amidst the "glory of God" is what the disciples see at the transfiguration. Note that in this vision "standing" may denote the urgency of Stephen's situation and the active presence of Jesus that he feels. The vision that Stephen sees while filled with the Holy Spirit is reflected already in Luke 9:32 and Luke 22:69. The charge of blasphemy brought against Jesus (similar to the charge of blasphemy brought against Stephen in Acts 7), begins when Jesus makes this statement: "From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God." First, Stephen’s theophanic vision of God is striking in its repetition and in its specific details. While Jesus is often pictured at the right hand of God (2:33; 5:31), he is usually seated if his position is expressed (Luke 22:69; Romans 8:34; Colossians 3:1; Hebrews 10:12; 12:2; I Peter 3:22). Yet, here, it is stated twice that he is standing at God’s right hand. Furthermore, Luke narrates this vision and then recounts Stephen telling the council what he has seen. The two versions are similar but not identical, and the latter highlights the only use of the phrase “Son of Man” in the New Testament outside of the gospels and Revelation (7:56). The restatement of the vision both by the narrator and by Stephen points to Luke’s validation of Stephen’s account in a different way than is the description of faith, power and the Spirit that are in Chapter 6. Now, Luke is affirming not only Stephen but also the account of Israel’s history that Stephen has given. The Son of Man, whom Stephen sees through the open heavens, is the final stamp of approval on this message. 57 But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him. The vision enrages the crowd. They betray their own traditions and become a mob. This gives a hint of a lynching be the crowd rather than a legal process, which may be due to Luke's editing so that it parallels the trial of Jesus. 58 Then they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. This is in accordance with Jewish legal ordinances, according to which the stoning had to take place outside the camp. Similarly, the stoning of Stephen may not take palace in Jerusalem. The rush to stone Stephen echoes the scene in Luke 4:28-29 when a crowd of enraged members of the Nazareth synagogue drags Jesus to the outskirts of town and attempt to push him off a cliff after hearing his teaching. And the witnesses, ironically, the actual Greek word "martyr" occurring in this passage, but not to refer to Stephen. The "martyrs" in Acts 7:55-60 are the witnesses who bring the charge of blasphemy against Stephen. According to biblical law, at least two or three witnesses are required in order to charge someone with a crime (Deuteronomy 19:15). According to Leviticus 24:14, those who believe they are witnesses to blasphemy are required to respond as did the crowd around Stephen. The verse reads, "Take the blasphemer outside the camp; and let all who were within hearing lay their hands on his head, and let the whole congregation stone him." They considered taking Stephen outside the city equivalent to taking an offender outside the wilderness camp. The biblical mandate to stone blasphemers is upheld in the Mishnah, the Jewish law code collected and compiled during the first two centuries of the Common Era. The Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin 7:4 lists the blasphemer as one whose crime merits stoning. Sanhedrin 7:5 outlines the conditions under which this sentence can be issued, namely, the person must have misused the formal name of God, the Tetragrammaton (Tractate Shevuoth 4:13 also affirms this), and there must be at least three witnesses to testify before a judge as to what exactly was said. All the witnesses, interviewed separately, must repeat what was said, and they must agree. Finally, the mechanics of stoning a blasphemer are outlined in Sanhedrin 6:4, including the fine point noted in Leviticus 24:14, that the witnesses are to hold the accused, and all the congregation are to stone the person. It is not clear, then, why Saul merely holds the coats of those stoning Stephen instead of participating in the execution himself. Perhaps not being from Jerusalem, they did not consider him a member of that congregation. It is also possible that just as all the conditions of Sanhedrin 7:5 were not followed in this case, local practice of such judgments was still variable at this point in history. The witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. Some scholars raise a question concerning the historicity of the events related here. For them, this statement serves to link the martyrdom of Stephen with the story of Paul that follows. In this way, the great missionary first appears on the scene as a bystander. That the witnesses lay down their clothes is presumably the result of a Lukan misunderstanding. The Jewish legal ordinance that Luke probably wanted to weave in here called for the condemned person to be stripped. Although this is a tragic story of a courageous witness who paid for his faith with his life, this story also serves another purpose altogether in the flow of the narrative of Acts. One can see this purpose when one imagines that the arrow on the compass that points from Stephen to Christ and back again had barbs on both ends. In this case, someone else stands on the opposite end of the arrow in a direct line of connection in Acts 7 -- namely a previously unheard of young man named Saul of Tarsus. This story marks his appearance in the narrative of Acts, and it is not accidental that the singularly most influential disciple who never met Jesus did in fact meet Stephen, the one whose martyrdom so closely resembled that of Christ. 