Witnesses

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 4^th & Race Streets were disrespected during worship, and walked out of the service to form their own congregation at 6^th & 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.