The Faithful Witness

Please note: The following sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.

Books come in great variety:

--some have few words and lots of pictures.

--some have a few pictures and lots of text.

There are advantages to both kinds.

--The ones with text may help us to think clearly about the subject.

--The ones with illustrations may stimulate our imagination even more.

Sometimes we are tempted to just read things quickly, to get it done.

But the reading time is much more beneficial if we take the time to savor the text, to consider the illustrations, and to use our imagination to see more than the bare words and colors.

So we turn to the second lesson today from Revelation.

We could read it in a perfunctory way, and hear and see very little.

But when we take the time to listen to the concepts and unleash our imaginations....

well, then our hearts and minds can be filled in ways that words alone or illustrations alone cannot limit.

This is the joy of Revelation:

it encourages us to stop, reflect, and wonder at the mercy and magnificence of God, and to use our imaginative gifts to think of the inexpressible.

And there are Good News images packed in those few verses that we read.

Today we will focus on the three titles applied to Jesus, who is

(1) the faithful witness,

(2) the first-born from the dead, and

(3) the ruler of kings on earth.

“Witness” we understand as a legal term, a person who tells the truth in the courtroom.

A faithful witness is one who keeps on telling the true story even when the attorneys from the other side are probing, looking for conflicts in testimony, checking confessions, etc.

The faithful witness is steadfast.

That is a wonderful and important thing to say about Jesus.

The Gospel of John stresses it again and again:

“I came into the world to bear witness to the truth,” Jesus says.

He does that in each scene throughout the Gospel where Jesus is revealing God's action and purpose in his words and deeds.

Some people have ears but do not hear the witness of the Lord.

--Pilate is a good example, as in our Gospel reading today.

Jesus, even in that desperate hour of the trial before Pilate, did not give Pilate what he wanted to hear, even though by doing so he was in grave peril; instead he gave him what he needed to hear, even if he refused the message.

Yes, Jesus is the faithful witness, even to death.

[marturia = witness = martyr]

Now if that were all that we wanted to say, some would claim that Jesus is much like other great men –Socrates, for example, who was forced to drink poison when he defended his ideal to the death.

But the other two titles given to Jesus help to guard against this:

firstborn from the dead

ruler of the kings on earth.

These additional titles point to God's action that extends far beyond that of any “hero”.

So what? Even if Jesus is the faithful witness, even if he is first-born from the dead, even if he rules over kings, how does that involve you and me?

Because our incorporation into Christ, the story of our lives is now written into Jesus' story.

We cannot tell of ourselves any longer without reference to the Lord Jesus

who has called and named us his own in Holy Baptism,

pursues us when we wander away, and

intends to mold our words and actions in ways that fit with his intentions for us.

When someone asks “Who are you?”, somewhere very soon in our description of ourselves will come the identification “I am a Christian.”

(1) Another way to say that is that

we are to be witnesses to the truth, faithful witnesses, taking on the full meaning of the Greek word marturia.

(2) The years of our lives slip by so quickly. It is reassuring to know that they will not be cut short by death,

but that our baptism into Christ means that his resurrected life is to be ours as well.

Christ is first-born from the dead, and we are somewhat later-born.

Our lives will be whole within the communion of the complete body of Christ, his church now and forever.

(3) That Jesus is ruler of the kings of the earth means that we keep the political decisions which we must make in proper perspective;

as confounded bothersome though they be now, they are not the ultimate arrangements for ourselves or the rest of creation.

Jesus is king over them all. ///

And then our passage from Revelation adds that we are made priests.

Is this Good News?

To be an intercessor

on behalf of someone else...

Can I do this all by myself? No

Do I want to do this?

Maybe not.

But it is Good News, because we are not left to accomplish this alone, to be witness and priest:

God has taken the initiative in all times and places and circumstances to reach out to us,

to catch our ear,

to enflame our hearts

to enliven our actions and make it possible.

The terms witness and priest have slipped away from us.

Witness seems to apply to 2 sober young men going door to door,

or else to sitting in a small group at a retreat telling each other how good I feel about Jesus.

But witness is a good word, one which we need.

To witness to the truth...

--is first of all, showing up at worship on Sunday, admitting that even on those days when I don't feel like it, God deserves our attention, and our fellow Christians need our support.

To witness to the truth is to come regularly to the sacraments hearing the promise of Jesus that he overcomes what we have been and makes all things new.

To witness to the truth involves proceeding with different values in the workplace.

...without cheating, looking for the deal that will be fair to all parties.

To witness to the truth involves care for the land so that we do not treat it as a disposable plaything but as a trust from God for the benefit of generations to come.

To take on a priestly role is to pray for the needs of all that are identified to us:

--in daily prayer,

--with our Amen to the Prayer of the Church when we gather here

--in bedtime prayer when we name the persons and causes most dear to us.

--in mealtime prayer that not only thanks God for what is in front of us, but also names those who hunger in other places, domestic and international.

--when we hear the ambulance siren blaring, our priestly prayers are likely for patient and crew whom we don't know at all.

Our roles as witness and priest are begun here, practiced here, and then carried out further in a variety of ways throughout the week.

It is not by our own strength or might that we are able to do these things.

but because God wants us,

--washes us,

--anoints us as witnesses and priests,

--sets us on the right path,

--and promises us the final victory.

Today Kyseem joins us in all of this.

Today Kyseem becomes a witness.

When someone asks him “Who are you?”, part of his answer will be “I am a Christian; I belong to Jesus.”

Today Kyseem also begins to take on a priestly role as well.

Today his prayers begin to be more than about himself.

In thanksgiving for this and all of God's blessings, we join with saints below and saints above in praising the One who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.

To him be glory and dominion now and forever. Amen.

The Faithful Witness

St. Mark's Lutheran Church