We Are Witnesses

If you’re a woman, you’ve probably had someone come up to you at some point and say, "Oh, I just love your blouse! Where did you get it?" And you respond with something like, "TJ Maxx. That is the best place to shop." In this conversation you are a witness for TJ Maxx. I’m not sure what the analogous situation would be for guys. I’m reminded of those obnoxious, but clever, ads that are running now on TV. Some guys in scruffy T-shirts and jeans are sitting on the couch eating junk food and watching sports. One comes back from the bathroom and says; "I don’t know how you keep your toilet bowl so clean!" And the host guy waxes rhapsodic about some sort of flushable toilet bowl wipes. He witnesses to the wonders of that product. Or, man or woman, it could be your yard or garden that is noteworthy. Your neighbor notices your extraordinary tomato plants and asks you how you did it. Or a friend comes in the house and his or her attention is immediately caught by beautiful folk music on the stereo and asks you who is performing. And you become an eager witness—to the beneficial powers of horse manure on tomato plants or to the beautiful power of Gordon Bok’s music.

Has anyone ever come up to you and said, "I can’t help but notice, but you seem to have a truly remarkable sense of peace and purpose in your life. Which God do you worship?" No? I don’t think it’s ever happened to me, either. But that is exactly what happens in the story we heard from Acts this morning. Peter and John healed a man who was lame from birth, and they had been preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ with remarkable effect, and for this they were put in prison. The conversation in today’s reading follows their imprisonment and is part inquisition and part inquiry. People have noticed the extraordinary activities of Peter and John and want to know: Which god has the power to do this? It is almost as though the people are asking Peter and John which brand of God they worship, because based upon what the people have seen, Peter and John's god seems to be a particularly good one. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter does not hesitate to witness: "The name of Jesus Christ. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

Witness. Being a witness. This is the major theme in this morning’s readings. I think for us today the word witness has lost most of its power. We think of a witness as someone who just happens to observe something occur. A witness is someone who just happens to be in the convenience store when a robbery occurs or who just happens to be driving on the interstate when someone goes barreling by in the wrong direction. Most of us, I expect, would hope never to be that sort of witness. Or, in a more positive light, a witness is someone who just happens to be in the ballpark on the day Pedro throws a no-hitter or Nomar hits for the cycle. (We can hope.) A witness to baseball history. Or perhaps a witness to some piece of political history. It’s just chance. Good luck or bad luck, as the case may be. But in any case, a witness today is a passive observer who just happens to be in the vicinity when something significant occurs.

But this image of a witness is only a cheap imitation or the flimsiest shadow of what a witness is in Holy Scripture. In the Bible, a witness is not someone who sees something; a witness is someone who does something, says something. All of these lessons we’ve heard today were originally written in Greek. The Greek word that is translated "witness" is martuV. Martus. Sound familiar? Sound like any English word you know? It is the root of our word martyr, of course. Not that all witnesses are called to be martyrs, but this does remind us that a witness is important for what he or she says or does or makes known; not just for what he or she might happen to have observed. The most significant quality of martyrs is not that they died for their faith; it is that they lived as witnesses for their faith. They lived in a way that proclaimed the faith that was within them. In some times and places in human history being a Christian witness led to death. In the majority of times and places in history being a Christian witness has not been fatal. But the point is to live in a way that proclaims your faith. To live a life that is a witness to the power of Jesus Christ.

The command to live as witnesses were Jesus’ last words to his disciples in Luke’s gospel. And they are Jesus’ command to us, his disciples today. "You are witnesses." The word "disciple" means follower. It’s a good thing those earliest disciples were more than just followers—that they took Jesus’ command to witness seriously. I don’t imagine we’d be here otherwise. We have virtually no account of Jesus’ life and teaching except for the witness of Jesus’ disciples. What if they had behaved as modern day witnesses, folk who just happened to be present when something interesting happened? They might have cherished the memories of those experiences, but that would have been the end of it. Their memories of Jesus would have died with them. The same is true today. If we do not witness to what we have witnessed, those who will come after us have little chance of being Christians, of knowing the reality of Jesus in their lives.

It seems to me that there are two parts to being a witness… to being a witness in the active, Biblical sense. The first part is being involved in something noteworthy or extraordinary. We don’t talk about being a witness unless it’s an unusually important or significant thing that we’ve witnessed. And the second part of being a witness is proclaiming that experience to others; helping others to know or share in this noteworthy or extraordinary experience.

So, if we are to be the Christian witnesses Christ calls and commands us to be, first, our lives as Christians need to stand out as particularly noteworthy to others, and, second, we need to share, to proclaim, the source of our extraordinary lives with others. We cannot be Christian witnesses if nothing in the way we live our lives identifies us as Christians, if nothing about us seems noteworthy or extraordinary to others. It's funny: we expect people to notice if we have on a very nice, new blouse.  We expect people to notice if our tomatoes are extraordinarily large and prolific. Evidently (drawing upon another TV commercial) we live in a world where we are expected to notice just by looking at him whether a man has just talked to his doctor about Viagra.  Yet we do not expect people to notice that we are Christians.  In fact, most of the time we seem to act as though we hope people will not notice that we are Christians. But the first step in being a Christian witness is being noteworthy, noticeable to others.

We live in a very secular world. It really isn’t that hard to be noticeably Christian. It doesn't take much.  Jesus tells the disciples that the hallmarks of the Christian life are repentance and forgiveness. Practicing repentance and forgiveness will make you noteworthy.

For example, a person who believed in the power of repentance would not let pride or posturing keep her from acknowledging her errors and shortcomings or the ways she had hurt others. Rather, she would humbly acknowledge her fault and repent. She would value repentance over self-image.  That’s a practice that will make you stand out in a crowd. Or, turning to forgiveness, a person who believed in the power of forgiveness would never act out of revenge towards others. Rather, he would earnestly forgive those who had wronged him.  Forgiveness rather than vengeance.  These days, that’s an extraordinary way of living.

People whose lives are built upon the power of repentance and forgiveness would always see in other people fellow sinners redeemed by God’s grace--no more, no less. All people are of equal dignity and status, no matter who they are or what they may or may not have done. A Christian will treat all of God’s children with equal love and respect. In actual practice, that’s a very rare trait and certainly a noteworthy one.

And finally, someone who really understands the power of reconciliation and forgiveness will live always with the vision, the conviction, that no situation is without hope; no situation is devoid of God’s potential redemption. If the crucifixion of God’s only Son was the means by which we were given eternal life, surely we must see that no human act is beyond the pale of God’s redeeming. To carry hope even in the very darkest of circumstances will certainly set you apart as an extraordinary human being.

To live with just a glimmer of this sense of repentance and forgiveness will make us stand out in a crowd. It will make us marvelously noteworthy among our fellow human beings. And when they ask us what it is that gives us this unusual presence and power, surely we may joyfully tell them! Witness to the power of Jesus Christ. Tell them! "It is the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." We are witnesses of this.

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