Did they know that they were fulfilling prophecy, I wonder?
When Peter and John – disciples of Jesus, leaders of the newborn Christian community in Jerusalem – went up to the Temple to pray, and come across a lame beggar, and heal him.
Peter just tells him to stand up and walk, in the name of Jesus the Messiah, of Nazareth, and he leaps up healed, just as if Jesus himself had stood there and said that to him, full of the power of God.
Peter and John and the healed man quickly attract a crowd of astonishment, and Peter has to say something. “Why are you staring at us?” he says. “Why are you acting as if we made this man walk by our own power or holiness? What you’re seeing – what you should be noticing – is the power of God, accomplished through faith in the name of Jesus.”
He goes on preaching, now that he’s got an audience. You killed Jesus, he says. We know you didn’t know what you were doing, but when you killed him, God raised him. We are witnesses. And faith in his name has given this man strength and perfect health, as you see, so repent and return to God to receive forgiveness.
Did Peter or John remember, in that moment, that this is exactly what Jesus told them would happen, when they saw him on that first uncertain and confusing night of resurrection, when everything changed as they watched the risen Jesus eat a piece of fish.
The Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead and repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Jesus said then. You are witnesses.
Exactly.
So did Peter and John set out on this healing and preaching because they’d thought about their assignment and worked out a strategy? Or did it seem to just happen to them? Did they just find themselves in the right place at the right time, following their gut and their faith as an everyday thing?
I don’t know. Luke doesn’t tell us.
But I do know that this is supposed to happen to us, too.
To you and me, disciples of Jesus, given the Holy Spirit in baptism, and empowered in our very daily lives, through faith in Jesus’ name. Just like the disciples were commissioned as witnesses on the night of the resurrection, and empowered by the Spirit at Pentecost.
So what would you do, if you knew you were supposed to do miracles of faith? To open eyes and hearts to repentance and forgiveness in a stunning wash of awe and hope?
Would you set about it strategically, identifying the person who needs a miracle, the crowds who need your preaching, and declaring healing in the Name of Jesus with full confidence in the results?
Or would if have to happen more by accident, letting your faith lead you, step-by-step, into the right place at the right time to speak in God’s name and see miracles happen?
Think about it. Because you and I, like Peter and John, are witnesses of Jesus, empowered and charged to proclaim repentance and forgiveness in all nations, charged with healing for the world.
It’s easier for Peter and John, I sometimes think. I mean, they were THERE. They knew Jesus, personally, before he died. They saw all those miracles. They were THERE when he appeared in that room, and invited them to touch him, and ate fish, living and resurrected and changing everything. They had that experience of transformation, of living the before and after of resurrection, of being set afire with the Spirit.
That had to give them confidence in their proclamation and power, right?
I just grew up in the church, where this was all good news but old news, and we’ve gotten used to expecting dramatic, unexplainable miracles to stay inside the pages of the Bible.
And yet the church insists that we too were there. We too, you know, experience resurrection, when we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ. We too are subject to impossible miracles, no matter how we rationalize them. We too, are changed forever in baptism, given the gift of the Holy Spirit, conveniently conveyed these days by water instead of fire on our heads.
It might not feel the same. But while we might not feel like eyewitnesses of the resurrection, every one of us is a witness to the power and presence of God.
Last Tuesday night, in our Vestry meeting, we did an exercise which included this meditation:
Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk, details something he experienced as a boy. He was walking in the evening when he was suddenly dazzled by the beautiful song of a flock of birds. The beauty of their singing seemed to awaken senses he’d never used before. In an instant the world seemed magically transformed, and everything in it seemed to burst with what he calls a “kind of sacramental character. I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me,” he wrote, “I felt inclined to kneel on the ground… and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.”
When have you experienced something like this? we were asked. Take time to re-imagine that time in your mind, re-creating the sensory experience.
We took a minute or so of silence to really put ourselves in that moment of God’s presence from our own lives. From that place of presence, different people reported feeling loved, awed, revived, peaceful, and free. And now you could feel God’s presence in the room, because we’d taken time to notice it in our lives.
We were witnesses, in those moments, to the immediate, life-giving presence of God.
Just like Peter and John and a dozen or so others, watching the newly risen Jesus eat fish, and explain scripture.
We don’t all witness the resurrection firsthand.
But I am a witness to the all-encompassing love of God, wrapped around me by my friend in some of my darkest hours. I am a witness to the transformative compassion of God, giving life through the quiet action and open hearts of many of you in this congregation. I am a witness to the way the vividness of God’s presence in a freezing, cloudless winter sky freed my soul from the dragging anxieties of grief.
I am a witness to much more.
And so are you.
And both of us – all of us – are “sent into the world in witness to God’s love” (as we pray for Sloane and Reed to be baptized today); charged, like Peter and John, with proclaiming resurrection, repentance, and forgiveness to all nations.
It’s a big job, but we don’t do it alone. We don’t have to plan miracles, and create them from our own power. Instead, the miracles and revelation and repentance and forgiveness that we are charged with in baptism are actually Jesus’ job. Just like Peter said. “Don’t look at me like I healed this man. God did this. I’m just the witness.”
All the proclamation, the healing, the miracles, the forgiveness and transformation you and I are charged with in baptism are God’s mission, and Jesus is doing it already.
We are witnesses.
Because our witnessing helps Jesus use us in this mission. We help Jesus, like Peter and John, Continually putting ourselves in that place in which you know you’re experiencing the presence and power of God - doing over and over what we did in Vestry last Tuesday. By continually noticing how God’s presence brings revival, or profound peace, or magnificent awe.
Because when we are in that place, bearing witness by paying attention to the presence of God, God can pour presence and power through us to touch others, to heal, revive, love and free, and transform the world.
And we too are transformed, by bearing witness.
Amen.
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