We’re All Witnesses

Acts 2:29-36

July 23, 2023 • Mount Pleasant UMC

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the last semester of seminary, and all of us who were graduating were also rather impatiently waiting on news of where we would be serving, what church our respective Bishops had appointed us to. A friend of mine thought he would be funny and left a message on the answering machine imitating a District Superintendent from a District I did not want to go to (one that, in God’s sense of humor, I did end up serving in a few years later). But then the real calls started coming in, and friends were receiving their appointments, and there I was, still waiting. And waiting. I was actually at choir practice when the call came in. This was in the days before cell phones, so Cathy called down to the seminary switchboard and asked someone to go down to the music room and tell me that a superintendent had called. I still had to finish choir practice, bike home and then wait on the superintendent to call back. That was a long wait! Once everything was settled, we couldn’t wait to tell people. It was exciting news, life-changing news, and we wanted everyone to know. These days, we would just post on social media and the whole world would find out all at once. But then, we had to call every single person we wanted to tell. The news traveled slowly, but I think it traveled more meaningfully.

This morning, I’ve got exciting news for you—Vacation Bible School is this week! We’ve made it through power outages and wind storms and internet outages and all of the other things and we have finally arrived at the very best week of the summer. In my years of ministry, I have missed very few VBS weeks because I believe it’s one of the most important weeks of the year, and I believe that because, as I’ve told you before, VBS is where I met Jesus personally. Growing up in church did not make me a Christian. Walking through the doors every Sunday did not make me a Christian. Knowing the stories of the Bible did not make me a Christian. What made me a Christian was meeting Jesus and inviting him to live in me. What makes me a Christian each and every day is following him as faithfully as I can. But none of that would have started if someone hadn’t told me about Jesus, if someone hadn’t been a witness to the change Jesus had made in her life. In my life, there were several people throughout the years, but the VBS leader who made a real difference was Noel Johns. I’m wondering, as we launch into this week of VBS, who the crew leaders will be that person for this week.

This morning, we’re wrapping up our series that is connected to our VBS stories: “Ready, Set, Move: Following Jesus Here, There and Everywhere.” We’ve been looking at what are called the “bottom lines” each week: do what Jesus says, believe who Jesus is and love who Jesus loves. This morning, we’re going to move beyond the Gospels into the book of Acts, the account of what the disciples did after Jesus’ ascension, and in this story we will hopefully see that our call, like that of the first disciples, is to share what Jesus did.

The passage we read this morning is at the tail end of Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. First of all, let me point out that the Simon we met last week, the Simon who had denied Jesus and needed to be restored as a disciple, is now Peter again. He is “the Rock” again, and even on this Pentecost, he is already taking charge and showing the kind of leadership that will make him the leader of the apostles. Second, Pentecost was already an established festival long before Christians associated it with the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost dates back to Leviticus, and it was always held fifty days after Passover. It was an agricultural festival, celebrating the early grain harvest. And it was a one-day festival but was still attended by large amounts of people (cf. New Interpreter’s Dictionary, Vol. 4, pgs. 438-440). By Peter’s time, it had become associated with the day when Moses brought down the law from Mount Sinai, when God showed the people how they were to live (cf. Wright, Acts for Everyone—Part One, pg. 196), so it’s entirely appropriate that this day was the day when the Holy Spirit arrived because the Spirit would now live inside God’s people, empowering us to live the life God wants us to live.

So in the first part of Acts 2, Luke tells how the disciples are gathered together “in one place,” presumably the Upper Room where they had last been with Jesus (2:1). Suddenly, without warning, the Holy Spirit comes in a rush of wind and fire and the disciples are enabled to speak in languages they did not learn (2:2-4). That would have come in handy in high school Spanish class! Anyway, the disciples are enabled to tell all the people who are gathered in Jerusalem for the festival the message about Jesus. Sometimes when I would have other people read Scripture for me, I’d have a lot of fun giving them this passage because of all the names. I think I still have one person who won’t talk to me because of that! But Luke wants us to know there were people from all over the known world there on that day: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome…Cretans and Arabs.” By the way, here’s my secret: just say the names confidently and most people will never question you. But, anyway, all those people, all those folks from all over the world, get to hear the good news about Jesus in their own tongues and they get a chance to respond to that good news (cf. 2:9-11). As Eugene Peterson described it, “Pentecost means that God is not a spectator, in turn amused and alarmed at world history; rather, he is a participant” (qtd. in McKnight, Acts, pg. 23). God shows up in a powerful way, and he stays with the disciples through the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

The representative Pentecost sermon we have is from Peter, and Peter goes to great lengths, because he is at a Jewish festival, to root the story of Jesus in the story of Israel. He quotes the Jewish prophets who foretold the coming of Jesus, and he quotes their greatest king, David, who sang about Jesus in the psalms. But, Peter says, the difference between our prophets, our greatest king and Jesus is that they are all dead and Jesus is alive. In fact, Peter says, “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it” (2:32). And Peter’s confident ending to his sermon is this: “Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (2:36; cf. Wright 37-38). He has made him Lord, ruler over all there is, and Messiah, the only one who can save us from our sin. Jesus, Peter declares, is the only hope we have, and we are all witnesses to that truth.

