While the disciples were telling how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed him his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
Luke 24-48
I’ve just returned from a week in Honduras, visiting a residential and day school for children living in extreme poverty. My husband Paul and I worked at that school in the first year of our marriage, and I’ve been back many times, though it’s been a long time since my last visit. Like all who travel internationally, I’m experiencing upon my return the dissonance between what I have witnessed in another part of the world that God loves and Jesus came to save and where I live.
This is not a sermon about that dissonance; rather, it is about what it means to be a witness.
“You are witnesses to these things,” the newly-resurrected Jesus told his astonished disciples. And to what were they witnesses? According to the text, “That the one sent from God was to suffer and to rise from the dead on the last day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
That’s a big witness. They were the ones who remembered Jesus’ teachings and what it was like to be in his presence. They were the ones who watched him die, and then, incredibly, experienced him as alive after death in ways both material and mystical.
You and I are not witnesses to those things. But our faith depends upon the witness of the first disciples as it is recorded in our biblical texts.
Many Christians whom I admire insist that the biblical stories are enough, that they must be enough for us, because the bible is the Word of God. Jesus is who he says he is because the witnesses wrote down what they saw and what they saw is true.
I believe that the Bible is a sacred text, that the stories told about Jesus are the foundation of our faith, and that through the biblical texts, God speaks to us. I believe these things because on one more than one occasion God has spoken to me in ways that are for me to put into words, but that nonetheless affirm my sense that Jesus can be trusted. It doesn’t happen all the time, and it’s more a mystical connection than an objective reality, but I’ve come to trust it.
Yet I confess that, for me, the stories themselves are not enough. I doubt that I would be Christian on the basis of the texts alone, were it not for the ways I’ve witnessed living faith in other people who have guided me on the Christian path. It’s said that faith is more caught than taught, and for me that was certainly the case. Not every person who claims to be a Jesus follower inspires my faith, but those that do are a spiritual lifeline for me. Some I’ve never met, but what I’ve learned of their witness made me want to be like them. Others were people who for whatever reason took an interest in me, or watched out for me—in short, who loved me in ways that felt more than human. Through them I felt the love of God.
Yet I’m sure that not even they would have been enough to keep me on the Christian path if I hadn’t had, on occasion, experiences that I can only describe as encounters with the living Christ. There have been times when I felt guided, forgiven, and strengthened by a power and a presence that I cannot prove to you, but that nonetheless assured me, in that moment, that Christ was real, and real for me.
What I’m trying to describe here, in general terms, is what people in other traditions might call “my testimony,” that is, how it is that I became and remain a person who believes in and strives to follow Jesus Christ.
The longer I live as a Christian, the more I realize that what grounds and sustains my life of faith isn’t one thing, but a constellation made up of many parts. The biblical stories are foundational, because of the ways they have woven themselves into my life story as a source of insight, inspiration and challenge. They have also frustrated and angered me for the way they have been used to justify human cruelty and prejudice in the name of God. The Bible is a complicated compilation of texts to spend your life connected to, but without them we’d lose our connection to Jesus of Nazareth and the spiritual traditions from which he came. Yet equally foundational are the people I’ve mentioned and the experiences I’ve had, not to mention the long stretches of doubt and emptiness that are also part of a life of faith.
Because I was just in Honduras, one experience from the year Paul and I lived there comes to mind. It was a hard year. The children at the school were street kids who knew how to wrap people like me around their little fingers. The environment was harsh—hot, dry and dirty. Within days of our arrival, my hopes and fantasies about the good we would do there had been shattered.
One day after work I walked through the neighborhood near the school and vented all my frustrations. I wasn’t consciously praying. It was more like rehearsing in my mind all that hurt, confused and angered me. At some point, I remember asking out loud “Is it always going to be this hard?” I wasn’t expecting an answer, but an answer came almost immediately. “Yes.”
I couldn’t remember a time when God had answered my prayers so quickly. It made me laugh. Then I heard, “And I will be with you.”
I don’t have experiences like that very often. But what God said to me that day got me through a tough year, and subsequent years when life was hard. Life isn’t always hard, but when it is, it’s good to know that someone has your back. And more than once, Jesus has shown up to tell me that he has mine.
