April 14, 2024 my sermon
3rd Sunday of Easter, Year B
Luke 24:36b-48
St. Matthew’s
We remember his death. We proclaim his resurrection. We await his coming in glory.
It was only 21 days since their Lord had ridden into Jerusalem with crowds lining the road, shouting and singing Hosanna. 17 since they shared what would be their last meal with him. 16 since he was nailed to a cross and died. 14 since his grave was discovered empty and they had begun to experience and hear of unnatural appearances and disappearances of their beloved Jesus.
They were now gathered together in a locked room going over and over what they knew, what they didn’t know, what they dared hoped for, what they most feared, what they should be doing, if anything.
Suddenly Jesus was among them. The words used to describe the scene are startled, terrified, frightened, wonderment, joy, disbelief. Jesus immediately sharpens their focus with these words: Look at my hands and my feet. Touch me and see. Have you anything here to eat?
He helps them process everything, puts things into context. And then looks at them and says: You are witnesses of these things. And he lets that sentence just hang.
A witness is an observer, a viewer, a bystander. It doesn’t necessarily require anything of you. You were there, you saw what happened. It’s afterwards, that comes a decision and with that decision an outcome: a responsibility for or a betrayal of the events. Do you keep what you saw to yourself or do you tell others what you have seen? Do you turn that noun into a verb . . .
So, it’s been more than 2000 years from that day when a handful of frightened souls in a locked room became witnesses of an astonishing story. They left that room and began to testify. They began to tell others what they seen, experienced. No longer passive. Today more people in the world claim to be Christian than any other religion: 31.6% of the world’s population. 2.38 billion people. Because a few began talking about the man, they had known as Jesus, was the Son of God. That he had died, had risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven.
And here we are:
21 days past Palm Sunday; 17 from Maundy Thursday; 16 since Good Friday, 14 after Easter Day. And we find ourselves together in this closed room, listening to these amazing and really unbelievable stories. Rehashing them, trying to understand what happened then and what does it mean for us all these years later, if anything.
Today’s collect says: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him. That is give us new eyes that we can see Jesus here before us, this very morning.
In Rite II, Eucharistic Prayer B we say these words together as part of the Eucharist preparation: We remember his death. We proclaim his resurrection. We await his coming in glory.
How is it that we say these words? Under what circumstance? They are statements that seem to imply we were there at his death, his resurrection. They are present tense. What memory are we remembering? What makes that memory real and therefore the statement truthful? We remember what we have directly experienced. How then to understand the words we say: We remember his death. Is it possible that because followers of Jesus have come together week after week, year after year saying these very words, that somehow, we are connecting to some great communal reservoir of memory? That we can claim the original memory as our own?
If that is a bridge too far, what are we to make of these words: You are witnesses of these things. What are we witnesses of? What are we bearing witness to?
If not the wounds of Jesus? Then perhaps the wounds of our neighbors or of God’s created world. If not the hunger of Jesus, then perhaps the hunger of our community, spiritual and physical.
We know that Christendom is not in great shape. There is much commentary that people are finding the church irrelevant, out of touch. Or worse, responsible for much of the ills of society, past and present. The percentage of people claiming to be Christian has decreased while the percentage of people claiming no religion is increasing.
And here we have Jesus calling us to be witnesses of what we have seen; witnesses for him and the church that rose around his life, death, and resurrection. Of which we are part of.
The challenge of the statement “You are witnesses of these things” struck me because I have mixed feelings about being a witness. It immediately suggests to me the image of a Bible-thumping, in your face, holier-than-thou personality.
When I was quite young: elementary school, we went to a nondenominational church with an evangelical bent; it was big on missions. Every year they would have mission week or maybe mission month. Missionaries the church supported, who were home on furlough, would come into the classrooms in native garb and talk about their work and the foreign lands in which they lived and the people with whom they lived who were far different from us. I hated these programs. They scared me to death. The missionaries would say: God may call you to be a missionary and I would think: Please God, don’t call me to be a missionary. They would say, you may think you don’t want to be a missionary, but God may change your heart. And I would think: Please God, don’t change my heart.
I also remember sitting alone on my parent’s bed reading a thick red book about martyred saints. I realized that it might require courage to be a Christian. It might exact a heavy price: pain, death. It is said that our patron saint, Matthew, died in Ethiopia by sword as he celebrated the Eucharist. The book frightened me with the thought that those things could happen to me. I began to recite to myself a litany as I walked about here and there. Jesus, come into my heart. Jesus, get out of my heart.
