“You are witnesses of these things.” Notice the phrasing. Jesus did not say “you will be witnesses” or “you can be witnesses” or even “be witnesses.” This isn’t a request, an invitation, or even a command; it’s a statement. You are witnesses. You are.
This is a statement because being a witness is not a choice. Bearing witness, actually telling someone what you have seen, acting on what you’ve witnessed, that is a choice, but being a witness is not. It’s in the very definition of the word, to witness something is to see it, not to believe it, not to understand it, or even to talk about it, it’s simply to see it. When the disciples saw Jesus in their presence, they became witnesses. And when we gather here, around the font and the table, and experience Jesus in the gathered community, we too become witnesses.
We are witnesses to these things. That’s the good news, we are witnesses. Already, now, we are witnesses. There’s nothing we have to do to earn witness status, it is a result of being in the presence of what God has done in our midst. We are witnesses. The challenge then, and the invitation, is given the inevitable fact of our witnesses status, what do we do, who shall we be, how shall we live, as witnesses? For that, we turn to Acts.
The Acts reading this morning comes from a sermon by Peter. But before we get to the sermon itself, let’s set the stage a little bit. Acts chapter three began with Peter and John going to the temple to pray. At the gate of the temple, they met a man who was lame from birth. Everyday his friends would bring this man to the temple gate, where he would lay and beg for alms from those coming to worship. As Peter and John approached this man, Peter looked at him and said to him, “Look at us.” And the man did, clearly expecting he was going to get something from them. Peter then said, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk.” And immediately, the man was healed and he got up and began to leap and praise God, and everyone was amazed.
When I read the account of this miracle, the first thing that caught my attention was Peter’s words, “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you.” Peter probably wasn’t lying; he very likely didn’t have any silver or gold. First off, being an apostle, especially in the days and weeks immediately after Jesus’ ascension was not exactly lucrative work. But also just a few verses earlier we heard about how the community of believers pooled all their resources together, and Peter wasn’t the keeper of the purse.
But I think it’s important that Peter made this statement because it shows us that Peter wasn’t hearing the man’s request for money and choosing to give him healing instead. Now, one can argue, and probably correctly, that what Peter gave was of more value than silver or gold, but the question addressed here is not which is more valuable, gold and silver or prayer. Peter wasn’t making a judgment call on what he thought this man really needed. Peter was literally giving the man the only thing he had, healing in the name of Jesus Christ. Last week we talked about how the work of the Christian community can be summed up simply as “see a need, meet it,” and that is what Peter did here. He saw a need, a beggar who needed money, and he didn’t have money, so he met that need with a thing he did have, healing in the name of Jesus.
And the crowd, understandably, was amazed. After all, this person whom they’d known for so long as the man who lay helpless at the gate to the temple was not just standing, but leaping for joy! To which Peter was like, friends, what’s the big deal? “Why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power and piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus… To this we are witnesses.” Did you catch that, it’s the witnesses thing from Luke again. “To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong.”
I think the point Peter was making here was this miracle wasn’t his doing. He wasn’t some superstar apostle filled with this special power from on high that allowed him to do these amazing things. He was a witness, a witness just like you and me. The only thing Peter did to make this healing take place was be in a location where someone was in need of healing. The healing came through the authority of Jesus, but because Peter was the one standing in front of the guy who needed to be healed, Peter got to be the vessel through which Jesus performed a miracle.
Peter showed up at the right place at the right time, and that literally was how he got cast in his role in the thing. We know from the text itself that Peter wasn’t prepared to help the beggar. The guy asked for money and Peter was all, “nope, sorry, I don’t have any of that, but I can give you this other thing.” And yeah, like we said, the other thing turned out to be better, but that doesn’t change the fact that Peter didn’t give him money because Peter didn’t have any.
The central question in Acts is what does it mean to be an Easter church, how are we to be now that we are witnesses to the resurrection? And this story in Acts shows us that the most important thing we can do is show up and do something. Had I been in Peter’s shoes, I can think of a million and one ways I could have overthought this problem. A million questions I might have asked myself, directions I may have gone in, possibilities I would have weighed and rejected. The result of all this thought would more than likely have paralyzed me to inaction, ending in me hurrying past the man silently hoping he didn’t catch my eye and I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I didn’t know what to do, so I chose instead not to try. But Peter was like, well, let’s try this, and boom, there you go. Just like last week, I think the message for us in this reading is to not over think the work of the church because being God’s people in the world is almost comically easy. Show up, do something, and then see what the Author of life does with that thing.
I don’t know about you, but in an increasingly complex world, this feels like incredible good news. Because maybe it’s my curious nature or my status as a skeptical millennial, but it seems like the more I learn about any issue, the less clear I become on what a solution might be. I want to do the right thing to bring about justice and peace and life into the world, but like we’ve talked about so often, doing what is right in the real world is never as clear cut as the parables would make them seem. How generous is generous enough? What group is the best use of my time? Does the result outweigh the cost? Can I be sure that I know all the information, that I am making the right action, that I am helping the right cause? Pilate scoffed at Jesus, “What is truth?” and the more I know, the less I am sure what truth really is. When I look at all these questions and possibilities, needs and divided attentions and very real issues, it is so easy to become paralyzed into inaction. But the example Peter sets here is to not get bogged down by not having the right answer, and instead trying an answer. Unlike Peter, I don’t have the power to command the lame to walk, but I do have other gifts. So just as Peter was not paralyzed by his lack of financial resources, I too can not let myself be paralyzed by my lack of miracle performing skills and I at least try something. And who knows what Jesus might do with that effort.
In Easter we celebrate that the risen Christ has come back from the dead, has defeated death, and has brought us and all of creation into new life in him. To this we are witnesses. Not by any doing of our own, but simply by being in the presence of this promise. We are witnesses. It is time to stop waiting until we feel like we have everything we need, because that fact alone is enough. We are witnesses, everything else is from Jesus. Amen.
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