Scriptures: Acts 1:1-14 Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35
I Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11 John 17:1-11, 20-26
Any Law and Order fans in the house? You know the setup – a crime happens, usually
discovered by people who have nothing to do with the rest of the story, who
we’ll never see again. Two detectives
are sent out – Briscoe and Curtis, Benson and Stabler – who interview various
suspects and witnesses. And then there’s
a trial, and the outcome hinges on which witnesses are credible, and which are
not.
Our reading from Acts gives us a snapshot of Jesus’ final
moments with his disciples. Remember that
the book of Acts is more or less the sequel to Luke’s gospel – the same author
wrote both works. We’re told that for a
40 day period after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples. Finally, the disciples gathered with
Jesus. And, as often happened, the
disciples were not on the same page with Jesus.
“Lord, will you restore the kingdom to Israel now?” After all that had happened, they were still
looking to Jesus to lead Israel to independence from Rome. They still saw Jesus as a politician. It’s entirely possible that Jesus did a
face-palm at that moment. “Will these
disciples of mine never stop missing the point?” Jesus might have thought to
himself. But, to his disciples, Jesus
replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has
set by his own authority.” Put another
way, Jesus told them: “Mind your own
business” or as is sometimes said today, “Stay in your own lane.”
But Jesus didn’t stop there.
He went on to say, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has
come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.” And then,
we’re told, Jesus was lifted up into heaven.
The end. If this were a Warner
Brothers cartoon, we’d be hearing the words, “That’s all, folks!” After the Gospels and this opening chapter of
Acts, we hear nothing more directly from Jesus, except for Paul’s brief vision
of the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus – which set a course for the rest
of his life, changing him from an enemy of the early church to perhaps its
greatest missionary - and John’s vision on the island of Patmos, about which we
read in the book of Revelation. With
these exceptions, after the Gospels, the focus of the rest of the New
Testaments shifts to the disciples and to the communities they gathered around
them, which we call the early church.
“You will be my witnesses.”
What does it mean to be a witness?
In order to be a witness, we have to have seen something or heard
something or otherwise experienced something.
If we witness a car accident, it means we heard the squeal of brakes and
the crunch of metal on metal, and see two cars make impact. Or, if we don’t actually see the accident,
perhaps we come upon the accident scene shortly afterward. But there needs to be some kind of first-hand
experience; we don’t get to be witnesses by reading about the accident in the
paper the next day. Similarly, for us to
be witnesses to a crime – a theft, a drug sale, a shooting – we actually have
to have seen the crime take place, or at the very least to see the crime scene
afterward. We don’t get to be witnesses
to a crime by listening to what somebody else said about it. And, beyond having seen or heard or otherwise
experienced something, the other part of being a witness is being willing to
tell others what we’ve experienced. And
this is the part that can be scary – if we’ve witnessed something that others
want to keep hidden, such as a crime, and if make it known that we’re willing
to tell others what we’ve seen, those who are trying to hide their acts may
threaten us. Or at the very least, they
may try to discredit us. Indeed, the word martyr, which we associate with being
killed for the sake of a belief or cause, comes from a Greek word meaning
“witness”. Being a witness can be risky,
and costly.
As it happens, the disciples were witnesses, not to a car
crash or a crime, but to a miracle.
Actually, to numerous miracles – the miracle of the resurrection, but
also the miracles of healing and feeding that Jesus performed – and beyond
that, the entire miracle of Jesus’ life and ministry, in which Jesus served
others and, in serving them, transformed their lives, and inspired at least
some of them to do the same for others. And, just before Jesus left them, he told his
disciples: “Go! Tell! Tell others about me.
Tell others what you’ve seen and heard and experienced. Tell others, so that all that we’ve shared
together will live on, even after you’ve passed on. Tell others so that all we’ve experienced
together will not be forgotten.” And it
is because these disciples did as Jesus said, that we’re gathered here together
today.
We know that sometime this morning, or maybe early afternoon
if they’re running late, the folks from the veterans posts will be coming to
hold their service of remembrance at our cemetery. This is their way of witnessing to the
sacrifices of those who died in the service of their country, of saying, “Their
lives mattered, and their deaths in the service of their country mattered. Do not let them be forgotten.” And
Jesus’ instruction to his disciples was similar, to an extent: “Do not let me be forgotten.”
I said, “similar to an extent”. We are inspired by the service of those who
have fallen, and by those who remember them.
But as Christians, we believe that as others hear of Jesus, his life and
ministry, his death and resurrection, they will be, not only inspired, but
transformed, transformed at the deepest level.
We believe that as others hear of Jesus, the focus of their lives will
change from being self-centered to being God-centered, from serving themselves
to serving God and neighbor. Remember
that I said that in order to be a witness, we had to experience something. The Gospels were written so that those who
read them would meet and experience Jesus in the pages of the Gospels just as
the first disciples met Jesus in the flesh, so that the lives of those who read
them would be transformed in the same way that the lives of Jesus’ first
disciples were transformed. John’s
Gospel is very direct about its intention, as John wrote: “Now Jesus did many other signs in the
presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to
believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing
you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30-31)
Jesus told his disciples that they would be his witnesses in
Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. To us, these are names for faraway places
most of us will never visit, but for those who followed Jesus, these places
held emotional associations. Jerusalem
was the center of Jewish worship, and was also the place where the disciples
had been instructed to stay. It was the
area immediately around them. Judea was the
area surrounding Jerusalem, and most of the residents were also of the Jewish
faith. Samaria was further north. While the residents of Samaria held some
basic beliefs in common with Jews, they rejected most of the Jewish scriptures
except for the first five books of the Old Testament, and they worshipped on a
mountain in their area, Mt. Gerezim, instead of Jerusalem. These differences were enough so that Jews
looked down on Samaritans, and Samaritans in return were hostile to Jews. And yet Jesus also wanted his disciples to
tell the Samaritans about Jesus. And
then, of course, Jesus said his disciples would go even further, to tell people
about him to the ends of the earth. Our
United Church of Christ logo, which is printed in the bulletin, comes from this
passage – the crown and the cross and the globe – representing the Lordship of
Christ over the whole world – and the globe is divided into three parts,
representing Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth. It’s a reminder that Jesus’ instructions to
his disciples are his instructions to us as well, that we too are to tell
others about Jesus in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth
– to our neighbors, our friends, our enemies, and to everyone.
