delivered 26 April 2009
by Rev. Dr John Evans
Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48
Michael Connelly, a writer of legal thrillers, begins his latest book The Brass Verdict with these words:
Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie. A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. Even the jury knows this.
Lies. Lies. Lies. Is that all there is?
The author of Luke-Acts -– the gospel of Luke, and then the account of the early church, the Acts of the Apostles — has the risen crucified Jesus saying these words to the disciples in that locked upper room on Easter day:
You are witnesses of these things. (24:48)
Then in our Acts reading, Peter – after he and John had healed the man at the Gate Beautiful, addressed the circling crowd. He spoke of Jesus’ death and how God had raised him from the dead. He then said:
To this we are witnesses. (3:15)
Witnesses should, contrary to what Michael Connelly suggests, provide testimony of an event, an incident or an experience. With the aid of a witness we can get at the truth. Truth, and not lies, is the hoped-for outcome.
Within the legal system this is what is sought. Once – and I am talking about a long time ago, way back at the start of the English justice system, in say the year 1,000 – the person who could bring the most number of witnesses would win their case. This was a system that was a little unfair, and open to corruption and manipulation, although it was an advance on trial by ordeal. This approach sought to use the witness of the divine to get at the truth, except the odds were impossibly stacked against the accused. So you might be thrown into a lake with heavy weights attached to you, or asked to walk across burning coals. If you survived you were guilty – the devil obviously was in you – and you were then punished. If you died, then you were innocent – there was obviously no guile in you! A system which, no doubt, was comforting to all concerned.
Witnesses are critical to our modern justice system. Indeed, it is a very detailed and complicated area of the law, the law of evidence. So, for example, a court only wants to hear direct evidence – it does not want second-hand evidence or hearsay evidence. The sort of evidence like: ‘He said to me, that he had heard her say, she had seen Fred do it’ – what ever the ‘it’ is. Such evidence is several stages removed from the actual, critical incident. It is not admitted as evidence as testimony of the particular event.
For this reason, the testimony of the apostles, the witness of the disciples, in the history of the church is so privileged and so often emphasised. They were there. They personally knew Jesus, they had seen with their own eyes this Jesus raised from the dead. They, it would seem, touched him – his wounds. As Peter says, ‘We are witnesses to all of this.’
The apostolic testimony became revered – and it was one way of including or excluding particular documents from the canon of the New Testament. Did apostolic testimony underpin this account or this document? It is why it was important that particular writings in the New Testament had the name of an apostle attached.
However, our text has more significance for us today than just the truth or otherwise of what the apostles saw and could witness to. The clear implication of our readings is: as followers of Jesus, we too are witnesses. We too have a testimony to share. But what does that all mean? To what are we witnesses?
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (1948-49)
On Wednesday night a group of us saw – perhaps the word is witnessed – Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. Superb, challenging – but what were these two homeless guys – Didi and Gogo actually witnesses to? What was their life’s testimony? And here I am assuming one is a witness to something, one bears testimony to something, not just by the words one uses, but also with how one lives one’s life. What were these two – who obviously were representing all of us – witnessing to?
Well, over the course of almost three hours, nothing much happened! As at the start, they still were there at the end, waiting for Godot – for God, for some meaning, purpose, even context for their lives. Waiting . . . at the end as they were in the beginning. Meanwhile, life was lived just for the day – so did an event happen yesterday, did it happen today? They didn’t really know, it didn’t really matter, life was just to be lived for that time. A sore foot because one’s boot didn’t fit, became just as important as profound issues of cruelty and injustice. Pleasure was fleeting. Life could be cruel. Life was just filled with the absurd, or the trivial – even though it might get dressed as being profound and deep. Apathy, lack of memory, lack of purpose, lack of commitment, shallow emotion, indecision and the total lack of any overarching context for life – these became the testimony of Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo). God did not come to such lives; was not in such lives.
Challenging. As a play it was odd, obscure, absurd. Should you laugh or cry – but ultimately quite profound. Is that all there is to life?
‘You are my witnesses,’ says the Christ. But, again, to what are we witnesses?
I or this sermon, or the person you are sitting next to, or your mother, or teacher, or your favourite book, or poem, cannot tell you what you are a witness to in your life, or you your life’s meaning and purpose. They can inform who you are, but in your uniqueness, in your individuality, you alone give testimony to who you are. Second-hand or hearsay testimony will not do.
So your testimony might be hollow, shallow or empty like a Didi or a Gogo from the play. And sadly what they show that passed for life over 50 years ago when the play was first performed, passes for life, or lack of it, today. We can see ourselves and others in Didi and Gogo.
So to what may we be a witness in our life?
Too often we just want to be witnesses to the party line, or the trend or fad of the moment. So it might just be to the historic understanding of the church, and so we use a formula and phrases that supposedly get at the meaning we believe we have.
Too often we just want to explain things or justify things, rather than actually witness to the truth that is within us. Witnessing and explaining are different. We want to prove or explain things about the Christian faith. We want to explain, or not explain, how the resurrection took place – and not be a witness that it actually might – as a story, or scientifically verifiable phenomena – mean something to me.
In the opening scene of Waiting for Godot, Didi, one of our two tramps, begins this seemingly deep and learned discourse about the two thieves at the crucifixion of Christ. It is scholarly, learned — and it also happens to be true that the four gospel accounts are different at this point. Meanwhile Gogo, with whom he his supposedly having this conversation, has a sore foot and is trying to get his boot off, and despite pleas for assistance, our learned friend does not respond.
Is this the sort of witness we are called to be? Erudite, learned, but unrelated to what actually might be in your gut, in the depth of your being – and certainly not what is needed or required at the time by the person you may be speaking with or relating with. Being a witness requires you to have a little sensitivity about the context in which your testimony is going to be seen, heard and received.
Dr Thomas Long, author and professor of preaching at Emory University in Atlanta
Tom Long, a noted US theologian, tells the story of being a guest preacher in a church. He’d just finished his sermon when an elderly woman, and to quote him “with a face like a hatchet dipped in vinegar” approached him and asked if he taught preaching in a seminary. Long replied that he did, to which this woman said, “Well, I have something that I want you to tell your students. Tell them to take me seriously.”
When Christ said to his disciples, “You are my witnesses,” the context (Easter and the resurrection) was critical. The crowds then would have heard of, probably seen ‘this Jesus’.
But what can we be witness to, that takes our hearers seriously? Not the sight of the wounds. Rather, I would hope a life of meaning and purpose, shaped by the possibility of new life, the power of love and service, and the strength of hope in a God-given future. This needs to be our sort of story, not some second-hand story; and certainly not a story of aimlessness like our two tramps who have lives in which, well, nothing happens.
Like it or not, we are witness to something. For those who witness to transformed lives, to hope and the power of love, this witnessing may not be easy. It is no accident that in the Greek, the verb ‘to witness’ is martyrein/martyreo. The word means simply ‘to see,’ and it is the root for the English word martyr. People who see, give their testimony could become martyrs. They are people who are prepared to die for the values of what they believe and understand about their lives.
Witnessing can have lines in the sand, which indicates your life is treasured and important. There is something very important to bear witness to.
“You are my witnesses.”
