RCL Easter 3B
19 April 2015
Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
Vancouver BC
You
are witnesses of these things. Luke
24.48
In order for any credible system of
justice to function there are certain essentials. Among these essentials is the necessity of
reliable witnesses.
Reliable witnesses
have experience that is germane to the issue being decided by the courts.
Reliable witnesses
are able to give evidence clearly and consistently.
It is always
helpful for there to be more than one witness in order to examine the issue
from more than one perspective.
In today’s gospel Jesus appears
after his resurrection to a group of his disciples. After reminding them that all he has done is
in accordance with the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, Jesus then utters a very
simple statement that lies at the centre of our vocation as evangelists: ‘You are witnesses of these things.’ (Luke 24.48 NRSV) The Revised English Bible translates this
verse, ‘You are to be witnesses to it all.’
Whether Jesus is
speaking of the present or the future, what is important to note is that being
a disciple of Jesus means bearing witness to ‘these things’.
And what are
‘these things’?
The first generation of believers
shared a common experience of the new life of God made known to them in the
resurrection of Jesus. The task that
Jesus now assigned them was to give voice to this experience clearly,
consistently and in as many voices as possible.
They were to look
at the life, ministry and teaching of Jesus through the lens of the resurrection. All that he had said and done in the years
leading up to that last week in Jerusalem took on new significance.
To aid in the
clarity and consistency of their witness, the documents we know as the New
Testament came into existence. But the
early Christians were also willing to preserve the testimony of a multitude of
witnesses: four gospels rather than one,
letters from a variety of apostolic writers including Paul and the followers of
Peter and John.
But these
documents and the traditions of faith and practice which emerged over the
centuries were not meant to replace the primary vehicle to carry the good news
of God in Jesus of Nazareth: the living
human voices of Jesus’ disciples over the centuries and throughout the world.
Every day of our lives you and I
give evidence before a jury of our peers, some of whom are mildly sympathetic,
some skeptical, some indifferent, some hostile.
We can, and
should, share the stories of faith found in the Scriptures as Jesus did with
his first followers.
We can, and
should, share the stories of our successes and our failures as Christians over
the centuries have attempted to follow the way, the truth and the life made
known to us in Jesus.
But more convincing than all this
is the witness we give in the day-to-day conduct of our lives.
Even as these
words leave my mouth, I realize how simple and obvious the meaning they convey
is.
But this simple
and obvious truth cannot be repeated too often.
G. K. Chesterton, the English writer and theologian, once wrote that “The Christian ideal has not been tried
and found wanting. It has been found
difficult; and left untried.”
Jesus’ words in today’s gospel remind us
that we live daily in the ‘court of public opinion’. Our failures to live up to the Christian
ideal are more often than not the subject of front-page stories; our successes
often relegated to less-read sections of whatever form of media we read.
So, today I invite you to join me in pondering
three questions:
How have you experienced the new life of
Jesus in your own life?
What do you need to bear witness to this
experience with clarity and consistency?
Who is the ‘jury’ to whom you have been
summoned to witness?
I hope that you will share your answers
with me, but more importantly, that you share them with each other so that we
can become that ‘great cloud of witnesses’ our world needs.
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