Psalm 4
1st Reading : Acts 3.12-19
2nd Reading: 1 John 3.1-7
Gospel : Luke 24.36b-48
Text: You are witnesses of these things (Luke 24.48)
Peter and the others could preach with such power and conviction because they were witnesses. They had seen Jesus crucified, they had seen him risen, and they knew he was alive. For us the dramatic events of that week-end are very distant, but I want to explore this morning how we too might be called to bear witness to the power of the resurrection.
The disciples in that Upper Room must have been utterly devastated and bewildered. Gathered around the table where they had so recently celebrated the Passover with Jesus, his sudden betrayal, the mockery of a rushed trial and his almost instant execution must have knocked them sideways. This morning the women had come back talking of angels and an empty tomb, and poor old Simon was saying he had seen Jesus, but he was still too shocked to say anything very much. Now here were Cleopas and Mary rushing back from Emmaus to tell them they had met him on the road and even had supper with him. And then, in all the confusion of hopes and fears and emotions, there is Jesus himself. Peace be with you. Was he really there, or were they seeing a ghost? Knowing what was going on in their minds, Jesus asks for something to eat. Ghosts don’t eat real food, so they watch spellbound as he takes the broiled fish and eats it in their presence.
As they calm down he begins to explain what it all means. He opens their minds to understand the Scriptures, to see how his suffering and death and now his resurrection fulfil all that was written about the promised Messiah in the books of the law and the prophets and in the psalms. Tantalisingly, Luke doesn’t tell us what he actually said. He cannot simply have cited a few key texts, or the disciples would have remembered, and used them again and again in their own writing and preaching. It seems more likely that he showed them how his own suffering and death was consistent with the whole sweep of Scripture.
It’s not that God wishes anyone to suffer. Our psalm was a reminder of how he delights to shower upon us the blessings of plenty, and safety and peace. But suffering is also an integral part of our human experience, and perhaps Jesus had to remind the disciples that far from being a break in the pattern, a challenge to the narrative, his death on the Cross was the final and definitive expression of his willingness, as the representative embodiment of the people of Israel, to experience in himself the full range of Israel’s suffering.
Sometimes the people of Israel had to learn how to bear with fortitude the suffering inflicted on them by others. That had been part of the pattern since the Exodus, and now it had been Jesus’ experience too. Sometimes their suffering had been the result of their own pride or folly, and they had to learn how to repent. Jesus had himself done nothing to repent of, but over and over again the disciples had seen what it could cost him to heal and restore not only those whose sickness was physical, but even those whose evil or rapacious behaviour had resulted in their self-imposed alienation from God, as well as their exclusion from society. Ultimately the prophets had come to understand that suffering borne for the sake of another tells us more than anything else about the love of God. They had seen Jesus put to death as an innocent victim, carrying on his shoulders the sins of the whole world. Greater love hath no man than this …
The disciples, who had witnessed these things, who were now at last on the way to understanding how the death and resurrection of Jesus was indeed the fulfilment of all that was written about the Messiah in the Scriptures – the disciples were now commanded to proclaim the good news of God’s healing and forgiving love to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. In our reading from Acts we see them beginning to do just that.
But what might it mean for us to be ‘witnesses of these things’? First of all, a witness has to have seen or heard or experienced something at first hand. It has to be our own experience. We can say we believe in the resurrection, but we can’t bear witness to Jesus’ resurrection in that direct sense. But I do believe that if we spend a little time thinking about what God has done in our lives, we should all have a story to tell. It might be about a chance meeting that changed the course of our lives. It might be about something someone said that lodged in our minds. It might be about some act of undeserved kindness that touched our hearts. It might be about some time of great fear or distress, some time of intense pain or grief or suffering, when we cried out to God, and felt that our prayers were answered.
You are witnesses. Perhaps what we are asked to do as witnesses is to think about these things, to be prepared to see God at work in them, and to give thanks in our hearts. As we are given the perception to see what the risen Christ has done in our lives, we may find, as Simon Peter clearly did, that we do have the confidence to share something of our experience with others when the occasion arises.