Luke 24:36-48
April 26th 2009
"Witnesses"
Today we are talking about being witnesses for Jesus Christ. I am going to help us understand this through the lens of our Methodist heritage as well as the new addition to our Membership Vows: the vow of “witness”.
This is being added to “Prayers, presence, gifts and service,” but first a story.
“On the way to preschool to drop her daughter off, a doctor had left her stethoscope on the car seat. Her little girl picked it up and began playing with it.
Be still, my heart, thought the Doctor, my daughter wants to follow in my footsteps and be a doctor!
Then the child spoke into the stethoscope and said, “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I take your order?” Mike’s Funnies 5/3/07
This goes to show that the witness of our works can be misunderstood. We need to use words or witness to describe what we do. Lots of groups and organizations and religions do good works, acts of compassion and service. We need to let our family members and others know what we do and why in the name of Jesus.
Another story is told about “A father who was at the beach with his children when his four-year-old son ran up to him, grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore, where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
“Daddy, what happened to him?” asked the son. “He died and went to heaven,” the dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said, “Did God throw him back?” Mike’s Funnies 5/3/07
Again we need to clearly articulate our faith. These funny stories may involve children, but they as well as adults need to have a clear understanding of our witness and faith in order to be enabled to respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As it says in verse 45 “Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” We need to open our minds, understand our faith in order to help open other people’s minds.
Our scripture today gives the gospel in miniature. It is one of the most basic and succinct explanations that you can find. It occurs on the evening of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He had already appeared to the men on the road to Emmaus and they had gone back to this group hiding in the Upper Room to tell them Jesus rose from the dead, but they didn’t believe and then ‘”Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”’
He presented then two proofs of his resurrection. First, he said “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.”
Then Jesus asks for something to eat and “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.”
At that point they believed it was Jesus. They believed he had been raised from the dead and then he “Opened their minds to understand the scripture.”
Now here is what the scriptures prophesized and is the Gospel in miniature. Verses 46 and 47 read “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 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.”
This is the Gospel in miniature. This is what we need to know and need to share with others when we are asked why we do what we do as Christians. Now there are many variations on this and many ways to say it like, “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him might not parish but have everlasting life.”
But that is the basic message of the Christian faith. That is what we are called to witness to, so that when people met us and hear us and watch us serve; they know there is some deeper meaning to what we do than “Welcome to CC may we take your order and do you want fries with that.”
Jesus final call or commission is “You are witnesses of these things.” We as believers are not giving an option. We are witnesses of these things and we can be good, bad or mediocre witnesses, but when we take the name of Christ upon us as Christians we become witnesses.
Now the word witness here has two meanings. The first is in the sense of being an “eyewitness”. Only these disciples and the others Jesus appeared to from the time of his resurrection to ascension can be witnesses in that sense.
The other sense of this word “witness” is “one who can testify to the gospel.” In other words one who can articulate that the Messiah was to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sin is to be proclaimed in his name.”
Of the two this is the only sense in which you and I can be witnesses, because we can’t be eyewitnesses to when Jesus walked the earth and we didn’t see him when he was raised from the dead. And for every generation of Christians after the first generation it has been the same.
We are to be witnesses in the sense that we articulate the gospel by what we say and what we do.
Now here is the problem why “witness” has been added to our membership vows. First, we haven’t been doing it very well. The nature of our culture and world has changed. We have gone from a “Modern” world view to a “post modern” world view. That means whatever we have been doing to witness to the world and make disciples in the past is now no longer working for the most part.
In the “Modern” world of America we were a Christian culture full of “cultural Christians”. It used to be much easier to start and build churches in America because of the culture. Our culture helped the churches produce Christians. Today that era has passed and I don’t have the time here to go into it all, but it is very well documented in many books on the subject and in chapters 8 & 10 of “The American Church in Crisis” by David T. Olson
And our culture is changing even more. Here is a quote from the just named book: “Christian ministry faces more challenges today than it did 20 years ago. Many of the people in the emerging culture do not share the philosophical assumptions of 50-year-old churches or even churches that are just 20 years old. Largely unaware of these changes, many churches continue to operate in modes and mentalities that no longer resonate with our culture.” The American Church in Crisis p. 161
Unfortunately the statistics bear this out. From 2000 to 2005 worship attendance at mainline churches in Arizona has declined 17.6 percent even as Arizona experienced explosive population growth. It is down even more today.
Worship attendance is the main indicator of church health. In those years here at Christ Church worship attendance has not been immune to this trend.
If we focus on the problem we will all get so down that we will give up, but let us not forget the miracle of today’s scripture story and the hope that is in it, God even raises the dead to life!!!! When we listen and follow God, God will raise us up!
We will be different for Jesus’ body certainly was different in that his resurrection body could pass through closed doors, but yes indeed he was raised and so shall we. When Jesus raises up the church it will still look like the church, but it will be different it will be able to speak to today’s & tomorrow’s culture and be heard.
