Picture yourself gathered for worship in your church. The announcements are finished, and the worship team is in full voice. Just as the congregation enters into a quiet refrain on one of your favorite worship songs, you are startled by a terrible sound and the building begins to shake. Your quick consideration of a second Pentecost is replaced by the blare of emergency sirens and the chaotic scrambling of your fellow parishioners. Before long, one of the people that always hangs out in the foyer during worship (every church seems to have them) comes bursting through the doors announcing, “Something crashed into our parking lot! All the cars are on fire and there’s a huge crater in our yard!”
What a Sunday, right? The first responders and the reporters descend on your church to try and figure out what happened. As the hours pass the coverage expands to interviews with the Chief of Police, the Federal Aviation Department, a UFO conspiracist, a meteorologist, and an Astrophysicist. Everyone is desperate to know what happened.
Sometime in the late afternoon the endless loop of repeated coverage is interrupted by a breaking news alert. It seems that at the time of impact, one of the greeters, a sainted soul loved and respected by everyone, was watching the parking lot for a guest she had invited. She saw the whole thing. She knows what happened. She can verify that it was a large fireball and it seemed to come out of nowhere.
Immediately, she is the star of all the coverage. Her simple, non-sensationalized truth far outweighs the conjecture and opinions of all the so called experts.
A simple witness trumps an expert every time.
I’m thinking about the women at the tomb of the crucified Jesus. They weren’t experts, the culture prohibited their formal rabbinical training. They weren’t generally respected. Jesus and the early church honored women, but first-century culture often did not. But they had something all the experts and religious leaders didn’t. They were witnesses. They had seen the whole thing. When the disciples ran to save their own skin, it was the women who stood by the cross and watched as Jesus’ lifeless body was taken down. It was the women who knew where he was laid. It was the women who ventured out early on resurrection morning to see to it that everything was done properly.
And it was the women who witnessed the resurrected Jesus and told the story. The first evangelists of the risen Jesus were these women!
Are there still witnesses today? You bet. You and I weren’t at the cross or the empty tomb, but we, like Paul the Apostle, have met the Lord! We have a story to tell.
You may not feel like an expert, you may not feel highly respected, but if you’ve met the risen Christ and surrendered your life to him, you have a story to tell.
A witness trumps an expert every time.
As you approach Easter Sunday, I know that many of you have worked extra hard in preparation and carrying out Holy Week and Easter gatherings. Jill and I wish we could be with each church on Easter Sunday. How much we would enjoy seeing all of you gathered. How much we would enjoy the diversity of our district. How much we would treasure the multicultural expressions of resurrection. We can’t do that but what we can do is join with you and countless believers across more than 2,000 years and rejoice that Jesus is risen! He is risen, indeed! From our hearts to yours, Happy Easter.
Sam
