EASTER WITNESSES
Acts 3:12-19; Luke 24:44-48
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
April 19, 2015
Sometimes the interchange between attorney and witness can lead to some
unintentionally funny moments, whether because the witness takes the question a bit
too literally, or is not the sharpest tool in the tool shed. Someone has collected some
actual word-for-word quotes from the witness stand. For example:
Lawyer: What is your date of birth?
Witness: July fifteenth.
Lawyer: What year?
Witness: Every year.
Or there is the case of the witness with the fuzzy memory:
Lawyer: How old is your son – the one living with you?
Witness: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.
Lawyer: How long has he lived with you?
Witness: Forty-five years.
Or my favorite from a case involving an auto collision:
Lawyer: Did you blow your horn or anything?
Witness: After the accident?
Lawyer: Before the accident.
Witness: Sure I played for ten years. I even went to school for it.1
Many times, of course, the testimony of witnesses can be very serious.
Recently, in North Charleston, South Carolina, a white policeman shot a black driver he
had stopped because of a broken taillight. The policeman claimed that the shooting
only occurred in self-defense because the driver had wrested the policeman’s taser
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from him and was threatening to use it. That was the version of events that the
authorities were going by until a witness stepped up and told a very different story.
What he saw was the driver running away from the policeman – and the policeman
shooting him several times in the back. Then after the man had fallen, the policeman
went up to him and dropped an object beside the fallen driver that looked like a taser.
The witness had a video to back up his testimony, one shot with his cell phone, and one
that all of us can view now thanks to Youtube and the internet.
“Witnesses” – it is the word that Peter uses here in Acts 3 to describe John and
himself: “To this we are witnesses.” He is preaching a sermon here in Acts 3 to a crowd
surging all around him. They have flocked to a portico of the Temple because they
have seen a man lame from birth jumping, leaping, and dancing after Peter said
something to the man and took him by the hand. The crowd is filled with wonder and
amazement and they cannot get enough of Peter.
We understand this crowd don’t we? Their hunger is as old as humankind and
as current as today. As one commentator notes, “we have a relentless human hunger
to believe that there are people who have tapped into the healing powers of the
universe and who can make these powers available for us, whether they are faith
healers of the backwoods revival tent or the slick self-help counselors on television talk
shows.”2 And so we click on their shows, attend their talks, and buy up their books and
dvds.
Peter, however, knows his proper place too well to climb a pedestal or let the
crowd put him in the front of a victory parade. “Why do you stare at us, as though by
our own power or piety we had made him walk?” he asks the crowd Instead, he says, it
is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” who in the name of Jesus
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has done this great thing. Heroic healers? Hardly. Peter and John know instead that
they are nothing more than “witnesses to these things.”
To what things is Peter talking about? What have they witnessed? The cross
and the resurrection and all that they stand for. This is what Peter and John have
witnessed: how the people chose to set free a murderer, Barabbas, rather than Jesus,
the Messiah and Son of God; how Jesus was crucified under Pilate, and how he was
then raised from the dead by God. In other words, Peter and John have been a witness
to the depth of human treachery as revealed in the cross, but also to the height of the
grace and power of God as revealed in the resurrection.
Peter does not recount these events to lay the blame on the crowds or to Jews in
general, which sadly, is how some Christians have erroneously interpreted these
scriptures through the centuries. No, echoing the words of Jesus on the cross, Peter
tells the crowd that they knew not what they did; they acted out of ignorance. But now
ignorance is no excuse. Now, they need to decide if they will go their own way, or
repent, that is, turn around, and go the way of God.
“To these things we are witnesses.” This is not just Peter and John’s calling; it is
the calling of all Christians, as Jesus’ words in the other passage we read today, Luke
24, reminds us. Which for most of us is not great news. Indeed, the word, “witness”
may rub many of us the wrong way. We think perhaps of door-to-door evangelists or
over-zealous co-workers whom we and others avoid because they are always trying to
talk about salvation. Or when someone talks about witnessing, we may get frightened
because we feel totally inadequate to “witness” to others. “What do we know?,” “Who
are we to preach to others?,” “What would we say?,” we may well protest. If these
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memories and images are what we carry around in our mind when we think about the
word, “witness,” then I dare say that we will always avoid witnessing to these things.
But stop for a moment. Consider this. Who is responsible for you being here?
Who taught you about God and God’s love for you? Who showed you or told you about
what it means to live as a Christian? Parents? A minister or Sunday School teacher?
A church music director or youth advisor or coach? A spouse or friend?
When it comes to being a Christian, none of us is ever self-made. We are all
here because someone, or in most cases, lots of people witnessed to us. To be sure,
their actions probably counted far more than their words. But there were words. Not
spoken arrogantly or self-righteously, but humbly and lovingly. There might not have
been many words, but there were at least a few. When we take a moment to think
about it, we are all here because someone witnessed to us.
