AU United Methodist Community

Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center/St. Luke’s United Methodist Church
May 4, 2003
Acts 3:12-19; Luke 24:36b-48

INTRODUCTION

Imagine the following situation: A professor is lecturing a class when a student comes in to talk with him about a grade or a paper. The professor says that it is not the proper time to have this discussion as they are in the middle of a class. The student gets increasingly agitated and when it becomes clear that the professor is not about to take the time to hear the student’s concerns, the student lashes out, pushing the professor to the floor, throwing up his hands, and storms out, all in front of an astonished classroom full of students.

It’s at this time that the professor stands up and brushes himself and says, “Alright—who can give me a description of my assailant.” It’s a trick that some law professors play on their classes. Usually it’s in the classes in criminal law or evidence that this happens. Because what the class soon discovers is that there is not a lot of agreement on what the person looked like. He was tall, no he was short. He had on a striped shirt, no he had on a solid. They will disagree as to the color of the assailant’s hair. Sometimes, even as to whether the assailant was male or female, black or white.

The whole thing is an exercise in instructing law students as to the value of witness testimony. Eye-witnesses are not necessarily the most reliable source of information. People often see what they want to. People also have preconceptions and biases and this often impacts what they witness and what they remember about what they’ve witnessed. Being a witness can be a tricky thing.

THE TEXT

In both of the readings for today, from Acts and from Luke, being a witness plays a key part. Listen again to these words from the lesson we heard read earlier.

Luke 24:45-48 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

A similar passage in the lesson from Acts:

Acts 3:14-15 But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.

“You are witnesses of these things.” “To this we are witnesses.”

WITNESSES

What does it mean to witness?

Witness as Observer

Well there’s the most basic meaning—one who witnesses or observes something. A witness to an accident. A witness who attests to a signature on a will or at a wedding.

It’s a basic meaning, but I am pretty sure this isn’t the meaning Jesus has in mind. He’s not simply saying, “You saw this happen.” That is, he’s not saying, “The Son of Man was crucified and raised from the dead, but you know that—you were there!” It’s got to be more than that.

Witness as Testifier

There’s the idea of a witness as one who gives testimony. Lawyers deal with these kinds of witnesses all the time. Eye-witnesses, who tell you what they say. Expert witnesses who tell you what they know about a particular subject. Character witnesses who tell you about the kind of person the defendant is. Rebuttal witnesses who testify so as to undermine the testimony of another witness. These are not simply witnesses who saw something, these are witnesses who will tell you about it.

Could Jesus have been talking about this kind of witness? Perhaps, since preaching the Good News has been central to Christian faith since the very beginning. And Peter’s statement in Acts about being witnesses occurs during the middle of his preaching on Jesus and the power to heal.
And there are certainly a lot of people who understand Christian witness in this fashion. Witnessing our faith is testifying to it. Telling people about it. And that’s true. But is that all there is to it? Is it simply telling people?

Witness as Martyr

The Greek word for “witnesses” that appears in these passages and others is martureV martyres, from which we get the word ‘martyr.’ For that is what the ancient martyrs of the church were seen as doing, as witnessing to their faith. A powerful witness as it turned out.

So long as Christians were seen as another sect of Jews, they enjoyed legal protection in the Roman Empire and exemption from Emperor worship. After Christianity and Judaism parted company in the late First Century, Christians no longer had the protection of an ‘ancient religion’ and were required to offer sacrifices to the Emperor. Because this was idolatry, most Christians refused. For this they were persecuted and often executed. Their lives would be spared—or perhaps their form of execution would be more merciful—if they would recant and renounce their faith. They didn’t and for that they were executed. Thus they were deemed to have witnessed—to have testified to their faith in the greatest way possible, by sacrificing their own lives.

Is that what Christ is calling us to do? Sometimes our Christian faith requires us to forfeit our lives for the sake of the Gospel. But is that what Jesus is telling us to do in this situation? Martyrdom is not really anyway to run a religion that envisages the long term.

Witness as Doer

But there’s another sense of witnessing that’s important to note here. It is generally agreed that the same person wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Among Biblical scholars these books are often referred to as one work, Luke-Acts, because they constituted a narrative whole. So, when we contemplate what Jesus means by being a “witness of these things” it’s helpful to look at how Luke uses that term throughout the Book of Acts, too.

As we look at the Book of Acts, it becomes clear that Luke is equating ‘witnessing’ with the work of the Apostles. It includes observation, it includes testifying, and it includes martyrdom. But it also includes healing. It includes teaching. Raising money for charity for the poor. It includes love of neighbor and faithfulness in the community. It includes all those things.

WHAT WE WITNESS

But it’s also important to remember that a lot of how we witness is related to what we witness.

Four Years of College

Certainly, in the four years we spend in college we witness a lot of things. Changes in our world, changes in our nation. Those who have been going through college over the past few years have been witness to a lot of such changes. Terrorism . War. Disease. And at the same time tremendous coming together as a community and a people.

We have also witnessed changes in ourselves. Those of you who are graduating seniors this year are not the people you were when you were freshmen. For seventeen or eighteen years, you were told who you were by your parents and teachers. But once in college you were able to figure that out for yourselves. And even if you did have a professor telling you, chances are you’d have another professor telling you something different, and you’d just have to decide for yourselves anyway. You try new things, new politics, new everything.
In those years you grow in understanding of yourselves and of your world. And we are all witnesses to that experience.

Four Years of Faith

We have grown in understanding of God. We have also witnessed the presence of God. In our communities of faith. In our campus ministry. In the church and in each other. As we go through times of growth and change, we have done it in a community that has accepted us, that has nurtured us, challenged us, and nourished us. During the years we spend in college growing, if we are lucky, we do so in the context of a community of faith. And so we witness what it is to grow in sense of self and world in the context of a community formed and sustained by God’s grace.

The Kingdom

We have envisioned a world transformed by God’s grace. We witness to that reality by living into it. We witness not simply by telling people about it, but by showing them what it looks like. Incorporating all that we have learned and come to know.

CONCLUSION

We have recently come through the Lenten period into the glory of Easter. We are a people transformed by the power of the Resurrection and we approach the spiritual power of Pentecost. We have seen many things. We have seen how the Son of God was baptized and tempted in the Wilderness. We saw how he ministered to the sick and the poor, to the disenfranchised and the suffering. We saw how he entered Jerusalem in pomp and how we later rejected him. We saw how he was crucified. And we watched in awe and wonder as God raised him from the dead and conquered death forever.

We leave this place to go out into this world not simply as people who have heard a good story, but as ones who are witnesses. “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.” We are Witnesses to these things.