We are all witnesses, Peter says. And the book of Acts, as you read the rest of it, makes it clear that he doesn’t just mean the disciples there on that day. All throughout the book, all sorts of people are witnesses to what Jesus is doing and has done. When Peter says we’re all witnesses, he means all of us, anyone who claims to follow Jesus, from that time to this. We’re all witnesses, all the way down to those of us sitting in a church pew or worshipping online in the twenty-first century. Still today, when someone becomes a member of the local church, we ask that you pledge your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service and your witness. Actually, as I often say, those are not just things for members to do; those are the things we want anyone who is part of Mount Pleasant to be doing regularly. So, maybe we need to ask—what does Peter mean? What is a witness?

The word there is martures, from which we get the word “martyr.” You can probably hear that. A martyr, of course, is someone who gives their life for a cause. In religious terms, in Christian terms, a martyr is someone who is killed because of their belief in Jesus, because of their faith that they will not renounce. But this word didn’t originally refer to that specifically; it simply meant someone who shared the information they had. It seems to have originally referred to someone who stood up in court and shared their record of events, what had happened from their vantage point. So a witness is someone who tells what they know.

We’re all witnesses, so what is it we know? One of the things I notice about Peter’s sermon here is the way he contextualizes the story about Jesus. You’ll find that all the way throughout the book of Acts. Wherever the disciples are, they do their level best to speak to the people in words, metaphors and images that whatever town they are in will understand. One of the most famous instances is in Acts 17, where Paul is in Athens, Greece, a very intellectual city, and Paul spends some time at first walking around the city to get a sense of what it’s like. He sees a “city full of idols” (17:16), and when he finally gets the chance to speak to some of the city’s leaders in the Areopagus, he uses what he has learned. He doesn’t tell the story of Israel like Peter did. In general terms he talks about creation, but then he quotes their poets, and he talks about their pagan altars. He tells the same story but in a different way, a way they could understand. And even though, in the end, his message is not widely received, it’s not because he is ineffective at telling the story. It’s because the idea of a God who cares for his people enough to die and rise again is so outside of their framework that it’s going to take some time to grasp it.

So what does that tell us about being a witness? For one, Paul’s example tells us it’s important to be familiar with the culture, with the things that are happening around us. We need to know what’s going on in the world, in the news, in popular culture because that’s where most people live. How are we going to communicate the good news if we stay within a small Christian subculture? That even goes to the language we use, the way we witness. We Christians have a lot of our own lingo, which is fine, and normal, because every group has its own language, its own way of expressing who they are. That’s natural. But like when I’m talking to a lawyer, for instance, sometimes they will get into legalese, using phrases and words that mean a lot to them but nothing to me. We can easily do the same thing. I have looked back on some of the early sermons I preached and I want to go apologize to the people who had to listen to them because I had all this knowledge, fresh from seminary, and I loved using all those big words I had learned. Those people were so very kind to listen to me and not complain. Well, most of them didn’t complain. Anyway, my point is this: we have to speak in a language others understand, so using words like salvation or sanctification or justification means we will just fail to communicate the good news about Jesus. In our world, even using Bible references will fail to communicate. We no longer live in a world that knows what those things mean. If we’re going to share the good news, if we’re going to be a witness, like Paul we need to learn to speak in the language of the culture around us.

The other thing I want us to notice about Paul’s experience is that sometimes we don’t get the response we want. Sometimes when we are a witness, we’re only planting seeds. When Paul finished witnessing at the Areopagus, some made fun of him but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject” (18:32). Luke records it this way: “Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others” (18:33). Paul planted seeds. So do we. We do it through our actions, through the way we live our lives, and we do it through our words. Every moment of every day, we’re all witnesses. Sometimes we see immediate results, and sometimes we don’t see results for a long time. But that doesn’t mean your witness is a failure, any more than Paul was a failure in Athens. God is still working, even when we don’t see it. Sometimes it just takes time.

