In
news stories about trials and in television courtroom dramas, often the
turning point in the decision is based upon the testimony of a witness. Someone
who was there. Someone who saw or heard what happened. Someone who was
involved, perhaps. And more times than not, it is a difficult thing to get up
on the stand and tell the story of what the person has seen.
You know how it goes on “Law and
Order.” Just by naming the perpetrator or by saying what they did, the witness
puts himself at risk. Friends or family of the perpetrator may threaten the
witness. If the accused gets off, they may go after the witness and silence
them forever. It’s a familiar plot device in such stories, this notion that
serving as a witness carries a risk.
And so it goes in this morning’s
first reading, from Acts of the Apostles. It’s the story of a witness and the
consequences of testimony.
“But wait,” you may ask. There’s no
courtoom. There is no judge, no jury. It’s one guy. Stephen, and he’s preaching
and then the people to whom he is preaching stone him to death.
Stephen is identified as the first
martyr of the Christian movement. He is a follower of Christ, a deacon of the
early church. He was pressed into service as a deacon in Acts chapter 6, to be
of service to poor widows. And he is doing precisely what Christ instructed all
his followers to do: to tell the story of the Son of God.
So Stephen is bearing witness to his
own understanding of Jesus Christ, preaching to a less-than-receptive crowd,
the Greek speaking Jewish population. Some of their leaders accused him of
blasphemy, and challenged him. So he responded with a very long sermon about
how Jesus was the Messiah and how they were wrong. He called them ‘stiff-necked,’
which seems to be one of the worst things you could call a person in those
days, and they got pretty hot about it. As they prepared to take action against
him, he had a vision of God in heaven – the words we heard this morning – and announced
this vision to those who were getting ready to stone him to death, the
prescribed punishment for blasphemers. Among the crowd that day was the
Pharisee Saul, the same Saul who later became the apostle Paul. Stephen gave
his testimony and got the sort of result that all witnesses fear – he died for
speaking the truth.
There’s a long tradition of this sort
of thing happening to Christians. Jesus Christ was killed for speaking the
truth. Many of his disciples after Stephen died, for speaking the truth.
And so we call Stephen a martyr,
someone who died because of his belief. But if we look at the word “martyr,” we
see that it actually comes from a Greek word that translates as “witness.”
Now there’s a scary proposition.
Being a witness can lead to death. Testifying for our understanding of the truth
of Jesus Christ our savior can lead to martyrdom.
It offers a whole range of questions
that we might ask in response to the situation.
Does this mean that Jesus isn’t going
to help us if we try to tell his story?
Why would anyone want to become a voice
for this church if it gets you killed?
Shouldn’t the bad people get smited,
like in the Old Testament?
Wouldn’t it be better to just pray to
ourselves and keep our mouths shut? Why take the risk?
They’re all good questions. We've come to equate the act of being a witness with risk. I expect
that we have so internalized our protective mechanisms that we rarely notice
that we never serve as witnesses to Christ in our lives. We rarely tell the
story of how we have been changed by his saving grace. We rarely say that we
have been saved, because we are afraid either consciously or unconsciously of
losing our lives, or at the very least the respect of our friends or families
or co-workers.
We may come to church on Sunday. We
may wear a cross around our neck, or have a little fish symbol on our bumper,
but those are such tepid signs of witness to the transforming power of Jesus
Christ in our lives.
We don’t want to take the risk. We
don’t want to face the fact that we are not able to step up and say what we
believe. Why? Because someone might think we were ignorant or superstitious or
silly because we believe?
It certainly isn’t because our own
lives are at risk.
But then I think of other witnesses.
Martyrs. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who went back to Germany
in the late 1930s when he could have stayed safe as a professor in a seminary
in New York City, because he felt he had to bear witness to the horror that was
the Holocaust, and who was executed by Hitler’s regime. Like the Catholic
activist Dorothy Day, who was vilified as a Communist because of her positions
on pacifism and social justice, who now is considered a saint. Like Archbishop
Oscar Romero, murdered while he was celebrating Holy Eucharist because he
opposed the oppressive regime of his country and preached against it. Like Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated for continuing to fight for equal justice
and opportunity for all. They witnessed for their faith and they paid the
price.
Sounds like a great advertisement for
the faith, doesn’t it? Join us and we’ll get you killed.
Why, then, would anyone follow
Christ, knowing that Christ’s charge to us is to be witnesses, and knowing that
being a witness is something that carries risk. The hearer of our testimony may
not want to hear it. They may act against us because of it.
And yet, there is that compulsion,
that drive to speak the truth. Jesus died but lives. Jesus has saved us. Jesus
helps us understand what real love looks like and walks with us in all we do.
Not a message that many people hear
these days, when they need it most of all.
Why would we share it? Because we can’t
not say it.
We might not preach like Stephen. We
might not have that vision of what heaven looks like – the glory of God and
Jesus standing at God’s right hand – but we do have something. We have a sense
of the final prize of eternal life.
So our witness might preaching – for some
folks this is their gift – but for many of us, our witness is our life.
How do we live? Do we live in a way
that is the embodiment of what Jesus Christ taught us, to love God and to love
each other? Do we live in a way that shows the world that our values are not
based on things like money or power or fame, but on service and simplicity and
respect? Do we honor those whom society vilifies? Do we speak for those who
have no voice? Do we imagine a world where the most beautiful thing is the
peace of God, a meal and water for every child, safety and equal opportunity?
And then, most importantly, what do
we do about it? Can we be witnesses who have slain our own fears so that the
world can be rid of its brokenness? Can we allow our own egos to be martyred in
service to a greater good? Can we imagine the place that Stephen saw, that Jesus
spoke of in the Gospel, and can we help bring that to earth today and tomorrow
and the next day?
Can we be speakers of truth and
creators of a world that lives that truth, one word and one person at a time?
Amen.
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