What do I witness?

Peter Preaching at Pentecost*

     Christ is risen! The scent of lilies still permeates the building, coming from the sanctuary where we celebrated our own baptisms into Christ's death and resurrection. Yet for the people in our gospel lessons, life has moved on to normal. Well, as normal as it gets when you believe that someone came back from the dead to conquer sin, death, and the devil, and to bring eternal salvation to the world.
     Recall with me from Matthew's gospel that the two Mary's who had gone to Jesus' tomb left quickly to return to Galilee, the land they are from. There was no reason to stay in Jerusalem as life there had returned to normal, too. So Jesus instructs the women to tell the men to meet him in Galilee. As we read the rest of Matthew 28, we see that Jesus does in fact meet them there, and that Jesus gives them the Great Commission:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

But you know, even in the midst of Jesus' very strong words of assurance and presence, some still doubted. And that's the beauty of these stories. As we heard on Sunday, the doubt still remains along with the faith. Our realities remain unchanged, right alongside the new reality which laughs at death and suffering because they are not final.
     And this is the reality we find the disciples living in this Sunday's text from Acts. We are continuing to gallop through the Bible, already in chapter 28 of The Story. It is from the Acts of the Apostles and chronicles their actions in those days, months, and years after Jesus' resurrection. In Sunday's reading we happen to find the disciples in Jerusalem again and preaching to a great crowd. It is one of the many sermons in Acts, and is spoken by Peter (you remember - the Peter who denied Jesus three times?). The beautiful and ingenious part of Peter's sermon comes right at the end when he says, "All of us are witnesses of this." The 'this' being Jesus' resurrection.
     That is the mystery I ponder today. How am I a witness of Jesus' resurrection? How are you? How have you seen the risen Jesus in the world? Many of us, along with the witnesses in Matthew still doubt, at times. Yet the important thing is that the doubt happened alongside worship. When we can come and worship - with all our doubts and imperfections - certainly we witness the risen Jesus.

*West, Benjamin, 1738-1820. Peter Preaching at Pentecost, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55159 [retrieved April 22, 2014]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Peter_Preaching_at_Pentecost.jpg.