And second, consider this. We are all witnessing all the time. Pay attention to
your Facebook feed or Iinstagram posts. Pay attention to the conversations around us.
How often are we witnessing to a movie we liked, or a funny video we just discovered?
How often do we share with a friend a good doctor we have found or a great restaurant?
As someone has written, “we bear witness to the accomplishments (or failures) of our
sports teams. We bear witness to the important events in our family or work lives. We
bear witness – that is tell someone about – the things that matter to us all the time.”3
It is not really all that different when it comes to faith. Witnessing about our faith
is not shoving our faith down someone’s throat or threatening them with hellfire like
some street corner evangelist. We simply talk about what we have seen and heard,
how we have seen or experienced God’s grace at work, the difference faith has made in
our lives or the lives around us. To be sure, our actions are far more important than
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words, but there is a place for words. Eloquence is not required – only authenticity and
humility.
We are called to be witnesses – not prosecutors. It is not up to us to persuade or
convince people to become Christians. Only Christ converts, just as it was only Christ
who healed that lame man outside of the Temple in Acts 3. And we are not the judge or
jury rendering a verdict about who is going to heaven or who is not – Christ alone is our
judge. We are simply witnesses, telling what we have seen and heard, speaking the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
We are witnesses – to these things – the cross and resurrection. We
acknowledge the way the world is, as revealed in the cross, the power of sin and evil,
the reality of death. We are no Pollyanna acting like all is right when it is not. But we
bear witness as well to the resurrection, that there is an alternative narrative at work in
the world and in our life.
Much like that witness in North Charleston, we give a different narrative for what
is happening. Sure, bad stuff happens – but so does grace. Sure, people treat others
badly, but so are they capable of great courage, compassion, and kindness. Sure
suffering and death are a reality; but so is the resurrection.
We give witness to the reality that in the end love wins, grace wins, and life wins.
Not because that is the natural way of things – far from it, the resurrection could not be
less natural. And not because of the result of positive thinking or human wishing. No,
there is an alternative ending that only God can make happen – and Easter reveals that
this is what God has made happen.
In his book, A Guide for the Perplexed, the philosopher E.F. Schumacher tells
about a visit to Leningrad during the days of communist Soviet Union. He consulted a
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map to find out where he was, but he could not make it out. “From where I stood, I
could see several enormous churches,” he writes, ”yet there was no trace of any of
them on my map. When finally an interpreter came to help me he said, ‘We don’t show
churches on our maps.’ Contradicting him, I pointed to one that was very clearly
marked. ‘That is a museum,’ he said, ‘not what we call a living church. It is only the
living churches that we don’t show.’”4
Bearing witness is simply telling about the actions of God that may not show up
on all of the maps of the world but are as surely present as those church buildings that
Schumacher could see with his own eyes in Leningrad. In our world, there is often a
functional atheism which acts as if God doesn’t exist. But what we are bearing witness
to is that Easter really happened and that God is real. Some look at our world and
proclaim that brokenness must be the norm and has the final word. But we give witness
to the power present in this world that can help the lame to walk and the blind to see.
We speak of another world that stands beside, inside, and outside our world. That
world is “an Easter world, where the healing and forgiving power of God is as pervasive
and present as sunshine and rain.”5
But, we can only see that world through the eyes of faith. We can only
experience that world when we turn from the paths that we make and walk the path
blazed by Jesus Christ.
Friends, just as gratitude is not limited to Thanksgiving and generosity to
Christmas, so too the good news we perceive, witness and proclaim is not limited to
holy Week.6 We are called to be Easter witnesses, giving witness to the reconciling
power of the cross and the transforming power of the resurrection that is not just a once
and done thing but is an ongoing reality in this world through Jesus Christ, who is alive
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and on the loose. May we give witness through our actions – because actions always
speak louder than words. But when the time and place are right may we also find the
words to share about what matters most deeply to us and how we perceive God at work
in the world and in our lives, whether it is through Facebook, or a lunchtime
conversation at work, or a sleepover, or a family dinner at home, or wherever. We
witness not to brag or because we have all of the answers. Far from it. No, we give
witness because we have good news about what God is up to in Jesus Christ that we
hope others can discover for themselves. And this good news, which is not just
intended for us but for all of the world is too good to keep to ourselves.
Friends, as the church has proclaimed since that first Easter,
L: Christ is risen!
All: He is risen indeed!
See, you have already started!
1
http://indigo.org/humor/witness.html
Thomas G. Long, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year
B, Volume 2, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 408.
3
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1530.
4
E.F. Schumacher, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 1.
5
Long, 410.
6
Jack Haberer, Presbyterian Outlook editorial, date unknown.
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