I wasn’t sure I could be a Christian or if it was safe to be a Christian. Even now, it is easier for me to say that I am an Episcopalian than I am a Christian. That I am a member of St. Matthew’s than I am a follower of Jesus. I worry that, if pressed, or if, God-forbid I might experience persecution, I won’t have what it takes, the courage to stand up for my faith.
But I do know that the church is my home. You are my people. The stories of Good Book are ones I return to again and again. The songs I want to sing are gospels and spirituals. I no longer ask Jesus to get out of my heart. I want him to stay.
I take comfort that Jesus spoke to his disciples in that room as a group and gave to them the common identity of witness. I appreciate that we say out loud and together: We believe in one God; We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ; We believe in the Holy Spirit.
And, I realize that there is an order to being a witness, a progression from passive to active. That there is some learning in this call. To be a witness, one must observe carefully. Be present. Be engaged. Maybe Jesus is asking us first to look up, look around, stop our myopic concentration on ourselves. Look out to the margins of our sight lines. What do we see then? Or, maybe Jesus is simply asking us to look at him, at his resurrected body, scarred but holy. A body that changes everything; upends life as we know it.
It may be that it is only after close observation we come to the active phase of witnessing. Acting on what we have seen, heard, experienced, come to know and sharing that with others.
I have known since December that I would be preaching today. I decided to keep my ear to the ground and listen; to keep my eyes open that I might find evidence of our collective faith at work. The fruits of our collective witness. The plural “you” in Jesus’ statement of us all gathered together.
The signs were not hard to find. The first one came blazing across my email and Facebook from Julia Sendor: a joyful report on the work of Justice United. Then on January 15, also from Facebook, a smiling-faced contingent from St. Matthew’s had joined the MLK march down Churton Street despite it being a cold and rainy day. There are the 175 cans of beef stew collected every month translating into 2,100 meals over the course of one year. There is Habitat for Humanity. There are the pilgrimages to Selma and Stagville. There is the revitalization of our Faith & Arts programming. And, there are the increasing numbers of people coming to weekly services.
We are here today because we believe that Jesus died, rose from the dead, and that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We remember what we have been told, by our parents, teachers, pastors and priests who were themselves told by their forebearers. All the way back to those disciples in the room charged by their Lord and master to be witnesses of things they’d seen.
Today, Jesus comes to us in this sacred space. Stands before us and says: Look at my hands and my feet: Touch me and see; He looks directly into each of our eyes and says: “You are witnesses of these things.” He looks at us, sees us as we are and despite that evidence gives us a new identity. He names us, commissions us, as witnesses of his life, death, and resurrection.
I urge you to take encouragement in the words Jesus said to his disciples: the you of all of them together and the you of each one individually. You are witnesses of these things. Note the difference between what I heard initially which was we were to BE witnesses vs. we ARE witnesses. You might hear the difference better from these statements: Be well. I am well. Be safe. I am safe. Embrace Jesus’ characterization of us as witnesses. We don’t have to be something we are not. Jesus accepts us as we are. Each of us, by living our very lives, bears a witness, leaves a wake: our countenance, our demeanor, our conversations, our choices, our interactions, the way we spend our time and the way we spend our money. The question for each of us today is: Do our lives bear the imprint of our risen Lord? Do our lives bear witness to Jesus?
Like those disciples we can’t stay here in this closed room. We will leave this sanctuary shortly. To be a witness one doesn’t have to shout from the roof top (although here I am – a shocking sight to my younger self – preaching from a pulpit); it doesn’t have to be going to a strange land (although my sister answered the call to be a missionary and served for 20 years in Thailand). It starts with who we are. It starts with where we are, right now, in a room with other believers. It starts with simply observing what we see: the people in our community, their needs and their gifts, the state of the world. And then owning what we see. Seeing it all through the prism of Jesus’ death and resurrection and aligning ourselves with that vision in response. Mother Teresa famously said: Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
What is the evidence of an individual witness? The fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We can do small things with great joy, small things with great peace, small things with great kindness.
Every week, we pray to be empowered to do the work given us to do, to love and serve as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. Every week we are dismissed with the charge to go forth into the world: to go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Know this: we cannot do this on our own power. Jesus gave his disciples the Spirit of God to enliven them and go with them as they went out into the world. Jesus gives us the Spirit too. We’re not out here on our own.
The disciples had a story to tell and so do we. Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold Jesus, remembering his death, proclaiming his resurrection, awaiting his coming in glory. Amen.