"Witnesses" - April 22, 2012

Text: Luke 24:36b-48

In Church School last Sunday, the topic of evangelism came up.  Many of us don’t talk about evangelism a whole lot.  I think we have seen it done so poorly and heavy-handedly and it can carry such negative connotations that we sort of have an aversion the word itself.  The word "evangelism can scare us, and the word "evangelist" is really scary.

I remember many years ago, as a Southern Baptist campus minister, taking students on a mission trip.  We went to an inner city church and worked doing a variety of things: painting, cleaning, building repairs, helping with their food program, leading activities with children.  This church serves a free meal for the community several nights a week.  There were quite a few college students working there over spring break, from at least four different schools, including students I had brought from Illinois Wesleyan along with a group from the University of Illinois.  This church used a lot of volunteers and were set up for groups to come and work.  They ran a homeless shelter at night and did a lot of good things in a neighborhood where there was a lot of poverty.

This was also an evangelistic church, and they had a particular view of evangelism.  Somebody from the church wanted all of the students who were there that week – there might have been 35 students total – to have a chance to “go witnessing.”  The way this worked was, they would take a group to a major thoroughfare downtown, later in the evening, when all kinds of people were out walking on the street.  The students were supposed to hand people tracts, ask them if they knew Jesus, ask people if they could pray for them.  Usually this involved three or four students approaching a single individual out on the street.  The leaders of this effort seemed to take it as a mark of spiritual toughness and real commitment to go and do this.

Well, this put me in a bit of a quandary – I had brought students to help this church.  We were supposed to be servants and do what the church needed doing.  But when we signed on to come and work here, nobody had said anything about this kind of evangelistic activity.  I wasn’t against evangelism; I just wasn’t comfortable with this kind of evangelizing effort.  And the people there just seemed to assume that that any good Christian would be on board with this.

When it came to evangelism, I was more of the “build a relationship” school than the “let’s accost someone we don’t know on the street for Jesus” school.  I questioned whether this was really the best way to influence people.  In my mind, this approach was likely to do more harm than good – I thought it would turn off more people than it might help.  Plus, it felt unseemly.  It was just plain embarrassing.

Not everybody went out on this activity at once.  A group of people went out on maybe three different nights and nobody paid much attention to who had already gone, so it was possible to avoid participating without calling attention to the fact that we were not participating.  That that is exactly what I did.  Some of my students participated, but I told them they didn’t have to.  In one case, they wound up having a good conversation with someone they met.  Some did not have a very good experience.  But this did serve to perpetuate a certain feeling many of us have about sharing our faith: that it involves preaching at strangers or using high-pressure tactics to try and “get people saved.”

The church I grew up in wasn’t quite like this, but I was around people with that kind of evangelistic fervor.  And it all served to make me feel uneasy about this concept of “witnessing.”

All of this is by way of saying that when we come to our scripture for today, and Jesus says, “You are witnesses,” it brings up certain images in my mind, and they are not all positive.  But Jesus says it nevertheless: “You are witnesses.”

Our text is another appearance of Jesus to his disciples after the resurrection.  It comes immediately after the story of the road to Emmaus.  You may remember what happened – two followers of Jesus were walking along the road when a man joined them.  He didn’t seem to know the events of the past week in Jerusalem, so they told this man about Jesus and about his crucifixion.  They stopped at an inn and shared a meal with this stranger, and when he broke the bread, their eyes were opened and they realized that it was Jesus himself who was with them.

These two who had met Jesus on the road were right in the middle of telling this story to others when, in our passage for today, Jesus appears and stands among them.  Despite the report of these two who had already seen Jesus, the disciples were “startled and terrified.”  They thought they were seeing a ghost.  Jesus tries to alleviate their fears and show that he is real, he is not a ghost.  He asks them why they are troubled.  He shows them his hands and his feet, with the nail prints.  At this point, they have moved from “startled and terrified” to “In their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”  How’s that for a mixture of emotions?  Joy, disbelief, wondering.  Then Jesus asked if they had anything to eat, and he eats a piece of broiled fish – to show that he is not a ghost.  Then he opened the scriptures, teaching them about the meaning of his death and his resurrection, and says, “You are witnesses of these things.”

Well, as I said, the term “witnessing” has a particular connotation for me, and it’s not entirely positive.  But the temptation is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Isn’t there a Biblical imperative to witness to our faith, to share the hope that we have?  It’s found in a lot of places, including right here in the words of the Risen Jesus to his disciples.  “You are witnesses of these things.”

