Weekly Sermon 1June 2014 WHY BOTHER BEING HIS WITNESSES? Sermon for 7th Sunday of Easter, year A Based on RCL rdgs Acts 1:6-14biblegateway/passage/?search=acts+1%3A6-14&version=NLT and John 17:1-11, [18, 20 non-RCL] Wesley United Church June 1, 2014 Rev. Brian MacDonald sermon.126 (Tell story of Jesus ascending to heaven after the first Easter and being greeted by angels, who question him about what will become of his mission… left it in the hands of the apostles and my other followers… but humans are fallible…what if they lose sight of your vision for the redemption of the world and their role in that? “In that case, I have no other plan. It’s up to them and the Holy Spirit.”) When the disciples ask Jesus when he will restore Israel to it’s rightful place among the nations, he says essentially “That’s not your problem. Rather, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses here in Jerusalem and in ever widening circles throughout the world.” A witness is someone who has seen or experienced something and is prepared to talk about that. In this case, people who are willing to talk openly about their experience of Jesus. But why bother being his witnesses? This is what I’d like us to look at today. We’ll break it down into why we need to be witnesses and why we may (or give ourselves permission) to be witnesses. We need to be witnesses because that is the primary work Jesus gives us to do. This is attested not only in the Acts and John readings, but also in Matthew’s and Mark’s accounts of Jesus’ parting words to the disciples. But it’s far more than a duty. Sharing our faith also helps us to come more fully alive as disciples. That’s another part of why we need to. Notice how access to the Spirit’s power and telling others about Christ are linked: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses.” The two go together. If our walk with Christ feels like a long desert march with the French Foreign Legion instead of a joyful cultivation of the presence of God, maybe we should try openly sharing our faith. If we want more of the Spirit’s power, we need to share our faith. The Spirit is there to enable us to do so. The fact is, we’re designed to be something like healthy bodies of water, which have a regular output as well as an input of water. The Dead Sea is dead not just because it has an extremely high salt concentration (making it extremely easy to float on, or, I suppose, make pickles), but also because it is always receiving water from the river Jordan and never giving out, except through evaporation. If we only ever listen to or read Scripture and other worthwhile material but never offer to others what we’re learning, we become kind of swampy, a spiritual wetland, if you will. It’s not that there won’t be good fruit in our lives, but we’ll definitely be stunted in our growth because we’re not offering the water of life to others. The output of sharing our faith gives us an enormous boost, a spiritual shot in the arm, making us more well-rounded believers. Another part of why we need to be Christ’s witnesses is that people are hungry for hope and mercy. I think the groundswell of popular concern for our natural environment points partly to this. Six years ago, Canada’s own Dr. David Suzuki spoke at Wilmot United Church on the “Sacred Balance,” which humanity has obviously thrown out of whack by how we’ve abused the earth. As environmentalist Al Gore says in his film “An Inconvenient Truth,” it’s now pay back time. It could well be that the extremely heavy snowfall we’ve had this year is at least partly a token of that pay back. Gore acknowledges that it will be extremely difficult for us to turn the environmental ship around, but he insists that we can do it, that we can save our earth. Those who attend his presentations know they’re dreaming in Technicolor if they think this will be easy. Yet with all the bad news he dishes up for his audiences, people come away feeling more pumped than depressed. Why? The United Church Observer suggests the reason is that there’s much about Gore’s message that is like an old- fashioned church revival meeting. I would add that it’s because even when people know that they’ve been a big part of the problem, they cling to the possibility that they can help things to change. This is a very spiritual dynamic. Relating that to the even bigger issue of our relationship with the Creator, even when we’ve “blown it” we crave hope and mercy. This is what Jesus offers us. As the old hymn says: We have heard the joyful sound: Jesus saves, Jesus saves. Spread the tidings all around: Jesus saves, Jesus saves… Sing it softly through the gloom when the heart for mercy craves, Sing in triumph o’er the tomb: Jesus saves, Jesus saves. Telling people about him satisfies their need for hope and mercy. The last reason we need to be Christ’s witnesses is that people aren’t mind readers: they need to be taught. It is only by hearing the Good News, whether we tell them ourselves or we invite them to church so they can hear from someone else, that they’ll get it. Sure, non-Christians benefit from Christians reaching out to them with compassion. But the only way they’ll begin to know for themselves the grace and love of God which fires us up is if we tell them of our experience of how the Lord has helped us. It’s like the Unitarian Service Committee TV commercial about overcoming poverty: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Tomorrow he’ll be hungry in the same old way. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for his life: Tomorrow he’ll be feeding his children and his wife. Sharing our faith gives people the tools they need to take hold of God’s hope and mercy for themselves. Early in May of 2008 I saw a City work crew build sandbag walls in front of the rear doors and windows of City Hall, for the waters of the St. John River were rising. Witnessing to Jesus Christ is a bit like that: sharing our faith with others gives people the tools to resist and repel the tide of chaos and hopelessness which is so pervasive in our world. Through that they find the Source of hope and mercy: Jesus, “God with us.” Finally, let’s look very briefly at why we may be witnesses. By that I mean giving ourselves permission to do so. That may seem silly at first, but it’s not when you think of how we all have struggled with a sense of whether or not we’re qualified or good enough to talk to others of Christ. We do need to aim to make our manner of life back up our profession of faith. Being the practical sort we United Church people are, we tend to focus on making a difference in tangible ways. For eg., you contribute to the Oromocto Food Bank, in the past you have helped out the Lions Club with Christmas gifts for the needy, and you enable others to work full-time in various peace and justice endeavours through the M & S fund. If we add to the example of our works the testimony of our words, our verbal witness will be backed up with personal integrity. We won’t just be “spouting off.” Therefore we can speak to others about our faith without holding back or thinking we’re not worthy to do so, because we will have earned the right. Eric Liddell, Britain’s famous Olympic runner depicted in the 1982 film Chariots of Fire, was a person who was effective in sharing his faith because of his positive outlook, sense of fun and of fair play. He loved to run and was amazingly good at it. In the film he says “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure.” His running got people’s attention for what he had to say. He would travel throughout Scotland to run at various competitions. Following these races he would then talk about Jesus to all who cared to hear. But he didn’t just look good on the track and sound good on the platform. He was a good and kind man, a man of integrity who was prepared to go to the wall for his faith. And so his spoken witness for Christ rang true. We may not have the talent to win Olympic medals or be good public speakers. But when we attempt to live righteously people admire that, and that will give us eloquence when we have the opportunity to share our faith, having earned the right. So we make the effort of being Christ’s witnesses because we need to: it’s the task that he has given us, it helps us to come alive and grow, people are hungry to hear some good news, and they need to hear it to avail themselves of it. Finally, we are his witnessesfor, while we aren’t perfect, we have earned the right to speak because of how we live.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 13:13:49 +0000