Through the years I’ve learned that if I am to have a relationship with the living Christ of any depth, as with any relationship, what I bring to it matters. It matters that I stay close to the Scriptures that tell his story and through which he sometimes speaks. It matters that I show up in community with other Jesus followers, for their inspiration, wisdom and encouragement (and ample opportunities to practice patience and forgiveness). It matters that I show up in times of quiet prayer, or as in the situation I described, of shouting prayer. (There are long stretches in prayer when not much happens, but on occasion, I sense a real connection to the mystery of God.) It matters that I stretch myself in ways that help me learn how to love as Jesus loves.
I’ve also learned that I am not the primary initiator of this relationship, nor is everything up to me. Jesus’ teachings makes abundantly clear that the God he reveals to us will always go the extra mile to be company. In fact, we can walk away and stay away for years, and should we decide to come back, God will greet us as a beloved child.
I am also persuaded, despite the biblical passages that suggest otherwise, that God is not a bully. Jesus is not someone we must love and choose to follow–or else. Because that’s not how love works. We can choose to follow Jesus, or not. But we cannot stop the God whom Jesus reveals from loving us. We don’t have that power.
In the Scripture passages before us this morning, and throughout the entire worship service, there are several references to Jesus’ forgiveness of our sins. In the gospel, Jesus is quite clear that he had come to suffer and die so that all we might “repent” (a religious word that means to feel and express remorse for wrongs we have done and to commit to a new way of life), and receive forgiveness for our sins.
In the Book of Acts, we’ve been dropped into a scene in which the Apostle Peter has just healed a man who was lame from birth, and he did this miracle in the name of Jesus. Afterwards he addresses the astonished crowd and immediately chastises them for their part in Jesus’ death. You acted in ignorance, he tells them, as did your rulers who carried out the murder. But it was destined for the Messiah to suffer so that you might repent and receive forgiveness for your sins.
I’m not going to try to make sense of all this in the few moments I have left. But I’ve been thinking about this notion of our need to be forgiven for our sins, and Jesus’ death somehow accomplishing that for us. What I want to say to you is this: while my faith and my identity as a follower of Jesus rests on several pillars, among the life-transforming spiritual experiences of my life have been when I been forgiven for something I said or did that I regretted afterwards, and when I have felt accepted and loved unconditionally for who I am, despite the ways I fail, get things wrong, and consciously or unconsciously participate in the evils of this world.
Let me close by telling you of such a time. It isn’t about the worst thing I’ve said or done, but the memory of the forgiveness I received has stayed with me and informs my understanding of what Jesus did and does for us.
Before I was ordained I was part of a Christian community that I loved. It was plucky, thoughtful, and deeply engaged in the struggles for justice of our city. It also had a disproportionately large number of vulnerable adults as members. I was so inspired by the leadership of that church that I overcommitted myself, promising to do things that, in the end, I could not do. (a tendency that I have to this day). My failures had a significant, hurtful impact on the most vulnerable in the congregation.
In my embarrassment and guilt, I stopped going to that church. It was too painful. I never said goodbye; I simply drifted away.
The time came for me to leave that city—I accepted a lay ministry position on the other side of the country. As I was packing my things to leave, I realized that I had to come clean with the congregation and its leaders. I mustered the courage to make an appointment with the senior pastor to apologize. I rehearsed everything I was going to say and when I sat down, I acknowledged all that I had done, and more importantly, what I had failed to do.
I don’t remember exactly what the pastor said to me in response. I know that she didn’t minimize my failure or patronize me with assurances that my behavior was no big deal. I felt heard in her presence, and seen for who I was. I felt loved and forgiven. While she was the one offering me forgiveness, Jesus was in the room. I left her office as if walking on clouds.
Later I thought to myself, “This is what Jesus meant—this is liberation that forgiveness brings.” I vowed that day to become the kind of person able to offer such forgiveness to another person whenever the tables were turned.
There is more to the Christian faith than forgiveness for our sins. But when you need forgiveness and a way out of bondage you’re in, there is no one better than Jesus to lead you home. If we choose, we get to participate in the miracle of forgiveness, by daring to receive it for ourselves and share it with others. We play a part in Jesus’ ministry of forgiveness, and the unconditional love that undergirds it. The better we get at it, the more credible and life affirming our witness will be.
To be a witness is to speak of what you know and testify to what we have seen. I’m here to testify to the fact that a relationship with Jesus isn’t about one thing, but at the top of the list is forgiveness.
I wonder what you know, and what you have seen.
I wonder if you know what it’s like to be set free. And what it’s like to help Jesus set someone else free.
For me, it’s like walking on clouds.
