Chosen as Witnesses

Homily for Sunday, April 17, 2022
Easter Day
Acts 10:34–43
Luke 24:1–12

We are witnesses to all that he did…. God raised him on the third day
and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses.
– Acts 10:39 & 41

These words, spoken by Peter to a “large crowd” (10:27, NIV) gathered at the house of Cornelius (a Roman Centurion), beg the question: “If the Resurrection really happened and was so important, why did God allow Jesus ‘to appear, not to all the people but [only] to us who were chosen by God as witnesses?’”  Had God allowed Jesus to appear to all people—to everyone, including (why not?) everyone in the world of all time (which, God being God, God surely could do)—it would have spared the Church a lot of trouble.  On Sunday mornings our churches would be packed, the Gospel message would go forward unhindered, and our world surely would be a kinder, gentler place.  (Surely…)  But instead of allowing Jesus to appear to all the people, “God…allowed [Jesus] to appear, not to all the people, but,” said Peter, only “to us who were chosen by God as witnesses.”

Perhaps God allowed Jesus to appear, not to all the people, but only to those who were chosen by God as witnesses because (for reasons known only to God) being a messenger of such an improbable message might be in some strange way good for us; for as Paul says, “suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom 5:3–5).  Perhaps God allowed Jesus to appear, not to all the people, but only to those who were chosen because (for reasons known only to God) God wanted us to experience like Jeremiah having “something like…fire shut up in our bones” (20:9), or God wanted us to experience like Paul “being in [the] pain of childbirth until Christ is formed” in those around us (Galatians 4:19).  Or perhaps God allowed Jesus to appear, not to all, but only to those who were chosen because God (for reasons known only to God) wants to keep the Church small, leaving others (as Mark’s Gospel suggests) to “indeed look, but not perceive,” to “indeed listen, but not understand” (Mk 4:12).

Whatever God’s reason for allowing Jesus to appear, not to all the people, but only to a few chosen witnesses, it leaves those of us here “on the ground,” as it were—those of us who this morning gather to celebrate the Resurrection—in an awkward place.  We are bearers of an important message, but that message is often incommunicable; we have news that could change the world, but we can’t always convey that news.  And perhaps we aren’t sure even if we want to convey it, for we know that the world often regards the Resurrection (as the disciples first did in today’s Gospel) as “an idle tale” and does not believe it.  Or perhaps we ourselves have misgivings about the Resurrection and do not “believe” it.

As we are in this awkward place, I wonder if we might focus, not so much on if or how to tell about the Resurrection, or on whether or not we ourselves “believe,” but I wonder if we might focus rather on the experience of the disciples, to whom at first the Resurrection “seemed…an idle tale, and they did not believe [it]…”  but to whom nonetheless God allowed Jesus to appear and who were chosen by God as witnesses.

In regards to the disciples, three things.  First: If the disciples are any indication, God has room for regarding the Resurrection as “an idle tale.”  If even the disciples, who are among the Church’s greatest saints, at first did not believe, God has room for us who may not believe.  Second: If the disciples are any indication, the Resurrection is not something God expects us to “believe” either without first having had a felt and lived experience of the risen Christ.  As with the disciples, God doesn’t expect us to “believe” without an experience of resurrection.  Lastly: Peter says that the disciples were “chosen by God as witnesses.”  If what Jesus says in John’s Gospel is true—that “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (15:16)—those of us here this morning are here not so much because we chose to be here, but rather because Jesus chose for us to be here.  We have been “chosen by God.”

Of these three—1) God has room for disbelief, 2) God does not expect belief without first having had experience, and 3) we are chosen—I want to circle back to the second, “God does not expect belief without first having had experience.”

“But how,” you may ask, “am I supposed to have an experience of the risen Christ, which you say happened 2,000 years ago and that I did not see?”  “Do you think,” I would ask in return, “that resurrection has ceased to happen?”  “Consider your own life, your experience of living in this body, in this world.  Consider your own life and tell me if you have not seen new life arise where all seemed dead.  Pay attention to your own life and tell me if you have not in your darkest moments experienced at least glimmers of hope, peace and assurance, all signs of resurrection.  Examine and look carefully and tell me if you have not experienced if only for a moment the wideness of God’s mercy, the broadness of God’s love, the healing ‘in the blood.’”  For it is there—there!—in those flashes of light, often in dark moments, that God allows Jesus to appear, not merely to anybody in a general kind of way, but to us as unique individuals whom God loves and cherishes…and who have been “chosen by God as witnesses.”

For those who may be skeptical of what I say in regards to point number two (that God does not expect belief without first having had experience), I refer you back to points one and three: God has room for regarding resurrection as “an idle tale,” and… you have been “chosen by God as witnesses.”  Keep looking at your life, keep paying attention, keep praying.  Because we who are here this morning have been “chosen by God as witnesses.”  Our world is in many ways fallen and depending on us to bear witness to Christ’s message of raising up.  Our world is in many ways grown old and is depending on us to bear witness that in Christ all is made new.  We live in a world in which much is broken, and the world is counting on us, counting on you, to help bear witness to the power of Christ’s resurrection at work even now, always and everywhere, to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.  Look around, pay attention!  For Christ is risen, he is at work in your life.  And you have been “chosen by God as witnesses.”

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