36b Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
44 He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. 46 He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.
The part we keyed upon in the sermon was the very last sentence: "You are witnesses of these things." Jesus did miracles for us, first through his preaching, teaching, healing, and other ministries then by doing what no other person in all of the universe could: breaking the power of death and atoning for human sin by sacrificing himself into death and rising again for our sake. He requested no payment for this. He did not encourage us to achieve it ourselves by copying him either, for none of us could. He put no conditions upon it. He gave himself for us, imparting his grace and redemption freely. This one thing he said: you are witnesses. Witnessing is the key distinction between the old, temporary, hopeless life we led without Jesus and the new bountiful, joyous, and free life we live in him.
How tragic, then, that we've lost the sense of witness in our lives.
Witnessing has always involved two components: seeing and then telling the story of what you saw. We're more conversant with the first component--seeing--than any other generation in history. We literally have the world at our fingertips. Remote controls and computer mouses (mice?) (mousen?) transport our eyes anywhere we desire in an instant. Cable news channels, Netflix, YouTube, and their allied brethren bring us all the visual stimulation we could wish at any time, day or night. When something unusual, tragic, or striking happens we all see it. We see it faster, more readily, and over a wider footprint than anyone ever has.
All of this seeing, though, has alienated us from the second critical component of witness: sharing. Granted, the capacity to share has expanded right along with the capacity to transmit video. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and like sites have taken over the world. Like seeing, sharing is easier and more widespread than it's ever been.
You know what those sites have in common, though?
If you said speed, you're half right. Once upon a time they sent letters across country via Pony Express. You could expect your missive to make it in a month or two if all went well. Then the U.S. Mail took over and for 150-odd years you could send a message anywhere in the country in 1-3 days. When everybody got personal computers e-mail became king. Now you could deliver messages instantly! But now e-mail is old hat. It's becoming a dinosaur and fewer people are using it. Why? It's too slow. The messages still get delivered instantly but who knows when a person will enter their inbox and read them? With Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging your recipient can just keep an extra window open on their computer (or their phone by their side) all day and see the message the second you send it.
With this emphasis on speed has come a corresponding emphasis on brevity. Pony Express letters could take all the stationary sheets you wanted. Mail could too, within reason. E-mails were sometimes long, sometimes short. But Facebook wall posts come 2-3 sentences at a time, tops. Twitter only works with 140 characters or less. With Pinterest it's just a picture and a link. What need to speak when you can just type in the web address you're talking about and with one click everybody can see just what you saw?
That's what passes for witness nowadays...not conversation, certainly not in-depth discussion, but everybody pointing their browsers towards the same place so they can see the same thing. Less talking, more seeing...that's our culture now.
In this new world we've lost the sense of telling the story ourselves. Witness has become purely visual, a mostly-passive consumption of something created for us by others. News anchors tell us what the news is. Professional chefs tell us what recipes we should try. Movie and TV folks tell our stories or sports heroes act them out on our big screens. YouTube wackos crash skateboards for our amusement. We sit, we watch, we consume, and we invite everybody else to do the same.
Little surprise, then, that when Jesus says, "You are witnesses of these things" our first instinct is to reply, "OK. Saw it. Heard it. Job done. Who's playing in the game today?"
No it's not! The job's not done! That's not what he meant by "witness". In Jesus' day, with no newscasts or TV's or papers, if people didn't talk about an event it never happened! Even if 1000 people all saw it--consumed it as we do--that was just a drop in the bucket compared to the overall population. There were no video or audio tapes to record events...no way of disseminating or passing on stories except to tell and re-tell them. If those 1000 people saw an event but never repeated a word about it then that event passed into nothingness when the last of them died, as if it never existed.
Consider this: had that handful of people in the room with Jesus during this gospel story not been active witnesses--had they not told the story to their own friends who then re-told it and wrote it down and passed it on from generation to generation--we would not know God at all. There would be no Jesus, no church, no scripture, no idea whatsoever that these things even exist. You know God because someone showed you and/or told you about God. They knew God because someone showed and/or told them. God works through all that sharing. That's how he makes himself known.
And yet here we are, conditioned by culture to think of witness as a taking in instead of a giving out, as an instant event instead of a lifetime journey, as passive receiving instead of active communication. If it can't be done with two clicks, why bother?
Think how much of our church life itself is framed in passive terms. You come...that's active at least. But to what do you come? We're trained to think of church as a place...a building that never moves rather than an activity we engage in or a vibrant community we help create. After we come we sit. We're read to. We hear somebody speak at us. We spend an hour mostly taking things in. Then we go home and...that's it! We're done for the week.
ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!
The traditional American church experience has been framed in such a way that makes us worse witnesses, not better...more passive rather than less. When the rest of our culture keels over, defining witness as mindless consumption, our faith becomes a sitting duck. In fact our faith was defining it that way well before YouTube and Fox News arrived on the scene. We're the original passive consumers!
If we're going to follow Jesus' words we need to change this. The first step is being aware of the issue, as I hope we become through this gospel and sermon. The next step goes beyond the bounds of this single scripture or a single talk.
This is where I reminded our good folks about the upcoming Evangelism Workshops on either Thursday May 3rd and 10th at 7:00 p.m. at St. John's or Sunday June 3rd and 24th after worship at the Valley. Those workshops will give us traction towards becoming more intentional and active witnesses. That's why we're asking everybody to set aside some time to engage in them.
Mark those dates. We'll see you there!
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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