59 While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” From Psalm 31:5 and strikingly close to the Lukan narrative of Jesus' death in Luke 23:46. Luke may have drawn a further parallel between the martyrdom of Stephen and that of Jesus. 60 Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, again, this recalling the passion of Jesus, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” The petition is close to Jesus' saying in Luke 23:34. His spirit is that of sacrificial love, forgiving in the spirit of Jesus. There may be some wisdom in the saying that urges us to forgive our enemies, but never to forget their names.[1] To forgive is extraordinary and uncommon. It runs counter to our instincts, which is to declare our pain, nurse our hurts, gain sympathy, and get justice. The Jewish leaders in Jerusalem needed forgiveness. Without forgiveness, they would never be free of the consequences of their actions. Their act of crucifixion of Jesus, their act of stoning Stephen, would be their defining act from which they would never recover. They would remain the victims of its consequences. Forgiveness breaks the spell of their act.[2] Jewish leaders carefully brought about the death of Jesus by legal manipulation. Stephen's death was the act of a vicious, spontaneous, lawless act. Secondly, this affirmation of Stephen reaches an even greater pinnacle through the account of Stephen’s death. It is only after Stephen describes his vision that his listeners respond violently enough to kill him (7:57-58). In this brutal response, however, two details are worth noticing. First, the council “covered their ears.” This fulfills Stephen’s “prophecy” about them in his speech (7:51), and their murder of Stephen perpetuates the “killing of the prophets” with which he charged them. Additionally, the council also rushes at Stephen “together” (NRSV) or “with one accord” (7:57). This word is used throughout Acts primarily to describe the activity of the early church (e.g., 1:14; 2:46; 4:24; 15:25) or either a positive (8:6) or negative (18:12; 19:29) response to the apostles’ preaching. Here, it shows a sharp contrast between the reaction of Stephen’s listeners and the general demeanor of the “believers,” even though, as Stephen’s speech has pointed out, both groups share the same God and the same ancestors (7:2ff.). These parallels culminate in Stephen’s statements as he died, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” and “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (7:59-60), which correspond to Jesus’ statements on the cross as Luke records them (Luke 23:46; possibly Luke 23:34). When he had said this, he died.
Stephen's behavior is different from that of the violent crowd. He was "full of grace and power" (6:8). His speech to the council that gathered to judge him displays a profound grasp of the biblical story. He courageously spoke the truth in difficult circumstances. He placed himself in the hands of God. He did not seek to be a martyr, but he did not run from it, just as Jesus himself did not run from the cross. This might be a good first rule: Don't go trying to be a martyr. A second rule: Don't give others an excuse to make a martyr out of you. Stephen was a just and righteous person and was persecuted without cause. And a third rule is suggested by Stephen's dying words: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." If we are persecuted, abused, or ridiculed because of our faith, Stephen's example counsels us to shift the focus from pain to prayer. Although in pain, he prayed for his persecutors. A fourth principle is derived from the Beatitudes: "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake" (Matthew 5:10).
We live in a part of the world where Christianity rarely makes the news unless it is to be mocked or defamed. Otherwise, the media is strangely silent about modern Christian martyrdom. In one month in 2013, 80 people died in Pakistan attending a Protestant church, assailants killed three members of a Christian wedding party in Egypt, and Jihadists in Syria target Christians. Political leaders in the West refuse to make the slaughter of innocents a foreign policy priority. Why the silence? "Three things distinguish anti-Christian persecution and discrimination around the world," said Denver's Archbishop Charles Chaput to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. "First, it's ugly. Second, it's growing. And third, the mass media generally ignore or downplay its gravity." ...