How do we go about being witnesses?  How do we authentically, with integrity, bear witness to what Christ has done in our lives?  We might look at Jesus’ actions in this story – look at the way Jesus “witnesses” to his disciples here, if we can use that term, and see how Jesus goes about it.

First, he asks them about what is troubling them.  The first thing he does is not to tell them how it is, but to listen for where they are.  He starts not by talking, but by listening.

We are not always so good at listening.  Don was eating lunch at the cafeteria at work.  He was a lot quieter than usual and seemed kind of down.  Ted sat down by him and asked if everything was OK.  Don said that things were not going well with his son, and from the way he said it, it was clear there was a serious issue.  Don was just about to get to the heart of the matter when Ted said, “Yeah, I know what you mean!  You won’t believe what happened with my son…” and he launched in to this long, rambling story.  When he finally took a breath to take a bite of his lunch, Don got up and left.  Ted just turned to another person at the table and continued with his story.

Sometimes, it’s not that we are disinterested, it’s just that we don’t go deep enough.  When we meet a new person at church, we may ask them questions to get to know them.  Where are you from?  Where do you work?  Are you a student?  What’s your department, what’s your major?  Where do you live?  These are good questions; these are a place to start.  But we have to go deeper.  Jesus asks, “Why are you troubled?”  The bigger, deeper questions have to do with hopes and dreams and hurts and struggles and needs and aspirations.  We need to really listen to get at these deeper questions.

And then, Jesus shows them his hands.  They see the marks of the nails.  But I wonder, as they looked at his hands, did they remember the hands that had broken the bread for them, the hands that blessed and multiplied the food for the thousands, the hands that mixed mud and touched a blind man’s eyes, the hands that reached out and brought a young girl back to life, the hands that reached out to a woman who dared to believe that if she but touched the hem of his garment she would be made well? 

We all bear witness through the work of our hands, through the things we do that make a difference.  Through actions that communicate love and care and acceptance and grace.

So often, it can be little things.  Opening a door for somebody.  Preparing a meal.  Sending a card.  Shoveling the neighbor’s sidewalk.  Susan and I have visited people who have received a shawl or a blanket that our prayer shawl group has made, and they are so appreciative.  To receive something knitted with love and shared prayerfully can be very powerful.  I think of the woman in Tennessee who was so touched that people from Iowa had come to build her a wheelchair ramp.  Through the work that we do, through the activities we take part in, we witness through the work of our hands.

And then Jesus showed them his feet.  I wonder, as they saw his feet - did they remember how often they saw those feet dirty and dusty from traveling the byways of the kingdom?  Did they remember the way Jesus flexed those sore feet as he sat by a well talking with a woman in Samaria?  Did they recall the way Jesus danced with his mother at a wedding in Cana, or the woman who had anointed his feet with costly perfume?  Did they think about the way Jesus knelt down and washed their feet just a few nights before, as he showed them what discipleship looks like.  I wonder if they saw more than just the nail prints.

Our feet take us where we are going.  For many people in that day, your feet were the only means of transportation available.  We witness with our feet when we go out of our way for others.  So often, we give witness to our love, and God’s love, simply by being there.  Our presence is a powerful witness to someone who is hurting, to someone who is in the hospital, to someone who is in jail, to someone who feels like a failure or who feels lonely or who feels on the margins.  Just showing up – just putting one foot in front of the other and going there, wherever “there” is, can communicate grace and love and acceptance in a powerful way.

Finally, Jesus eats a piece of fish.  It is even reported to be broiled fish – it’s not fried, it’s not baked, it’s broiled.  By giving those specific details, Luke says that this is real, everyday stuff.  Jesus eats the fish - it doesn’t say whether he used tartar sauce on his broiled fish, but I doubt it - and in eating shows them that he is not a ghost, not an apparition.  This is really him and he is really there.

But I think more is happening than just showing he is not a ghost.  Food plays such an important role in the gospels.  Meals are central to so many stories, and one of our important acts of worship, the Lord’s Supper, is a meal in which we remember Jesus.

By eating, Jesus not only shows that he is not a ghost, Jesus reminds the disciples of all the times he shared food with them as they journeyed the last few years.  He reminds them of the way he was willing to eat and drink with the outcasts of the world when he could have accepted invitations from the rich and the famous.  He reminds them of that last meal they had shared together, and of the promise he had made to eat and drink with them in the new kingdom  -  the promise that was now being fulfilled before their very eyes.

Jesus told his disciples that they were witnesses, but he had already given them a model of how to go about being witnesses. 