The solution is to do what Jesus Christ told us to do; to not depend on society, or culture, or the Annual Conference, or the Bishop or the Pastor to make disciples, to witness. The solution is that each and every one of us witness and we as a church make witnessing and making disciples our number one priority, in fact our only priority.
Our Mission statement, our purpose for being in the United Methodist church is this: “To make disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the world.” Now this is a more balanced approach to the Christian life than you might think and in a moment I will get into that, but here is the history of our new membership vow to “witness”.
This comes out of our General Conference last year and I quote, “The United Methodist membership mantra: (was) “prayers, presence, gifts and service.” In some of our congregations, these words became the only “membership vows” many of our people knew, despite the fact that our Discipline names all the vows of the baptismal covenant as requirements for professing membership. When the Association of Annual Conference Lay Leaders submitted its proposal to GBOD, our Board agreed that the vows of “prayers, presence, gifts and service” were primarily “inwardly” focused and institutional in character.
They offered little insight or inspiration for disciples of Jesus Christ to engage in God’s mission of transforming the world….. Adding “and witness” to the list (“prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness”) may help our members, new and old, to recognize their responsibilities not only to “show up” but to “show forth” God’s saving love in all that we do.”
As I have said in sermons recently, “When we become inwardly focused we begin to die. We become older and smaller as older members die and new ones are not brought into our church.”
To move into the future we need to grow younger as a church by getting in younger members and by doing that we will grow larger. Our number one priority needs to be on children, youth and their parents or we will continue to just grow older until we disappear.
Now how do we do this without people misunderstanding us and we being ignorant of what to say and do? How do we balance witnessing with the transformation of the world for by this point I really hope someone has been asking in their mind well how about taking care of the homeless, the hungry, the sick, the stranger etc.
In your bulletin you will find what is called “The General Rule of Discipleship.” Take a look at that now and read it. This comes out of our Wesleyan tradition. It is a rule to shape our life and ministry together. It is a way of keeping our personal and church lives in balance as we seek to witness to the world.
Let us read this together, “To witness to Jesus Christ in the world, and to follow his teachings through acts of compassion, justice, worship and devotion under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
Note those four areas on the corners of the Jerusalem cross. The primary purpose is “witness”. We as a church have forgotten this. We have gotten into a bad habit. We have gotten out of balance and thus grown smaller. These when practiced together and practiced as a means of witness will indeed make us grow.
We will fulfill our commission of Jesus to be “witnesses of these things.”
HERE IS A SHORT VIDEO CLIP ON THIS FROM MY ‘GRACE STUDY’
The application of all this is that nothing we do here should go on without reference to Jesus!! No program should be done here, or engaged in here without witnessing in some way to Jesus. Cookies delivered to AIDS patients need to be delivered in the name of Jesus. Food given out needs to be done in the name of Jesus with the offer to participate in Christian Discipleship ie an invitation to worship which I know is happening. When we host the homeless overnight the invitation needs to come for worship and inclusion in the body of Christ.
If we are to turn things around and I am sure we can otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to preach this sermon: no person, no program, no ministry, no committee, no choir, no Bible study that is done here at Christ Church should be exempt from the necessity, absolute necessity of witnessing to Jesus Christ of making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.
We all need to be on one page with one goal, one purpose, one mission. We need to not be doing our own thing. Every committee meeting, every group, ministry, every service we provide, every Bible study needs to be able to readily answer the questions, “What are you doing to make disciples of Jesus Christ?"
Next week I am going to continue speaking to this. I am going to give you examples of churches and individuals that have put such thinking and words into action. I will tell you about a church mainly of older members who transformed itself into a younger one. I will tell you the story of an inner city church, huge old structure that was pruned down to 13 members before growing back to 9,000.
We worship a God who brings the dead back to life. We worship a God that inspires people to witness like this and I close with this. I know a man who is deeply committed to Christ who was in a serious car accident. He was hauled off to the hospital in an ambulance and admitted in ER.
This man hurt so bad from the impact and seatbelt he could hardly breathe, but while the ER Doctor checked him out he invited the ER Doctor to worship. The ER Doctor got angry and turned him down because of the stance many churches hold about homosexuality and told him so, but the man still persisted in his pain and through the rejection to invite. This man attends here and what I am saying is we need to become more like him.
And I know some attend here Sunday after Sunday and every joint in your body hurts. I know some who worship here who can hardly lift their eyes to the cross but week after you are here. Your faithfulness and the witness of your presence inspires me and others and I salute you for it today.
Finally, related to this, our Administrative council is this Tuesday. Part of what we absolutely need to deal with this month is leadership for our children’s ministry area. Pastor Alicia is leaving and this was half of her duties. We need to decide what to do. We will need people to volunteer to step up and lead and we will need funds in the future depending on what direction we go. So be there and witness to your faith and commitment to the future of our church.
Amen