The secular West has been looking the other way for a very long time. Even the average church-going Christian is not likely to know that 45.5 million of the estimated 70 million Christians who have died for Christ did so in the last century. For this reason, scholars such as Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, refer to the past century as one of the darkest periods of martyrdom since the birth of Christianity.[3]
Pope John Paul II has paid tribute to the Christian martyrs of the 20th century in a solemn ceremony at Rome's ancient Colosseum. Anglicans, Lutherans, Russian Orthodox and Pentecostalists joined the pope in prayer in an unusual ecumenical event attended by thousands of pilgrims. The Pope said countless Christians had been united in their readiness to die for their faith in the 20th century. Those who died in Soviet gulags, in Nazi and Japanese prison camps during World War II, in the 1994 Rwanda genocide and during the recent fundamentalist unrest in Algeria were honored in prayer and song. In his sermon, the pope said Christians had experienced "hatred and exclusion, violence and murder" in the modern age. He noted that some 3,000 priests were interned in the Nazi death camp at Dachau. A prayer read in Czech recalled the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. The killing of more than a million Armenian Christians in Turkey during World War I was also remembered. Saying he himself witnessed "much pain and many trials" as a young man in communist Poland, he said his generation was particularly marked by war, concentration camps and persecution. Special tributes were paid to Russian Orthodox Patriarch Tikhon, who stood up to the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution, and Olga Jafa, a Russian teacher exiled to a Soviet gulag. The tributes also included Anton Luli, an Albanian Catholic priest who spent 28 years in prison, and Paul Schneider, a Lutheran anti-Nazi priest tortured to death in Buchenwald concentration camp. Many of the people who suffered or died for their faith were "unknown soldiers," the pope said. "There are so many of them. They must not be forgotten. Rather they must be remembered, and their lives documented," he said.[4]
I want to draw your attention to the crowd. It acted with rage. It was USA Today (September 2, 1992, 9A) which asked if we were becoming the "age of rage." They asked the question, "Are we becoming a country of haters?" Think of it. Rap music began with a strong sense of rage. Andrew Dice Clay, the comic, uses the theme of rage throughout his act. There is a rise in skinhead groups throughout the country. Racial incidents seem to be increasing. What is happening to us? Little League was started in 1939 with the aim of assisting youth in developing qualities of citizenship, discipline, teamwork, and physical well-being with proper guidance and exemplary leadership. Yet, in 1992, one coach slashed a rival coach's throat with a pocketknife, blood splattering on one player's shirt. In Terre Haute in 1989 a manager was clubbed with a baseball bat by a rival manager. In El Centro, California league play was suspended after an umpire was threatened by a knife-wielding parent.
The crowd acted violently in the name God. Religion is not naturally violent. After all, connecting with the divine has been a matter for quiet persons. They search for communion with the divine and other like-minded persons. This desire for communion for that which is beyond the finite and temporal allows them to place their immediate ideas and concerns in proper perspective. Such persons can appreciate multiple forms of judgment and contemplation. In that sense, religious temperament opposes narrow-mindedness. When an ideology grabs the mind and passion of a person, the result is narrowing and limiting in a way that generates hostility. However, the desire for communion with that which is beyond our finite and temporal world leads to genuine liberty.[5]
Certain forms of religion become an ideology that leads to violence. Fascism and Communism are atheist but also have ideologies that lead to violence. All religions have their violent forms. Supposedly Christian militia receive no endorsement from the major brands of Christianity. A difference that Islam has with other major religions is that Islamists, the political ideology that leads to violence within Islam, is a major component of Islam and receives a sympathetic hearing among many other adherents of Islam.
Do The Right Thing is a 1989 movie. Spike Lee wrote the screenplay and directed it. When this movie first appeared, the violence bothered some people; they thought it would cause trouble. Others felt the message was confused. The movie is violent, and if cussing bothers you, do not watch it.
