"You are Witnesses of These Things" - Redeemer Episcopal Church

 Luke 24:36b-48

Jesus Appears to His Disciples

36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 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.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.

44 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.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 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, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.

God of grace and mercy, help us to understand our new identity as witnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection in the world, its importance to your mission in this season of Easter. Amen. 

The very last line of this morning’s gospel text strikes me. “You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus says. It’s a statement, not a question or even a command or commission. Jesus doesn’t say, “are you ready to be witnesses?” Or “whenever it’s convenient I’d like for you to be witnesses” or “in the next couple of years, please go be witnesses.” Jesus says, “you are witnesses of these things.” It is a declaration. For the disciples, being witnesses is not voluntary, it is a state of being. It is undeniably a part of their identity now because of what Christ has done in his life, death, and resurrection. 

I remember when I was younger, I would watch my dad leave for work wearing a flight suit and combat boots— his uniform as a pilot in the army. It was part of his identity and who he was for nearly 22 years, and in many ways it is still a part of his identity. But every evening he would come home and take that uniform off and I didn’t think of him as an Army pilot, but just as my dad, who let me put flowery clips in his hair and paint his nails on the weekend. 

There are many professions that have uniforms or certain dress codes, but we don’t wear those uniforms all the time. We take off the chef’s coat or the scrubs or the construction hat or the suit and tie and we can be seen as someone other than our profession or our job. In that way, what we do doesn’t have to be who we are. On the weekends or in the evenings, whenever we “clock out,” we can be someone or something entirely different if we want to. Just by changing our clothes. 

But that is not the case with our identity in Christ Jesus. 

This is what we learn when Jesus declares, “you are witnesses.” And this is what we hear at the beginning of the second reading: we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. We are God’s children now. This is the declaration we hear in our baptismal vows— whether we hear them when we are babies and our family and friends are making vows on our behalf or later in life— we are named and claimed as God’s children. 

When the waters of baptism wash over us, and when we are marked with the sign of the cross in oil, we are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever. And most of us affirm these vows and this commitment to Christ again in our confirmation and every time we witness another baptism in our community. Our identity is changed forever in that holy sacrament. 

The water that has cleansed us, the oil that has sealed a cross on our foreheads is not something that can be taken off. It doesn’t matter if we wear a cross necklace some days or a t-shirt announcing our Christianity to the world. God has made a declaration to us, that we are God’s children and our new identity in Christ not something we put on and take off like a jacket. It is who we are. 

In that way, our identity as witnesses, just like the disciples, is also who we are. What we do and say, how we treat others, how we interact with the world, is all witnessing to who we are as God’s children. 

Last week, I left you with a series of questions about if the resurrection made any difference at all in our lives. And this week Jesus declares that it does. Not that the resurrection should change us or that it has the potential change us, but that it does change us. Because we are witnesses to the risen Christ, and are baptized in the Spirit, we have been changed whether we completely understand it or not. 

And because of this change— our language, our behavior, our words and actions not only witness to who we are as children of God, but also how others see God to be. Let me repeat that— the way people see us is how people see God. We are never NOT giving witness to God in the world. 

And that is important to remember as we are faced with tragedy after tragedy across our country, it’s important to remember as we re-enter the world in public witness in person, and as we care for creation and one another after so much loss and as we continue to be faced with difficult times. We are witnesses not only to the wounds that Jesus shows us in his hands and his feet, but we touch and see that Jesus has been resurrected. And we are also witnesses to the wounds of this world. We are witnesses to the wounds of our siblings and to the re-creation that God is bringing about in the world through redemption and reconciliation.

There is no season like the season of Easter to get used to this witnessing. To be continually reminded that in everything we do, in everything we say, as well as everything we don’t do and everything we don’t say, we are witnessing to who we are are whose we are in light of the resurrection, the light of the flesh and blood of our Christ who meets us here in our own wounds, in the promise of our own resurrection. Amen.