Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn

Witnesses
Text: Acts 3: 12-19

NRS Acts 3
¹²When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, "You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? ¹³The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. ¹⁴But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, ¹⁵and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. ¹⁶And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.¹⁷And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. ¹⁸  In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. ¹⁹Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.

            Dear Friends in Christ, may the Lord keep all your days and deeds in the peace that passes all human understanding; for the sake of Jesus the Messiah.  Amen. 

From today’s First Lesson you can tell that St. Peter never attended seminary.  In seminary they teach you to start your sermons on a warm, friendly note.  The preacher-in-training is exhorted to engage his or her audience with a winsome smile and a hearty salutation, like “Dearly Beloved,” or “Brothers and Sisters,” or my favorite, “Dear Friends in Christ.”  But how does St. Peter start his Temple sermon in today’s reading from Acts 3?  Basically, he begins, “You idiots!” 
Peter doesn’t use that exact phrase, but he might as well have.  The apostle’s sermon follows his healing of a man lame from birth.  For years the lame man had been carried to the Jerusalem Temple to beg for alms at the gate called Beautiful.  For years he’d been consigned to view humanity from the feet up while waiting for coins to fall from the hands of people entering the Temple.  He’d been begging for so many years that his voice had, more than likely, grown flat and toneless, “Alms-alms-alms.”  But when he begs from Peter and John, they ask something of him, “Look at us.”  When the lame man’s eyes meet Peter’s, the apostle says to him, “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” (Acts 3: 6).  When the lame man gets up, not only does he start walking but also leaping and praising God at the top of his voice.  When the people recognize this man dancing a jig as the same man who lay paralyzed for so many years at the Beautiful Gate, the crowd’s attention shifts to Peter and John, whereupon Peter says, in effect, “What are you looking at?”

Again, those aren’t Peter’s exact words, but pretty close.  In the opening verse of our First Lesson, Peter says, “You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?”  Like I said, “What are you looking at?”  On the other hand, what Peter then proceeds to tell these Israelites makes his opening seem like Shakespeare.  Peter continues by extolling Jesus as glorified by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but then tells his audience that this is the same Jesus (quote) “whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him” (v. 13).  Pow!  But Peter then follows that hard right with a smashing left, “But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you” (v. 14).  Bam!  Those Israelites had to be reeling, when Peter pulls out a power punch straight to the gut, “And,” he says, “you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (v. 15).  Oof!  Peter then backs off a bit and seems to try to smooth things over by calling his listeners “friends,” but then he says, “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (v. 17).  In other words, “You idiots!” 

Let’s face it, Peter is no Keith Stone, the smooth-talking, jerky-eating spokesperson for Keystone Light.  The Peter we hear speaking in today’s lesson from Acts is the same Peter we’ve come to know and love in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John:  impulsive, blunt, tactless, the first to confess Christ and the first to deny him, the first to step out the boat and the first to drown.  There’s a reason, you know, that Jesus called him Rock, or if you please, Rocky.  (Yes, think Sylvester Stallone.)  This was a man who got his education in the back of a fishing boat.  You can paint a halo around his head, put “St.” in front of his name, give him the keys to the kingdom, and robe him in white with the martyrs of old, but he’s still just plain old Rock, Rocky, or as he’s known in St. Bernard Parish, Rocco.  So it’s no surprise that his sermon provokes the ire of the priests, the captain of the Temple, and the Sadducees!  No surprise that Peter and John are arrested that day and dragged before the council the next!  But what’s surprising, nay, amazing, is that according to Acts, “many of those who heard [his] word believed; and they numbered about five thousand” (Acts 4: 4).

How does that happen?  How does a man with the social skills of a ball-peen hammer win 5,000 converts to Christ with a sermon that wouldn’t pass muster in a first-year preaching class?  The short answer:  the Holy Spirit!  The Holy Spirit gave wings to Peter’s hard words to find a soft spot in the hearts of the people who gathered around him that afternoon in the Temple.   But let’s also remember that the Holy Spirit would have had nothing to work with if Peter hadn’t made his witness.  And make no mistake, this was Peter’s witness.  What if Peter had testified to Christ in the Cynic-Stoic diatribe style of the Apostle Paul?  What if Peter had attempted to extol Jesus in the exalted Christology of the Evangelist John? What if Peter had preached Christ in the quirky, parabolic manner of Mark’s Gospel?   That testimony would, I think, have fallen flat on its face.  It would have come off as inauthentic, phony, somebody else’s words coming out of another man’s mouth. But Peter spoke from his own center.  He spoke of what he had seen, and experienced, and knew in the depths of his own soul.  That’s what it means to be a witness, and that’s the kind of witness the Holy Spirit can make glow like burning coals. 

And here’s the Good News:  To make your witness you don’t have to be Peter or Paul or have a seminary degree or be anybody but yourself.  In fact, God forbid that you should even try to sound like anybody else.  Every once in a while I look back through my files and I find a sermon that makes me want to weep, not because it was so moving, but because I was trying to preach like Arndt Halvorson, or Roy Harrisville, or any of the other great teacher-preachers I’ve heard over the years.  They were great because they had found their own voice, but more importantly, they trusted the Holy Spirit to use their voice, however imperfect, to a purpose greater than themselves. 

We hear the word “witness” and we get all creeped out because we think of Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing our doorbells or Crusaders for Christ buttonholing us in the airport to ask, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”  If that’s what it means to be a witness for Christ, then I guess I’m not going to make that cut.  That’s not my witness, and my hunch is that for most of you, it’s not your witness, either.  But you do have a witness. 
Maybe your witness is more like the disciples in today’s Gospel, who, when Jesus appears in their midst, practically jump out of their sandals, terrified that he’s a ghost.  Even after they see his hands and feet, they’re elated, but still disbelieving and doubtful.  Jesus eats a piece of broiled fish to show them his corporeality, but they still don’t quite get it.  Jesus has to teach them the Scriptures and open their minds and only then can they be the witnesses that God has called them to be. 
That’s a portrait of most Christians.  We hear the good news of resurrection, but we still have our doubts and questions, “How, why, when, is this for real?”  But then we learn some Scripture, we hear the testimony of others, and we begin to see.  From out of our own congregation we see quilts going to tsunami victims.  We see fresh, clean, safe water from mountain springs flowing to villages that were previously devastated by water-borne diseases.  We see 42,000 meals purchased through our local food bank because of the generosity of a Christian couple who believed in you and me to do the right thing with the money they gave us.  And now we see something like 500 mosquito nets being purchased from your contributions to alleviate the plague of malaria.  We see God at work in our hands and arms and legs doing Christ’s ministry, and to this we are witnesses. 

We’re not shy about bragging on the Tiger baseball team.  We’re pretty darn quick to celebrate the achievements of our kids and grandkids, nieces and nephews.  We don’t miss an opportunity to boast on the character of our magnificent nation.  We can do no less for the God who brings light and life, health and healing, hope and promise to every corner of this creation.  For to this we are witnesses.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.