The movie takes place during one long, hot day in the Bedford-Stuyevesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. It reveals the racial tensions in the neighborhood. At one point, Radio Raheem: (50:29 to 51:47) says:
Let me tell you the story of "Right Hand, Left Hand." It's a tale of good and evil. Hate: It was with this hand that Cane iced his brother. Love: These five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man. The right hand: the hand of love. The story of life is this: Static. One hand is always fighting the other hand; and the left hand is kicking much a--. I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished. But, hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back. Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that's right. Ooh, it's the devastating right and Hate is hurt, he's down. Left-Hand Hate K.O.ed by Love. If I love you, I love you. But if I hate you … I love you man.”
It often looks like hate is winning the war. It even seems as if hate has taken over religious people as well. I must confess that I look at passages like the one before us in a quite different light since 9/11.
According to The Washington Post (August 6, 2007), an enormous mental gulf separates “cold” emotional states from “hot” emotional states. “We tend to exaggerate the importance of willpower,” says George Loewenstein, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who has studied the power of cold and hot emotional states. Avoiding junk food and shedding a few pounds seem like reasonable and responsible things to do. But then, you know what happens — you get stressed or hungry, and suddenly a bag of potato chips becomes completely irresistible. You go temporarily insane and eat the whole thing. People in a hot emotional state have blown many diets.
Well, many religious people have blown the principles of their religion in hot emotional states, doing much harm to the witness of their faith and to other people.
We want passion when it comes to our faith. Lukewarm is not the type of faith we want. It would hardly be a complement to say that someone was “ice-cold for Jesus.”
Yet, hot faith can be a violent and deadly force in the world. Look around: Sunnis are fighting with Shiites in Iraq. Hindus are battling Muslims in India. The church has had plenty of violent sins in its history. Call them extremists, or call them crazy, but one thing is certain — their faith is hot.
Several outspoken atheists have gone so far as to say that religion is the cause of most of the world’s troubles. Christopher Hitchens, author of the book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, blames faith for genocide, sexism, suicide bombings, genital mutilation, totalitarianism and every other problem in the history of the world. He scores some points — no one would argue against the notion that people do a great deal of evil in the name of God. I am sure none of us would want to defend suicide bombings and genital mutilation.
The alternative to hot faith is not no faith, as Mr. Hitchens says. It is cool faith. What would cool faith look like?
Cool faith is trust in God. It is trust in a God who “does not dwell in houses made with human hands.” So often, we worship a god of our own making, instead of the Lord God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, as the Apostles’ Creed says. We make a god that likes the things we like and hates the things we hate. Yet, God is above all and in all, working through all that God has made. God does not live in the tiny houses we make. Nothing in our finite world can contain an infinite Lord. A nation cannot do it; a political party cannot do it; a denomination cannot do it; our personal agendas cannot do it. When Stephen catches a vision of Jesus at the right hand of God in heaven, he sees God as not defined by the heat of this moment. God has a perspective on matters that we can never have.
Cool faith is also a sacrificial faith. Stephen is determined to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, so he does not fight back when the crowd attacks him. As the crowd throws the stones, he prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He wants to be in complete and eternal relationship with the One who is his Savior.
Sacrifice is a tough one for us. We show our strength by getting our way, sometimes no matter who we hurt in the process. We show strength by fighting for what we want, sometimes at all cost. But:
• to be a good parent, you must sacrifice time at work to be with your children;
• to be a good spouse, you must give up some of your own desires to satisfy the needs of your partner;
• to be a good Christian at school, you must sacrifice some of your popularity to live the life that God desires for you;
• to be a good church member, you have to offer time and talent and money to advance the mission of the congregation. You may have to set aside what you want, no matter how much you think you are in the right, because the majority has made different decision from what you would have chosen.
None of this is easy, and some of it can be painful, but sacrificial living is part of what it means to be a follower of the One who gave his life on the cross. In fact, in the next chapter, we find that the death of Stephen will lead to the conversion of a man named Saul, who in turn would become Paul, the great apostle for the Gentiles. Stephen would not see the result of his faithfulness.