If a witness in a trial says something that’s obviously
false, that testimony will be discounted. For a witness to be heard, he or she
must be credible. Jesus knew that in
order for people to believe his disciples words about how Jesus transformed
their lives, their lives had to look transformed. Indeed, one of the failings
of the church – and I’m talking about the church as a whole - is that, as much as we talk about Jesus
changing our lives for the better, too often those outside the church look at
our lives, and see no change at all – that is to say, preach as we will about
the love of Jesus, the lives of many inside the church are just as unloving and
self-centered as those outside the church. For our witness to be believable, we
need to walk the way we talk, and when we don’t, our words will come to
nothing. In our Gospel reading, Jesus
was praying for his disciples at the Last Supper….a final prayer for them
before his arrest. Jesus could have
prayed any number of things on their behalf – “let them be persistent, let them
be powerful, let them be successful” - but instead, he prayed that they would be one
– and not only them, but anyone who would come to believe in Jesus because of
their words, that they would all be one.
And he linked this to the credibility of their testimony about Jesus,
praying “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that
you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Jesus felt that unity among his followers
would make the witness of his followers believable. For Jesus, unity brought credibility.
Well. We may question
whether God granted this prayer of Jesus, for his disciples to be completely
one. Over the first thousand years of
the history of the church, the small congregations planted by the disciples of
Jesus gave birth to other congregations, and over time bishops were elected to
oversee these congregations, and after Christianity was embraced by Emperor
Constantine, eventually the bishop of Rome, otherwise known as the Pope, came
to be seen as the most powerful of the bishops – and with power came power
struggles and corruption. In the year
1054, there was a great split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
churches. In the 1500’s and 1600’s,
numerous Protestant communities split off from the Roman Catholic Church,
including the German Reformed Church from which our congregation traces its
heritage. Today there are said to be
close to 40,000 Christian denominations.
Some are large, such as the Southern Baptist Church, United Methodist
Church, Episcopal Church, and so forth.
Others are very small, such as the Schwenkfelder Church, a denomination
consisting of five historically German churches in Southeastern Pennsylvania,
with combined membership of a couple thousand. These denominations differ on
all sorts of issues, sometimes about matters of governance – should the church
be governed by a pope or by bishops or by other sorts of denominational
governing bodies – or should each church be on its own, charting its own
course. Church splits have happened over
race, as the African Methodist Episcopal Church formed from persons who were
not welcomed in white Methodist Churches – in fact, the AME church started
right here in Philadelphia, when African-American worshippers at St. George’s
Methodist near 4th & Race Streets were disrespected during
worship, and walked out of the service to form their own congregation at 6th
& Lombard Street, called Mother Bethel - and the National Baptist
Convention was formed by African-Americans who felt unwelcome in white Baptist
churches. Churches split over social issues, as the split between the American
Baptist and Southern Baptist churches came over the issue of slavery, and more
recent church splits have come over the authorization of female clergy and gay
clergy, among other issues. Some split
over matters of worship and doctrine, such as whether people should be baptized
as infants or as adults, or whether communion should happen weekly or monthly.
What do these splits say about Christian unity, about Jesus’
prayer that we may all be one? Surely our divisions over the centuries have
grieved the heart of God, and it’s tempting for us to throw up our hands in
despair. Certainly, throughout history,
Protestants and Catholics, and different brands of Protestants, have
excommunicated one another and even killed one another in the name of Christ –
which made a mockery of the intended message of Christ’s love. Today, however, churches are learning to
work together across denominational lines.
Some of this is a matter of practicality – with shrinking numbers, in
order to have any impact at all, we’ve had to learn to work together. We are learning that even if we don’t have
uniformity, we can still have a measure of unity, particularly in helping the
poor and marginalized in our communities. Our own denomination, the United Church of
Christ, is the result of the merger of four previous denominations – German Reformed,
German Evangelical, Congregational, Christian.
The United Church of Christ has agreements recognizing the sacraments of
several other denominations – Presbyterian Church USA, Reformed Church in
America, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, Disciples of Christ - and belong to bodies such the World Council of
Churches and the National Council of Churches, which include most major
Protestant denominations. Though ours is a small denomination, the
United Church of Christ has worked tirelessly for unity in the church. We see ourselves as a united and uniting
church. And of course, here in
Bridesburg, we are a contributing member of the Bridesburg Council of Churches,
working with our Presbyterian and Methodist sisters and brothers to share
Christ’s love and to serve our neighbors here in the ‘Burg. Indeed, back in the
1950’s, one of our former pastors, the Rev. Ronald Keller, had a key role in
the formation of the council. As small
as the Bridesburg Council of Churches is, it’s a witness of unity, a small
answer to Jesus’ prayer for unity, and as such deserves our support.
Jesus wanted his disciples to go out into all the world to
be witnesses, and he wanted them to walk together in unity. May we do our part, not only talking about
God’s love but living out God’s love in ways that build others up instead of
tearing them down. Truly, may they know
we are Christians by our love. Amen.