It is our willingness to really get to know the people we encounter, to go beyond the superficial “how are you” greetings, that makes us witnesses today.  We have to start somewhere – those basic questions may be starting points – but we need to go deeper to really know another where they live.

It is our willingness to show our hands to be hands of service and compassion that allow us to bear witness.  Hands that reach out to give, not to take.  Hands open to join hands with another, not hands clenched in a fist.  It is hands that reach out to share what we have been given by God that make us witnesses today.

It is our willingness to have feet of servants, who go into neighborhoods to rebuild both dilapidated homes and despairing lives.  Feet that walk with immigrants who are asking for a job, a home, a future.  Feet that play ball with the kids in the neighborhood.  Feet that walk the lonely corridors of hospitals with those who are hurting.  Feet that travel the path to be present with those who are in need of hope, in need of a friend.  Feet that take us to where people are, in all of their pain and joy and humanity, allow us to be witnesses today.

It is our willingness not only to give some canned goods to the local food pantry, but our willingness to sit down and share a meal with another that makes us a witness.  It’s our willingness to open our homes and our tables to students who may be stressed out and who may be struggling, and to learn about their world that makes us a witness.  It is our willingness to open our hearts to those people next door who are so different that makes us a witness.

It is all of those things that we do before we ever open our mouths that make us witnesses of the Risen Christ.  And these are things we can do, every one of us.  Through sensitivity to others, through acts of love and compassion, through meals shared and friendship extended, we are witnesses to the love of God and the power of resurrection.

Our Psalm this morning says, “You have put gladness in my heart… I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety.”  We are called to be witnesses.  As we bear witness, God gives us strength, God puts a gladness in our hearts, and God protects us—you might say that we have a “witness protection program.”

Thom Shuman is a pastor in Ohio who has a wonderful way with words.  I close this morning with a poem/prayer of Thom’s:

if we showed you our hands, would you find them nicked
from building a house for the homeless;
or a callous on our thumb
from using the TV remote too much?

if we showed you our feet, would you find them toughened
by walking the corridors of a hospice with the terminally ill;
or wrinkled by too many hours in the hot tub?

if we showed you our hearts, would you find them broken
over the struggles of the lost, the little, the last, the least;
or would they be clogged with the plaque
of our consumerized lives?

if we truly want to be your witnesses,
God of the empty grave, would you show us how?  Amen.

I am indebted to Thom Shuman both for the poem and for a helpful approach to this sermon.

“The Now of Easter” - Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012

Text: John 20:1-18

Ask a person on the street, “What is the biggest holiday of the year?” and it’s not even close: it’s Christmas.  Everything else pales in comparison, with Thanksgiving and the 4th of July trailing by a wide margin, the way that Wendy’s and Burger King trail McDonald’s in sales.  Easter might be in the same ballpark as Hardee’s or maybe White Castle or Jack in the Box.

This is the first Easter that our daughter Zoe has not been with us.  Of course, it was bound to happen sometime – she is growing up, she is away at college and a young woman.  But she would have been here this morning except for the fact that the National Collegiate Speech Tournament is taking place in San Marcos, Texas.  It is a three-day event and they are competing this morning - on Easter Sunday. 

Easter does not have the cachet it once did; I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have held the tournament on Christmas.  A few years ago, I read that according to a survey, Easter was the “most boring holiday,” and I don’t think public opinion has moved very much since I read that article.

Maybe the reason that Easter is seen as boring is that it has been so domesticated and become so familiar that we don’t hear, we don’t notice, we don’t really take in what it is we are celebrating - even in the church. 

A casual look around this morning would tell us this day is at least somewhat out of the ordinary.  Some folks are dressed up a little more than usual.  We took a bath whether we needed one or not.   We had a nice breakfast.  The crowd is larger than your average week.  There is something in the air, and it’s something more than the fragrance of the lilies. 

What we celebrate today is anything but ordinary: Jesus was crucified and buried and in the tomb for three days, and then raised from the dead.  This is about as far from ordinary as you can get.  But we have trouble comprehending what that really means.

St. Augustine said that our lives are like when a man is sick and near death, and friends look at him on his deathbed and say, “He is dying, he won’t get over this.”  So it could be said of us on the first day of our lives, as we lie in the crib, “She is dying, she won’t get over this.”  We are all dying.

Now, I admit that this is not polite conversation on Easter morning.  We want to ignore death, and if we talk about it at all, we talk as though we can defy it.

