Trust the Witnesses

A sermon for Easter

By Lanny Peters

Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church

March 31, 2002

"Trust the credibility of the witnesses, not their memory of the details." Last week, I talked about my experience as a juror in a criminal trial and this is what we had to struggle with as we heard conflicting accounts of the truth. "Trust the credibility of the witnesses, not their memory of the details." Since the facts did not agree, we had to decide whose witness was most trustworthy?

If you compare the gospels er to determine exactly what happened that first Easter morning, you get conflicting answers. In the two accounts we read today, Luke says there were a number of women who went to the tomb, but John says that Mary went alone. In each of the four gospels, the women encounter some type of mysterious persons or angels at Jesus’ tomb, but they don’t agree on how they appeared, how many there were, or what they said.

Matthew has Roman soldiers guarding the tomb when suddenly there is an earthquake and an angel rolls the stone away. Yet this rather dramatic event goes unmentioned by the other three gospels. In stark contrast, John’s gospel has two angels sitting calmly in the tomb, who say only, "Woman, why are you weeping?" The other two gospels also have quite different versions.

Biblical scholarship has helped us to understand at least part of the reason for this. The gospels are both the story of the earthly Jesus and at the same time they are the story of the living Christ as experienced in four different places at four different times many years after Jesus’ death. They represent four different authors with distinct personalities and theological perspectives, each using different sources. It makes sense there would be discrepancies. Given all this, it may be just as amazing there are a number of things upon which they all concur.

All agree the resurrection was a complete surprise to everyone, even Jesus’s closest followers. At our Good Friday service when the lights were all extinguished, a voice in the darkness spoke, saying, "Darkness. Emptiness. There is nothing left. That is how it must have been for the disciples. For his friends. Dark. Empty. He was dead. All their hopes were shattered. No one knew there was going to be a resurrection. Their hearts were heavy and without hope. He was just a minor political agitator after all, instead of what he said he was." (Madeline L’Engle.)

Yes, the gospels agree that despite any promises Jesus made to them, his horrible death had destroyed all hope. The disciples had scattered and were hiding in fear for their own lives.

The gospels also all agree that the first followers to come out of hiding and go to the graveyard were women. The only person mentioned in all four accounts is Mary Magdalene. This is significant because women were not allowed to be witnesses in a court of law or the Temple during that time. Having women to be the first witnesses to the resurrection would have been a bit of an embarrassment, so this unanimity of the gospels on this issue is remarkable.

There is another area in which the gospels agree. In each of the gospel accounts the empty tomb by itself is not enough to convince the disciples Jesus is alive. Even the presence of angels does not do it. Luke tells us that when the women told the male disciples Jesus was alive, they "dismissed it as an idle tale." It is only when the risen appears to them that they believe.

Is that not true for us as well. It is not the story of the empty tomb or our understanding of exactly what the facts were on that first Easter morning that will ultimately convince us. It is our experience of the risen Christ which makes us believe.

And this experience is not just an individual one. The American version of Christianity has often stressed faith in Christ as an individual thing, but in the gospels the resurrected Christ appears to the community.

It was rather mysterious that in our Lenten Reflections booklet written by church members for this year the one written for March 9 was by Warren Woolf. It turned out to be the day his granddaughter died. Warren wrote, "As all our family have dealt with Sarah’s cancer for the past year, there have been many times when we would get to feeling so far down that, as the old saying goes, ‘we would have to look up to see the bottom.’ Throughout these experiences, we have been reminded time after time that the mercies of God were being mediated through the words and actions of our dear friends. The assurances of prayers, the notes, the hugs all said to us that these were mediators of God’s mercies." Warren then wrote of January 13 when I announced that Sarah had completed her year of chemotherapy and radiation, and the entire congregation rose for a standing ovation.

It is still hard to believe Sarah would be dead in less than two months from that day. On my way to our Good Friday service, I stopped by the Woolf home. Only Shannon was home. She told me her Mom was going out with some friends and her Dad was taking her roommate and her out to celebrate her roommate’s birthday. We don’t need to go to the Good Friday service; we have had a year of Good Fridays. For Sarah’s family, it is no doubt too soon to experience very much of Easter. Yet, the experience we had two weeks ago when we were together for Sarah’s memorial service was a glimpse of the resurrection. When we rose to give Sarah another standing ovation, and other times during that service, I felt the presence of the Christ alive in this community, and I had absolutely no doubt about it.

There is something else the four gospels have in common that amazes me. In all the resurrection appearances, Jesus never says a word about how his closest friends and disciples had all denied him and abandoned him on that horrible Friday just two days before. Jesus had preached a gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation and the disciples now experience this from the resurrected Christ. The story following the scripture with which we opened our worship today in the gospel of John is this:

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

Christ wanted the disciples to experience his forgiveness and unconditional love for a purpose: so they could share it with others.

A number of years ago, Newsweek magazine carried the story of the memorial service held for Hubert Humphrey, former vice-president of the United States. Hundreds of people came from all over the world to say good-bye to their old friend and colleague. But one person who came was shunned and ignored by virtually everyone there.

Nobody would look at him, much less speak to him. That person was former president Richard Nixon. Not long before, he had gone through the shame and infamy of Watergate. He was back in Washington for the first time since his resignation from the presidency.