Peter, the preacher on Pentecost, many years later wrote to the believers in Asia this word of encouragement and challenge: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…” (1 Peter 3:15). When should we be ready to share what we have witnessed, according to Peter who has spent a lifetime at this point telling others about Jesus? Should we only be ready when we know more Scripture, or when we understand more about the Christian faith, or someday when we have more confidence? No, that’s not what Peter says. He says “always be ready.” Every day. Every second. Because at any moment, someone might need the witness that only you can provide. Always be prepared to be a witness because that is, in fact, what you already are. If you follow Jesus, you’re a witness.

So I believe all of us should have ready what is often called an “elevator speech.” It’s called that because you should be able to share what Jesus means to you in the time it takes to ride an elevator from floor to floor. (Of course, if that’s our elevator here in the building, you’ve got plenty of time!) I actually had that scenario happen to me once, and I may have told this story before, so bear with me. But I was at the hospital, visiting a church member who was being moved from one hospital to another. While we were chatting, the transfer people came to move her, and they told me I could ride down with her as they took her to the waiting ambulance. As we were going to the elevator, my church member introduced me to her new drivers as her pastor. They asked what church and when I told them, one of them asked me, “So, what does it mean to be a United Methodist?” In that moment, we were getting on the elevator and I realized I had just the amount of time from the floor we were on to the ground floor to share about my faith. So I talked about grace, and how one of our emphases in this tradition is a focus on the way God shows us kindness when he doesn’t have to, how he welcomes us when we don’t feel like we’re very welcome-able. And I told her that I had experienced the love of Jesus and it had made a difference in my life. All of those things, I think, get at the basic needs and desires most people have today. She thanked me, but there was no blinding light or dramatic story that happened. All I did in that elevator was to try to plant some seeds by sharing my story.

That’s what being a witness is all about. It’s about telling what you know. It’s about telling your story, about the difference Jesus has made in your life. In certain corners of the Christian faith still today there’s a big emphasis on having proof, on being able to logically prove step by step things like the existence of God, the reality of Jesus and so on. And while there is a place for that, most people in our world today are not convinced by proofs. Like it or not, what they want to know is your story. How has Jesus changed your life? And the marvelous thing, especially for those who worry about having the right answers for everything—you don’t have to have all the answers. No one can argue with your story because your story is just that—yours. No one can disprove or discount the way Jesus has worked in your life. If you’re a witness, you are simply telling the way you have experienced this faith we hold dear. And then we leave the other person’s response up to God.

I want to say one other thing this morning about being a witness today. I believe the boldest thing we can do today is to be consistent in the ways we live our our faith. People are watching you and me. Even if they don’t say anything, they are watching you and me. I realized this several years ago when I was out at a grocery store on a Friday afternoon. (This is my version of Pastor Rick’s Taco Bell story.) It was my day off and, honestly, I was in a bad mood. I don’t remember now why, but I remember wanting to get my groceries and just get out and go back home. The cashier was trying to talk to me, one of those chatty folks, and I wasn’t really responding, until she said something that caught me off guard. “I really like your shirt,” she said. I had to stop and think about what shirt I had on, and of course it was a church shirt, a Jesus shirt, one that explicitly said, “Have you seen Jesus my Lord?” Right in that moment, the Holy Spirit whispered to me, “Can she see Jesus through you?” No, not at that moment, she could not. My attitude was in the way. The Spirit gave me a wholehearted attitude adjustment in that moment because people are watching. They watch for us to be consistent in how we live. They want to see if Jesus makes any kind of difference. If you simply go by the statistics and the news stories, it seems that Jesus doesn’t make all that much difference. Pastors make moral mistakes at just about the same rate as nonreligious people. Churches have “grace” on the sign outside but show very little of it inside. Persons who are in leadership in the local church go to work and treat people who work for them like they are anything but a child of God. Yes, the world is broken. But that doesn’t mean we should be just like the world. We’re all witnesses to the healing power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have the greatest news anyone has ever heard. So let’s live like it. Let’s live like Jesus is transforming us. Let’s live like witnesses.

The bottom line today, as I said earlier, is simply this: share what Jesus did. Jesus shared love with all those around him, so be love to those around you. Jesus shared hope with all those around him, so be hope to those around you. Jesus shared good news with those around him, so be good news to a world that seems filled with bad news. What might this world be like if just the Christians—2.6 billion people in the world today, about 1/3 of the world’s population—what if we lived as witnesses? What if we shared what Jesus did, every day, every hour? What might the world look like if we just believed that and live like we’re all witnesses? Because we are. Let’s pray.