Jesus said, “You are witnesses of these things.” In the name of +Jesus. Amen.
When I was 17, our German class took a long-awaited trip to Germany. I was a senior in high school, and like most seniors, was caught up in the anticipation of graduation, final college selection, and a sincere sense that I knew everything I needed to know about the world.
And then, my teacher Herr Hrincevich took us to Dachau, a concentration camp located in Upper Bavaria in Southern Germany. It was recorded that 206,206 prisoners were taken to Dachau in the course of 12 years.
Walking the grounds of Dachau, I lost a part of me that was innocent to the world’s evil. I always focused on the good, but you can’t ignore the evil. And the evil hit me in the spirit of the place. It was as if you could smell the horror that occurred. Innocent people gassed and tortured. Starved and rejected, not because they deserved to be, but because someone put a label on them.
I became a witness that day. I was enlightened to a new evil. One of indifference. Most of the people working at the concentration camps were good, solid Christian church-going folk. Like us. Justifying their ability to kill based on a human label.
I became a witness that day. My mind was opened to a new kind of awareness, a new understanding of the words “Never again.” The impact of the Holocaust was now personal for me. Would I become the kind of witness who quietly stands by and watches helplessly in fear as others suffer? Or would I become the kind of witness who opens her heart and mind to claim the power of her voice?
In today’s Gospel, we get Luke’s version of what it is to be locked in our fear, so much so that it becomes hard to be a witness. Jesus was tortured, and they were afraid that they, too would be tortured if they were found. And so they hid.
Never again would the disciples know death as the final answer. And yet, their fears overpowered their ability to see that. And when we can’t see, we certainly can’t be much of a witness to our surroundings.
Jesus shows them his wounded body. They were witnesses to see that Jesus actually still had a body. Were they open wounds? Or scars? The Gospel writer doesn’t tell us, perhaps so that we know that whatever wounds we face on this earth, God has the power to not only heal them, but to resurrect us. To defeat death and bring us alive again.
Jesus calls the disciples out of fear, eats with them, and then feeds them with a word to cast out fear. Everything written about me must be fulfilled. And he opened their minds, and they saw the Scriptures revealed in a new way, in tangible and very real promises. In Jesus, conquering death and eating with them. And now, they are witnesses of these things.
Imagine the stories the disciples could tell, now that Jesus opened their minds and set them free from their fears. Imagine the hope that the people of Roman times could have, hearing the word of this witness instead of facing the fear they met every day. Imagine how incredibly vulnerable this kind of witness is to a world that uses fear as a power mechanism to control people. Jesus didn’t promise that being a witness would be easy. Nor does he tell us that we have a choice. We are witnesses to these things. Now how will we respond?
All over the news this week is the ongoing conflict in Syria. I have worked with Syrian refugees. Beautiful, wonderful thoughtful people who tell me stories that I can not comprehend. I see pictures of towns once thriving, bombed out beyond recognition. Ashes and dust all over the place.
But in the hearts of the Syrians I have met is a new hope. They made it to the United States. Their children go to school. They miss their home, but they know for now, going back is not an option. Life as they knew it died. But in their smiles, I see the reality of resurrection. I see that in all the refugees we’ve met. It is a piece of God that they share, a joy in the midst of great sorrow. A hope that outweighs the destruction. Sometimes nations get into power struggles, and we lose sight of the humanity. We lock ourselves into rooms of fear, and we forget to use our voices of witness. We allow fear to be our focus in this world.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls us to not only see, but to speak with our boldest voice. Proclaiming to the world that God’s powerful and life-giving presence is here. Now. Never again will humanity’s evil overpower us. Death will not have the final say.
God brings us a different “Never again”, conquering death and all the ways we wound and kill each other with our words and actions. “Never again” do we need to dwell in our fear, for Christ leads us out of our dark tombs, heals us and opens us to new beginnings. Today, more than ever, we need such transformation.
German theologian Dorothee Soelle (swayla) grew up during the years of Hitler’s Nazi regime. In her writings, she faces the reality that her own Protestant liberalism failed to stop the war and the horrors of concentration camps, and that part of the failure contributed to the ability for this level of hatred to exist in the first place.
“She challenges the human tendency for wanting to feel safe, to feel secure from any threat, by seeking that from God. In her essay, “Peace, not Security”, she notes that ‘change happens at the level of action that contains risk.’ 1
Risk. Isn’t that what Jesus calls us into every day? Risking to help the one who is being oppressed, bullied, cast out, judged, condemned? We can run to our locked rooms and hide in a sense of safety from our world, but every time Jesus will find us and open our minds to what we should already know.
Soelle (Swayla) says in another essay, “Because you are strong [in Christ], you can put the neurotic need for security behind you. You do not need to defend your life like a lunatic. For the love of the poor, Jesus says you can give your life away and spread it around.”2
For Jesus’ early followers, being a witness was immense risk. For most disciples, it would lead to death on this earth. Yet somehow, Jesus could move them out of their fear and disbelief, and give them confidence as he opened their hearts and minds to all the promises in Scripture. That the promises were revealed to them so that they may believe in times of fear.
And Jesus calls us to be witnesses today, too. Calls us out of indifference or ignorance, challenges our desires to feel secure, so that we may speak a loud voice of hope to the world.
Today, Jesus proclaims to us that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations. Proclaimed in our words and our deeds. Proclaimed in all that we say and do. Proclaimed even when it’s easier to look the other way.
What does it look like when we open ourselves, trusting that promise of resurrection even in the midst of fear? It looks like two 9/11 widows, both pregnant on the day of 9/11, who were showered in support after the unimaginable. With grateful hearts, the women began to think of the women in Afghanistan, who didn’t have the benefit of insurance or community support after their husbands die from terrorism. They began a nonprofit called Beyond the 11th, with a simple message, “Beyond borders, beyond religion and politics, beyond hatred and ignorance – lies hope, and a common bond.
In lieu of living in a locked room, two women took a tragic, unimaginable loss and began to use their voices to help women who are forever trapped in poverty at the loss of a husband. Forever without a voice in their society.
Jesus will use our hands and hearts to help heal the world. You are already witnesses of these things.
1 Bartlett, David L., and Barbara Brown Taylor. Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary. Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. Reflection by Nancy Blakely, pg. 426
2 Dorothee Soelle. Essential Writings. “Jesus’ death.”