President Jimmy Carter, who was in the White House at that time, came into the room. Before he was seated, he saw Nixon over against the wall, all by himself. He went over to [him] as though he were greeting a family member, stuck out his hand to the former president, and smiled broadly. To the surprise of everyone there, the two of them embraced each other, and Carter said, "Welcome home, Mr. President! Welcome home!"

Commenting on that, Newsweek magazine asserted, "If there was a turning point in Nixon's long ordeal in the wilderness, it was that moment and that gesture of love and compassion." (As told by Maxie Dunnam in The Workbook on Living as a Christian, pp. 112-113.)

"Trust the credibility of the witnesses not their memory of the details." For me, Jimmy Carter is one of those witnesses of the resurrection. He is a person who inspires me with his commitment to the Christ whose first words to the community of disciples in John’s gospel, "Peace be with you." He still believes that the key to peace is through building relationships, as his upcoming trip to Cuba represents yet again. What I fear most since September 11 is we will come to believe only violence and the threat of violence will keep us safe. If that happens, the September 11 terrorists will have done more damage than we realized, for we will have rejected the way of Christ, the Prince of Peace.

In the gospel of Luke, when Jesus enters Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week, it says; "As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’ "

We think of the risen Christ appearing triumphantly to us on this day, and certainly Easter is a time for great joy and celebration. But I also believe the risen Christ who has experienced the worst life can do to us through his agonizing death on the cross has returned to be with us in our grief and our pain.

Christ is still weeping over the Middle East, weeping for Jews and Palestinians. Christ has returned to hurting and grieving places and families not to deny them their grief but to be present in it.

On my 25^th birthday, I was a newlywed teaching ninth graders physical science and living in the Baptist Student Union at East Carolina University. The campus minister, Bob Clyde, that year invited a female campus minister to come and speak at a banquet we had. It may have been the first woman minister I had ever met. Because of that and her unusual name, I never forgot her. Her name was Pitts Hughes. Yes, the one and only Pitts Hughes that sits here today, a longtime member of Oakhurst.

I have told Pitts I still remember something she said that day. She told us, "The older I get, the less I know for sure." That struck me then and now as very wise. Now I am much closer to the age Pitts was then and I can appreciate more than ever what she meant.

In those days, I spent a lot of time arguing about theology, especially with the more fundamentalist students. I had a need to convince them they were wrong about some things. Now that I look back, I realize I was trying to convince myself as much as I was them. I have a lot less need to do that anymore. At least once a month, I get a call out of the blue from someone who has read about Oakhurst who wants to argue theology with me. I used to be more willing to debate them, and occasionally still will. But most of the time now, I tell them I have just a few minutes before I need to do something else. Then I ask, "What’s on your mind." Often what follows is an earnest attempt to convince me our church has gone down the wrong path. Scripture is quoted (usually out of context) and I am exhorted to change my ways less I continue to lead this congregation down the path of destruction. Mostly I listen without interrupting much unless they say something so outrageous I cannot resist. Actually though, I listen better this way, as I am not worrying so much about what I am going to say back to them. After several minutes, I remind them I have something I need to do. Sometimes, I will try to make one point, but as often as not, I just thank them for calling. I may refer them to our website or the Alliance of Baptists website if they would like to learn more about who we are.

Pitts was right. "The older I get, the less I know for sure." But you know what made the biggest impression on me about Pitts was those things she knew for sure. One of the folks in the new members class was struggling honestly with whether her theology fit within the parameters of what our church believes. She sent me a very thoughtful e-mail about some of her concerns with things like original sin, good and evil, and whether she believed literally in the resurrection. In the midst of all this, she tells me this wonderful story of how she experienced God the day before in a way that left her weeping and full of hope.

She concluded, "Mostly, what I think Oakhurst Baptist Church has to offer me is a model for living in community, and although I am not sure I have the courage to really do that, I want to find out." She wanted to get together and listen to some of my answers to her questions. I called her up and told her, I would love to get together and talk when we could arrange it, but I wanted her to know now that as far as I was concerned, she was ready to join us right now.

I have some questions about the resurrection. It is interesting to note that one more thing the gospels all have in common is that not one of them tries to explain just exactly what happened that morning. They don’t even agree on the details of what happened after the resurrection. But what they do agree is that what kept the story of the resurrection alive were the witnesses. What drew this new person to us was not our theology. She was not even sure what that was. But she had experienced something about those who were here, the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection. When I was 40, I had been pastor here three years and I was scared to death every time I entered this pulpit. I felt this burden that I needed to bring the gospel truth to this congregation. I often felt like a fraud.

Now when I climb into this pulpit I am still a bit nervous, but I also know for sure it is not all dependent on me. A great cloud of witnesses surrounds me. Some of these are no longer physically present with us, Margaret Swain, Evelyn Peck, David Chewning, Gail Campbell, Jack Smith, and Sarah Woolf. I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who sit here today.

"Trust the credibility of the witnesses, not their memory of the details." I cannot today tell you what happened on that first Easter morning. But one of the few things I do know for sure is I truly believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ because I trust the witnesses.

And I will be so bold to say that I have become one of those witnesses. I am here to proclaim that Christ has risen. Christ is alive and present with us on this day offering us the gifts of peace and hope and love for one another. Christ has returned to invite us to join in His ministry of reconciliation. May we experience this as grace in such a way that we will be faithful, credible witnesses who proclaim boldly to the world, Christ is risen. Hallelujah. Amen.