SERMON

Being a Reliable Witness

Luke 24:36-47

Pastor Robyn Hogue April 19, 2015 Skyline Presbyterian Church

There are many things we believe in this world that we haven’t seen. As children we learned that the earth is round. We’ve never traveled into space and looked back at the earth but we believe what we have been taught.

It was the ancient Greeks who first theorized that the earth is round. This discovery is attributed to Pythagoras who first proposed it sometime around 500 B.C. “Earth is a sphere floating in space,” he declared to a packed lecture hall. It is said that a grave silence fell upon the hall when he said this. His listeners were amazed. They wondered how they could live on a sphere! Common sense suggested that earlier philosophers were right when they said the earth was a flat disc floating on the air. Pythagoras had deduced the idea of a round earth based on his observation that earth casts a circular shadow on the moon during eclipses.

His revolutionary idea was accepted by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers and became common knowledge as early as 300 B.C. Most of the rest of humanity, though, had to accept it on faith. It has only been within our own lifetime that we’ve been able to venture into space and affirm that Pythagoras was right. The world is round. Most of us have accepted the truths of science from an early age. We believe even though we have not personally seen.

Scientists tell us that our earth is rotating on its axis at 1,100 miles per hour; that our earth is rotating around the sun at 481,000 mph; and that our sun and solar system are whirling into space at 57,000,000 mph. Wow! It would take quite a leap of faith to believe all that, but people I know and trust tell me it’s true, and thus I believe that, yes, it is all likely true.

Furthermore, science tells us this universe is enormous. This isn’t mere conjecture. For close to four decades two Voyager space crafts have been hurtling beyond the edge of our solar system at a rate of 100,000 miles per hour. These space craft have been speeding away from earth and are now approximately 12 billion miles from our small planet. When these craft were still responding to signals at about 9 billion miles away engineers would beam commands to them at the speed of light. It took these commands thirteen hours to arrive, even at the speed of light! It is estimated that to send a message to the edge of our enormous universe at the speed of light would take 15 billion years. And within this enormous universe there are billions and billions of galaxies.

That’s more than some can get their minds around, but isn’t it a magnificent thought that we live in such an amazing universe? Is there anyone in this room who believes that such a magnificent universe could just have happened with no guiding hand at work?

Do you remember Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town? There is a scene in it where Jane Crofut gets a letter from her minister when she is sick. The envelope is addressed like this: “Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God.”

That’s right the mind of God. That is where it all began. Science can tell us how it happened, but only faith can tell us why it happened.

A father told of taking his family to the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. He said the sky seemed more brilliant than they had ever seen it, and the stars were so close you believed you could touch them.

Their three boys decided that they would put their sleeping bags out on the ground so they could go to sleep watching the stars. The man and his wife had just settled down for the night when their youngest boy came into the tent, dragging his sleeping bag with him.

“What is the matter?” his parents asked. “Is it getting too cold?”

“No,” he answered. Then he added, “I just never knew I was so small.”

Well, it does make us feel small. But it also reminds us of how great and wonderful God is. Even if we were determined to be atheistic, we would still be left with mysteries that science cannot answer: The first of these is the creation of the universe itself: that there should be something rather than nothing is miraculous. The second is that, once upon a time, some of the inanimate matter on this earth planet suddenly came to life. And the third is that some of that matter that came to life gained the ability to think, to be motivated, to seek, and to imagine, even to hope.

Even if we weren’t impressed by the immensity and the intricacy of it all, the wondrous beauty of creation alone should show the sheer lunacy of believing it all happened by pure chance. “Nature,” wrote Jonathan Edwards, “is God’s greatest evangelist.” And he was right.

That is one of the reasons we are in this room today. We can’t imagine a universe such as ours coming into being without some Intelligent Being saying, “Let there be light.” Whether it happened in seven days or whether it happened over billions of years is not our argument. It happened because God caused it to happen.

But there is another reason we are here. It is because two thousand years ago in Jerusalem a man named Jesus rose from the grave.

We weren’t there. We didn’t see it with our own eyes. But there were a host of people, reliable people, who did see it. Listen to their testimony.

In Luke’s Gospel we discover that when Jesus was seen after He was resurrected from the dead, some of His closest friends reacted with shock and disbelief. They thought He was a ghost. They wanted to touch Him and hold Him. We can’t blame them. How could He be resurrected from the dead?

These disciples needed proof He was alive. If He were merely a bodiless apparition, it would be too easy to dismiss His appearance as a mass psychosis brought on by their grief. But they touched His hands and His feet and His sword-pierced side. He even ate a meal with them. He was no ghost. He was the risen Christ. Of this they had no doubt. You can see that from what happened next.

Christ gives them their mission. He says to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then He opens their minds so they can understand the Scriptures. He tells them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

They are to be His witnesses. And what witnesses they became. They were fearless. No matter how hard the religious and the political authorities tried to squelch their fast growing movement they would not recant their faith.

We’re told that the word Luke uses here translated as “witness” is a unique word in Greek. It has two or three meanings. Initially, it simply meant someone who was an eyewitness, who saw something happen with their own eyes. In that sense, the disciples were definitely witnesses. However, it can also mean someone who might not have seen something happen with their own eyes, but who nonetheless believes strongly enough that the event happened that they are willing to tell others about it. Paul is called a witness even though he wasn’t present for Jesus’ actual ministry. You and I also fit into this category alongside Paul. 

But there’s a third meaning for witness as well in the New Testament, and it’s the one that applies the most. We get the word “martyr” from the Greek word for witness. It even sounds like it “martus.” As you know, a martyr is someone who was killed for their convictions, for their witness. The Greeks understood the connection between martyrdom and being a witness. So did the disciples. We don’t know exactly how all the disciples died. Most of the stories come from tradition, not from scripture. But we do know that none of the original eleven, plus Paul, died a natural death.

That is why we know that their witness is reliable. People do not die for something that they know is not true. People with a second-hand faith might be reluctant to give their lives. After all, they might have a degree of uncertainty. They weren’t there. They simply heard a report from people they trusted. But the disciples were there. They spoke with absolute certainty. They saw nail scarred hands. They spoke with Him and ate with Him. And, eventually, they died for Him. There can be no doubt of their reliability.

Chuck Colson says it better than anyone else. For our younger worshippers, Chuck Colson went to prison as part of the infamous Watergate burglary and subsequent cover-up during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Colson was part of a determined conspiracy to cover up a crime committed by high government officials. Colson says: “The Watergate cover-up reveals the true nature of humanity. Even political zealots at the pinnacle of power will, in the crunch, save their own necks, even at the expense of the ones they profess to serve so loyally. But the apostles could not deny Jesus because they had seen Him face to face, and they knew He had risen from the dead. No, you can take it from an expert in cover-ups. I’ve lived through Watergate and nothing less than a resurrected Christ could have caused those men to maintain to their dying whispers that Jesus is alive and is Lord. Two thousand years later, nothing less than the power of the risen Christ could inspire Christians around the world to remain faithful despite prison, torture, and death.”

It’s a matter of faith. But that doesn’t mean we have turned our minds off and accepted as truth something which is appealing but without substance. Just as we accept the teachings of science because we accept the witness of authorities we trust, so we accept the resurrection of Jesus Christ because we accept the testimony of reliable witnesses.

And now we seek to be reliable witnesses as well. Here’s the thing: I want you to be able to share with another person how Jesus has changed you. You should be able to share your own witness. Write out some notes (they should fit on the back of a business card) to guide you so you’re ready to share with that friend who is growing more open about spiritual things, with your son or daughter, with your grandson or granddaughter. Others are counting on our reliable witness. Will you share yours this week?