Finally, cool faith is a forgiving faith. Stephen’s very last words are, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Like Jesus himself, Stephen forgives his killers, knowing that they are acting out of hot faith — overcome by rage and passion. His final words echo the prayer Jesus said on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
This may be the biggest challenge of cool faith, but it is at the heart of being a follower of Christ. Look around the world, look around the public discourse in this country, and look deeply into this community and this community of faith. We have a forgiving faith. We need to practice it. As Christians, we live as people forgiven by God. Our job is to forgive — forgive our friends, our family members, our boyfriends and girlfriends, our brothers and sisters. Our job is to forgive our bosses, our coworkers, our opponents, our enemies … even ourselves.
The hot emotional states of anger or anxiety are powerful. When we offer true forgiveness, we let go of the anger and anxiety that we feel toward those who have hurt us so badly. We also ask God to show them mercy, for in so many cases they did not know what they were doing. God knows, you know, the world needs a witness to a faith like that.
In a world ripped apart by anger and violence, in a world willing to injure what deserves respect, it is hard to believe that a hotter faith, a faith rooted in a hot emotional state, is going to bring us all closer together. A call for more passion is not going to lead to peace.
Instead, let us have the cool faith that leads to trust in the providence of God, sacrificial living, and forgiveness. Then, we can be part of bringing people closer together so that they can bear witness to the genuineness of their faith to the world around them.
The film ends on an ambiguous note due to two quotations. The first, from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., argues that violence is never justified under any circumstances. The second, from Malcolm X, argues that violence is "intelligent" when it is self-defense.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys a community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
[1] Attributed to both John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert.
[2] Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer's apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell. --Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 237.
[3] --Susan Brinkmann, "The greatest story never told: Modern Christian martyrdom," Catholic Online Website, catholic.org. December 5, 2008. Retrieved December 21, 2013.
[4] --http://news.bbc.co.uk.com Retrieved November 5, 2001.
[5] Friedreich Schleiermacher, On the Christian Religion (1768-1834). Seers of the Infinite have ever been quiet souls. They abide alone with themselves and the Infinite, or if they do look around them, grudge to no one who understands the mighty word his own peculiar way. By means of this wide vision, this feeling of the Infinite, they are able to look beyond their own sphere. There is in religion such a capacity for unlimited many-sidedness in judgment and in contemplation, as is nowhere else to be found ... Religion is the natural and sworn foe of all narrow-mindedness and of all one-sidedness ... The man who only thinks methodically, and acts from principle an design, and will accomplish this or that in the work, un-avoidably circumscribes himself, and makes everything that does not forward him an object of antipathy. Only when the free impulse of seeing and of living is directed towards the Infinite and goes into the Infinite, is the mind set in unbounded liberty.
Likes cool faith. Did you mean to say that the dissension in the community that led to Stephen being brought before the council was from the christian community? That seems to be what you are saying. Also no one ever mentions that the Jews could not carry out a death sentence under Roman laws. Yet they did. I always wonder did Rome have anything to say about this?
ReplyDeleteWhen one speaks of violence in religion, don't leave out the crusades, inquisition, Northern Ireland, nor the emotional violence done by stiff necked Christians to other Christians in our own churches.
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
DeleteNo I did not intend to say Stephen came before the council because of dissension within the community. As I re-reason that part, I still do not see. Sorry.
Actually as I recall many commentaries do deal with whether the Jewish people could carry our a death sentence. However, as I am understanding this passage, it was a crowd enraged and passionate in defense of their faith. It was the rage of the moment and the crowd. It is not like it was a calmly considered act. Further, for Romans, one less Jew is a good thing.
As to the crusades, I have mentioned them often my lectionary discussions. My article is testimony that I do not think the way you do about mentioning crusades etc every time one talks about violence in religion. In this case, I focused on the aggressive stance of secularism against people of faith. The focus is more on contemporary rage than the history of rage.
Again, thanks for the comments.