Can I Get a Witness?
Jesus told his followers they would be his witnesses (Acts 1:8). Witness. Just tell what you’ve seen, heard, experienced. So Peter stands up to talk to a bunch of people he doesn’t know. Peter the failure. Peter the denier. Peter who betrayed his Lord. Peter the coward. He’s the witness. And what follows, of course, is Peter’s first sermon. He pulls no punches, lays it all out there–Jesus betrayed, Jesus crucified, Jesus resurrected, the sending of the Spirit by Jesus. Peter even tells the gathered people they have personal responsibility for Jesus’ death, and mentions the wicked state of their lives. Peter may be a rookie preacher, but he does pretty well–people listening are cut to the heart and gasp out “What should we do?”
Honestly, the Spirit of God has to be all over this, because let’s be honest–it’s just not that great of a sermon. No slides. No refrains. No screaming and yelling. No stories to illustrate. Peter just tells what he knows…that’s what a witness does. The church immediately grows from 120 people to 3,120. For you church growth people, it multiplied 26-fold. Not bad for a first sermon. I remember my first sermon. I was so nervous I could barely hold my Bible. And I don’t remember 3,000 people coming forward.
What happened that day in Jerusalem? I think what happened is–people actually wanted to hear. They were like a parched desert dying for water, and Peter’s sermon is the water, because he talks about Jesus. Many of us have convinced ourselves that our friends and families and communities don’t want to hear about Jesus, aren’t interested. And it is certainly true that there can be bristling hostility towards Christianity and Christians in our culture. Some of it is well deserved. But don’t fall into the trap of thinking people don’t want to know about or need to hear about Jesus.
My folks were both from Genesee, a small farming town in Central Idaho. My brother and I used to stay there with our grandparents for a week or two during the summer. Like many small towns, there’s a little country cemetery on the edge of town, and several generations of my family are buried in it. Since I’ve been a pastor, I have done a number of services there. So, fifteen years ago this summer, I found myself flying to Seattle from LA and then driving 5 ½ hours to Idaho to do a graveside service for one of my aunts. I have many of them, since my mom was one of 8 girls growing up on a farm.
When I arrived in that town of less than 1,000, I drove down the main street and saw my uncle’s insurance office, the post office where my Grandma worked, and the construction company another uncle and some cousins ran. I drove by my grandparents’ old house, then headed out the highway, past the grain elevator Grandpa worked at for decades, and turned up a dusty gravel road. The cemetery sits on a hilltop and looks out over thousands of acres of rich Palouse farmland.
At that point, I’d already buried all my grandparents in that cemetery, as well as a great uncle, and on that day in 2010 it was my Aunt Rae. Probably 75 people gathered for a short service , which started and ended with bagpipes. We had to pause a few times because an irritating crop-dusting plane kept zooming past. Most of the people were related to me in some way, or I at least knew their family. They ranged from 8 months to 90 years old. There was my mom’s cousin Bob, who told me that he was looking around the crowd trying to figure out who would be the next person to go in the ground! Every family has an Uncle Bob, right?! And there was my older and always wild cousin John who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, but still farmed some of the family property. He read a scripture, as did another cousin, Doug, who taught philosophy at Gonzaga. My folks were both alive at the time and present, as well as my little sister, and various people from the town. Several had graduated from Genesee High School with Aunt Rae, class of 1952. Put us all together, we were a motley crew. Some Christians, many who had never set foot in a church, and a few who good-naturedly described themselves to me afterwards as “heathens.” A funny family, an unlikely bunch…almost like a church, gathered on that hillside.
One of my enduring pictures came as I started to share a short homily–it had to be very short, since it was about 95 degrees out. I began with reading a scripture. And suddenly there was this holy moment (I’ve now had many on that hill). It grew very, very quiet, and as I read, I looked around and realized that everyone was listening intently and leaning forward to receive the words. Not my words, these words:
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It was absolutely silent. I think it was then that I realized why many people had come, whether they knew it or not. Sure, they were paying their respects or simply meeting an obligation. But ultimately? I think people wanted to hear about Jesus. When life and death are on the line, all of us are like parched desert, desperate for water…and Jesus IS that water.
For all of our talk and statistics about postmodern people not wanting to hear the gospel, there are plenty of people who do. It seems to me that if we want the faith communities we lead to reach out and evangelize and be excited about sharing their faith…we had better first check and see if our own lives and words are offering a compelling picture of Jesus. It’s not about preaching the world’s best sermon, and it isn’t complicated. In fact, the job description is very simple–just be a witness.
Peace of Christ,
Dan Baumgartner
Dan Baumgartner is the senior pastor at The Cove in Santa Rosa CA and formerly served as Secretary on The Fellowship Community Board.