Cosmetic surgery and Botox and Rogaine and permanent makeup are popular because they make us appear younger, as if we are winning the battle.  There used to be those commercials - I don’t remember who they were for, Maybelline or Cover Girl or somebody - where they would have a mother and daughter together and the mother would look as young as the daughter because they used a certain beauty product.  The two appeared to be fairly similar in age.  But this only goes so far.  They didn’t do ads with a grandmother and granddaughter together.  You can only do so much with hair and beauty products, and even then, we are just tinkering with appearances.  This doesn’t really make a person younger.  We can try and hide aging, but it doesn’t stave off death.  When you are ill and go to the hospital, they don’t treat you with Grecian formula.

Commercials call these products “age-defying,” and then we have that phrase, “death-defying.”  You can go to the circus and see the acrobats on the high-wire act, performing death-defying feats.  There is this image of taking on death and winning that we find appealing.  It may be appealing, but it isn’t real.  Evel Knievel used to perform death-defying feats on his motorcycle, but he couldn’t defy death forever.  We all know how the story is going to end.

The disciples knew.  Jesus had been arrested and taken away, just after their Passover meal on Thursday night.  He had been beaten, he had been mocked, he had been tried in a rushed trial.  He had been sentenced to death as an enemy of the state, a traitor, an insurrectionist.  He had been crucified on a cross, dying an agonizing death. 

Jesus’ followers had no answer to his anguished question on the cross of why God would forsake him.  They clearly expected a very different outcome.  If he were the promised Messiah, his followers expected him to seize military and political power.  It appears that Judas in particular wanted him to lead a revolt against Rome.  Jesus’ arrest and trial for sedition and his execution as a common criminal came as a crushing blow to his disciples.  What made it even worse was that Jesus’ decisions and behavior seemed to help lead to the sad, tragic ending.  He didn’t have to come to Jerusalem, he didn’t have to say and do the things he did, he could have been more deferential, more subtle, more diplomatic, but he seemed to intentionally put his safety at risk.  And so as Jesus was crucified, his disciples for the most part fled, left him to die alone, and went into hiding.

The women alone among his followers stayed with him until the end and watched as he died and as he was buried.  And after the Sabbath, it was the women who came back to the burial place.

The Gospel accounts are wonderfully inconsistent about what happened next, about who was there, about who arrived first, about who said what to whom.  They portray the chaos and the raw emotion of those events.  But all of the gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was there at the tomb.   The accounts all agree that the body was not there, that the tomb was empty.  And they all agree in reporting that nobody - nobody - was expecting a resurrection.  Everyone’s immediate conclusion was that someone, for whatever reason, had moved the body elsewhere.

It doesn’t at all sound like a concocted story.  When the disciples are told what happened, they respond as we would.  They don’t believe it; they are skeptical, they are doubting, and they are very frightened.

Dan Brown’s novel, The DaVinci Code, was a New York Times bestseller made into a blockbuster movie.  At the center of the story is the contention that for 2000 years, the Church has prevented the world from finding out that Jesus had been married to, and had children with, Mary Magdalene.  The book’s premise is based on the notion that if Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had children, it would destroy the faith because it would prove that Jesus was human.

But isn’t that what we believe?  Isn’t that the claim of Christian faith?  That Jesus really was born, really lived on this earth, really and truly experienced what it is to be human: pain and joy and hurt and loss and laughter and temptation and uncertainty and anticipation and happiness and fear and foreboding.  And death.  He really did experience human life and he really did die.  If Jesus did not really live and really die as one of us, then Easter Sunday would have no real meaning.  Without a real death, there is no resurrection.  And without really living as a human being, there is no connection to us.

Like many of us, Mary went to the grave of her loved one to remember and to grieve.  The tomb was a small cave in the rock.  A great stone was rolled in front of the tomb to seal it. 

As John tells the story, Mary was not at all prepared for what she saw.  The stone had been moved.  It was almost more than she could bear.  Jesus had been beaten, humiliated, and finally crucified.  Mary could only watch helplessly.  And now, one last humiliation.  She was filled with fear and terror and heart-wrenching pain.

On hearing Mary’s report, Peter and John hurried to the tomb to see for themselves.  They took in the scene and then went back home.  The implication was that they really didn’t know what to make of it.  By now Mary was back at the tomb, but she stayed.  She wept.  Finally, she looked into the tomb, and saw two angels.  They asked why she was weeping, and Mary told them.  Someone had taken away her Lord, she said.  Someone had stolen the body.

Then she turned around and Jesus was there.  Only she did not recognize that it was him.  If you are not looking for someone, you won’t see them.  Jesus asked why she was crying.  Mary thought this must be the gardener.  “If you have taken the body, tell me where you have laid him.”  But then Jesus spoke her name.  “Mary.”  And she knew.  She knew.  He was alive!  It was Jesus! 

