St
Luke’s,
“We are witnesses to these
things.”
I have never seen a serious
car crash, but I’ve witnessed many. Let
me explain what I mean.
Just over 20 years ago now I
spent some months living in Feilding and working in a
local church and when I wasn’t doing that I was working as an ambulance officer
for Palmerston North hospital. Palmerston
North, as I’m sure we all know, is this speack of a
city in the middle of a vast countryside and every which way you go you’re on
State Highways, treacherous, often deadly state highways. So every night I was
on duty I knew, at least once, I’d be attending a serious and possibly fatal
car smash somewhere on the outskirts of the city and I’d experience again and
again and again the carnage and the confusion and the chaos, and I can tell
you, ever since I have always worn my seatbelt. I never once saw one of those
cars crash, but I was absolutely a witness to it, and it changed me.
I wonder if we can try to
imagine for a moment what it must have been like to be there. To be there at
the cross, to be there outside the empty tomb, to be there on the
We’re now in the Great Fifty
Days of Eastertide which take us on the journey from the empty tomb to the day
of Pentecost and throughout this time the focus – the centre – upon which we’re
invited to reflect is summed up in that single sentence from our first reading
today – we are witnesses to these things. Not in an ‘I was there’ sense of
course. None of us were literally there. But then neither was Peter. Peter, who
stands before the Hebrew council in today’s reading and passionately declares
that Jesus was killed on a tree and what’s more he is a witness to it. But he
wasn’t. This is the same Peter who, after Jesus was arrested, denied him three
times before running away, scared and ashamed. And he wasn’t alone. Almost none
of the disciples were actually at the cross, just as only a handful of women
saw the empty tomb. Yet all of them go on to declare, we are witnesses to these
things.
Many of them, of course, saw
the risen Christ later, like Thomas. I’ve always been a great fan of Thomas – I
think I see a bit of myself in him. Thomas is the faithful pessimist. Elsewhere
in the gospel, when Jesus announces he’s going to
We are witnesses to these
things.
There’s a story which I have
no idea of the veracity of about a wily old parishioner who on an Easter Day
barrelled up a well known liberal bishop and asked him, ‘Bishop, tell me, do
you believe in the resurrection?’ Fully expecting a standard liberal response
outlining a rational intellectual understanding of the Easter story, the
parishioner was astonished when the liberal bishop replied, ‘Yes I believe in
the resurrection. I’ve seen it too many times not to.’
We are witnesses to these
things.
I wonder where we see
ourselves in these Eastertide stories? For a start I
suspect most of us see at least a bit of ourselves in Thomas. Is there anyone
among us who has absolutely no doubts about this whole religion thing? I doubt
it, if you’ll pardon the pun. And that’s OK. Contrary to some opinions, the
opposite of faith isn’t doubt, not at all. The opposite of faith, in fact, is
certainty. We don’t need to have faith to believe in things we’re certain of,
only things we’re not.
So we might see ourselves in
doubting Thomas, but what about in Peter, or in the other Thomas, the
worshipping Thomas? Can we see ourselves in those disciples and others who even
though they might have doubts, even though they might not have been there, even
though it all seems somewhat unlikely and even absurd, still they declare, we
are witnesses to these things – can we see ourselves in them?
I hope we can, I know we can.
I know we can see ourselves in them because we too, like that liberal bishop,
have seen the resurrection too many times not to believe in it. We too, like
Peter, have seen Jesus nailed to a tree. We too, like Thomas, have felt Christ’s
wounds and touched his hands. We too are witnesses to these things, if we just
allow ourselves to be.
I spoke on Thursday about the
importance of recognising the natural ebbs and flows of our church year. The
Christian calendar doesn’t just lurch from festival to festival, with a few saints days thrown in for good measure. Each of our seasons
flows into the next so they interconnect and work together, often in ways we
don’t immediately recognise. Much the same, of course, can be said about the
scriptures. When Jesus appears to Thomas in this morning’s reading it’s the
same Jesus who walked and talked with him previously. The Jesus who says come
and see me and touch my hands and my side is the Jesus who Andrew urged others
to ‘come and see’ at the beginning of his ministry. And the Jesus whom Peter
testifies to is the same Jesus who, when teaching his disciples, pointed to the
old and the poor and the sick and the young and said, when you do it for the
least of these, you do it for me.
We are witnesses to these
things. We are witnesses to horror and pain and suffering and humiliation, we
are witnesses to mourning and grief and gut-wrenching desperation and we are
witnesses to new life, second chances, new beginnings.
We are witnesses to these things, if we choose to see them.
Easter isn’t just a story.
Nor is it something to be simply analysed or explained away. Easter, like all
the stories of our faith – like the entirety of our faith itself – is
ultimately something to be experienced. Ultimately Christianity is tactile and
experiential. It’s about what we taste and hear and touch and feel and see –
it’s about it all. But beware.
‘My Lord and my
God.’ Thomas’ outburst is a reminder that no one experiences the risen Christ
and remains untouched. That’s why the Peter we read about in Acts seems so
different to the Peter of the gospels – because he is. This is not the same
Peter who drops the ball so often with Jesus. This is not the same Peter who
denies him and runs away. This is the Peter who has seen the risen Christ, who has
experienced the resurrection, and emerged a changed man.
We are witnesses to these
things.
We’re on a journey now. The
road didn’t end at the cross. From here we move on to Pentecost – to the point
where it becomes graphically and dramatically clear that none of this – the
crucifixion, the resurrection, none of it – happened just so we could feel good
about things, it happened so we could witness to these things.
Ours is a faith to be
experienced, to be cherished, and to be shared. Ours is not a private,
just-between-you-and-me religion, it’s a faith to be passed on freely and
without fear or hesitation.
We are witnesses to these
things. May God truly make it so. Amen.