Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter, 26th April 2009

We are witnesses

Today's lessons: click to read

St Paul said, 'Pray for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel … [Eph. 6:19] So I pray. Amen.

Thank you for resisting the temptation to run a marathon today or to stay with your Austin 7 at the show in Cobham Park. It's good to be in church. Some of us have been away, have had a nice holiday, perhaps ski-ing. Don't worry. You haven't really missed Easter. The season of Easter lasts up to Whit Sunday at the end of next month.

Easter is at the heart of what it is to be Christian. In the Creed we say,

'For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,

He suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again.

What do you really think about that? We heard last week about Doubting Thomas. Today I've just read you, in Luke's gospel, about another time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he had risen from the dead.

It's clear that they were very sceptical – they thought they were seeing a ghost. Hence Jesus felt he had to get quite basic and physical – come and touch me – 'handle me' in the Authorised Version – and he eats some fish in front of them. No ghost could do that.

So it isn't a question that, if you're a Christian, you're expected to suspend your normal critical faculties. The disciples were normal people, not some kind of 'God squad' ultra-religious types.

And then both here in Luke's story and also in his account of what St Peter said to the people in Solomon's Portico in Jerusalem in the other lesson today from Acts [which you can read in the reading sheet afterwards], we get these words -

'You are witnesses' in Luke, Jesus addressing the disciples, and then 'We are witnesses' in Acts, St Peter addressing the Israelites. Witnesses.

As some of you may know, I'm a lawyer, a solicitor by profession. I specialise in maritime law. Now one of the things I have most enjoyed in my practice is taking witness statements. When something has happened – perhaps a cargo of fruit has gone 'off' on the voyage, or a ship has run aground and spilled oil, or there has been a collision at sea – I have had to go and interview the ship's officers and crew, and produce a Proof of Evidence, a witness statement. I've enjoyed doing it because it got me out of the office and I've usually had to visit some interesting port somewhere. For instance, I remember flying to Milan and then cruising down the autostrade in beautiful sunshine all along the Riviera coast in a little Alfa Romeo which I had rented, all the way to Livorno where the ship was; it's the sort of thing people do on their holidays, but I was getting paid to do it!

But seriously, being a witness is, and always has been, a vital part of the legal process. If in court someone says that something happened, if it's simply their word against someone else's, it may be impossible for the court to decide, beyond reasonable doubt, what really happened.

But if somebody's story has a witness to back it up, it is corroborated, strengthened. There is corroborating evidence that something happened. The best evidence comes from a witness.

Now the Romans had a well-developed legal system – and the Jews certainly understood the value of evidence provided by witnesses. In Deuteronomy, in the law of Moses, a criminal could not be convicted or condemned to death on the evidence of a single witness: there had to be two or three witnesses [Deut. 17:6, 19:15-21].

So when Jesus, or Peter, used the word 'witness' – 'you are witnesses', they would have understood that this was serious, rational evidence – it would stand up in court.

But I suppose we have to allow for the passage of time. If we were reading the gospel at the time when it was written, perhaps thirty years after Jesus' death, clearly the fact that the story of Jesus' death and resurrection was written by someone who knew the actual witnesses – people who were there – must have made it very compelling.

Now perhaps, it hasn't quite got the same impact. 2,000 years of Easters have removed some of the shock value.

But it's still true that there were a lot of witnesses. Something really extraordinary happened. The witnesses testified, that Jesus rose from the dead.

There are really no alternatives. You have to confront this. If you decide that it's all too far-fetched: if you think, as Mary Magdalene did at first, (and as Jews still do) that the gardener took away Jesus' body, where does that leave you?

The whole point of the resurrection is that Jesus died as a man, but he was also God, so he was not defeated by death. He rose again.

Perhaps another way of putting it is this. What if it's true? You may be shocked – affronted – to hear me say that. But compare notes in the light of our other lesson today, from John's first letter. This was most likely a letter written by the same John who wrote John's Gospel. And it's likely that this John was John the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was certainly a witness.

Look at what this John says. 'Beloved, we are God's children now. … And all who have this hope in him sanctify themselves, make themselves pure, a race apart: just as he is pure, sanctified … Everyone who commits sin also does what is unlawful: and sin is lawlessness.'

So John is saying that everyone who knows this stupendous fact, that Jesus is the Messiah, the chosen one of God, and that he rose from the dead as a sign of this, will have his life utterly changed.

Doing what is 'unlawful' in this context is what is against God's law, not necessarily against the law of the land. So if you do something which implies that you don't love the Lord your God, or your neighbour as yourself – or if you do something which means that you don't love one another – maybe it's because the true perception, the true understanding, of what the witnesses saw at the first Easter, has faded from your mind.

It's not the case that you need to do good deeds and follow the law of Moses in order to be saved. The Easter story is not about that. Jesus died and he was raised again. Nothing to do with us, in the sense that he didn't rise again because of good things we had done.

Similarly, I have difficulty understanding his death as being in some way caused by things we, the human race, have done. Although the Bible says, 'He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins'[1 John 2:2], I think this has more to do with looking back to the various ancient, primitive rules for sacrifices given in Leviticus in the Old Testament, than seriously to suggest that the God of love demands blood sacrifices. Better I think to understand Christ's death as his ultimate sharing of our human nature.

So what if, indeed, it is true? Then Jesus, and Peter, and St Paul – they have all told us what we have to do. We must 'repent therefore, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out. …'

You can't keep it at arm's length. 'I'll just have a little dose of church today and it'll make me a better person'. That doesn't work. We are God's children now. Remember those witnesses.

Amen.