We have heard this so many times that it is hard to catch the joy of that moment.  Here we are, 2000 years later, still telling this wonderful story.  Except that is not such a surprise any more.  We know what is going to happen.  Year after year, Jesus is raised and comes out of that grave.  The story is so familiar that it loses some of its shock value.  We can’t feel the raw emotion, the incredible surge of amazement and joy and euphoria that Mary felt that morning.

But if we understood Easter to be about shocking, amazing, incomprehensible life after death, about unbelievable joy that comes after every glimmer of hope is gone, about incredible gladness coming even when that is not even possible, then Easter would rate considerably higher than the “most boring holiday.”

Tom Long tells the story of Clint Tidwell, the pastor of a small-town church.  One of his blessings – and curses – is that the 80-year old owner and still active editor of the local newspaper is a member of his congregation.  The blessing part is that this veteran journalist considers Tidwell to be one of the finest preachers around, and wishing the whole town to benefit from his wisdom, he frequently publishes a summary of the Sunday sermon in the Monday newspaper.  The curse part is that while he is well-meaning, this newspaperman is on the eccentric side, and Tidwell is sometimes astonished to read the synopses of his sermons.  There is often an ocean of difference between what he said and what the editor heard.  This man owns the paper and nobody dares edit his columns, so what shows up in the Monday paper is often a source of embarrassment to Tidwell.

The pastor’s deepest amazement, however, came not when the editor misunderstood the Sunday sermon; it came when he understood it all too well.  Early on the Monday morning after Easter, Tidwell went out in his bathrobe and slippers to get the paper at the end of the driveway.  As he approached it, he could see the headline in “second coming” sized type.  What had happened?  Had war broken out?  A cure for cancer discovered?  As he got close enough to read the headline, he was startled to read the words, ‘Tidwell Claims Jesus Christ Rose From The Dead.’

Long wrote, “A red flush crept up Tidwell’s neck.  Yes, of course, he had claimed in yesterday’s sermon that Christ rose from the dead, but golly, was that headline news? … I mean, you’re supposed to say that on Easter, aren’t you, that Jesus rose from the dead, but that’s not like saying some person who died last week had risen from the grave, is it?” (Tom Long, Whispering the Lyrics: Sermons for Lent and Easter, CSS Publishing, 1995.)

That is exactly the question we need to consider.  Is Easter just about what happened long ago, or does it have something to do with us today?  For us, the big question of Easter is not so much, “What exactly happened 2000 years ago?”  Maybe the bigger question is, “What does Easter mean for us today?” 

The Good News of the gospel is that by raising Jesus from the dead, God showed that the power of God is greater than the power of death.  Paul wrote that nothing in all creation, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Death does not have the final word.  And that is Good News.  It is fantastic news.  It is the best news we could possible hear, because we are surrounded by death.

Death doesn’t just come at the end of our lives; it comes little by little.  We all know about disappointment.  We all know about heartache.  We all know about things going badly wrong.  We look at our world and see fighting and violence and greed and poverty.  We see disease and racism and fear and abuse.  Within our circle of friends and family there will likely be broken relationships, unemployment, problems with drugs and alcohol, serious illness, financial crises, legal troubles, and just plain sad stories.

There are plenty of cases we would think to be hopeless, beyond fixing, beyond repair.  We know all about Good Friday; we see it and we live it all the time.  I think we are really here today because we have all had it with Good Fridays.  We know hurt and pain and suffering all too well, and we are ready – we are longing – we are desperate - for Good News.

The Good News of Easter, the message of resurrection, is that even when we don’t expect it, even when we don’t believe it to be possible, God brings new life.  Beyond all of the deaths we experience, there is the new life that God gives.  Beyond all the deaths of this life and even beyond our physical dying, there is resurrection.
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Centerbury, wrote: “Ultimately, joy is about discovering that the world is more than you ever suspected, and so you yourself are more than you suspected.  The joy of the resurrection … breaks open the shell of the world we thought we knew and projects us into the new and mysterious realm in which victorious mercy and inexhaustible love make the rules.

Victorious mercy and inexhaustible love make the rules.  Easter tells us that despite the losses and failures and disappointments of the past, the time is now, that God gives new life, abundant life, resurrection life.  Beyond our losses and brokenness, God is still with us and wants to give new life.  Easter is not just a remembrance of what happened then.  Easter is about right now.  Hallelujah! Amen.