"Called to be Witnesses"
A meditation by the Rev. Dr. Hilary J. Barrett
Preached at Pleasantville UCC, May 24, 2009
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
(Acts 1:8)

My sister’s daughter graduated from Barnard College on Monday afternoon.  Her mother and father journeyed all the way from California, and Rob and I drove up to Manhattan to be witnesses to the great event.  I wasn’t there to hear her borning cry but, since she was the first grandchild in the family, I heard all about her borning cry and when she was born I traveled back from the east coast to hold her and rock her and coo over her as I did when her brother was born three years later.  So I had a special interest in seeing this day come to fruition.  You know you’re getting old, though, when they start playing “Pomp and Circumstance” and you start weeping.  But it was important to be there, because all of us need a witness to the great and small things that happen in our lives.  Sometimes it’s as simple as, “How was your day, honey?”  And sometimes we need a witness in order for us to fully comprehend what we’ve accomplished and what we’ve survived, what we are battling and what it has cost us.

This particular weekend in May is all about witness.  We come to this Memorial Day as a nation pausing to remember.  It is one of the rare occasions in our common life when we pause from our commerce and our busyness, from our running to and fro to remember those who fought and died in wars past. 

We remember those who did not return, whose graves are in another country.  We remember those who returned home and who live among us as witnesses to an experience they alone can name.  May we remember them…

On this Memorial Day weekend we remember that we are a country at war, and for that reason this day should not pass without its citizenry pausing to witness the human cost of war.  Since March, 2003, the Department of Defense reports that 31,285 US Soldiers have been wounded in action; 4,300 US soldiers have been killed[1], and between 92,000 and 100,000 civilians have died in the Iraq war and occupation.[2]  And we are witnesses to it. 

Yesterday, many in our neighborhood gathered for a block party to send off young Paul Dooley, the older brother of a friend of Sam’s.  Paul Dooley is deploying to Iraq.  Let us name those we know who have been deployed or are soon to be deployed…

Pleasantville’s newsletter went out this week.  You should be receiving it soon.  When you do, you will see that my article speaks about the origins of Memorial Day which was originally known as “Decoration Day.”  It began after the Civil war and it was designated for the purpose of remembering those “who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.”  That war, more than any other in our nation’s history, tore families apart -- and so the idea of honoring all those who died was particularly important as families were sometimes divided; fighting on opposite sides of the cause.  Decoration Day was remembered by decorating the graves if the fallen – usually with flowers.

Here at Pleasantville, we have our own kind of Decoration Day tradition which we practice on the day of the church picnic.  In addition to all the other wonderful picnic things that we all bring, some of us also bring flowers to decorate the graves of the Saints among us.  Remembering the dead is in itself a kind of witness.

But it is not the secular calendar alone which invites us to be a witness this weekend.  This past Thursday was May 21^st.  But if you observe a religious calendar then you will know that it was also “Ascension Day.”  Forty days after the Resurrection, the scriptures tell us, Jesus bade farewell to his disciples and ascended into heaven to rule over all creation with God, the Father.  The text for the day recalls that event, and forms a kind of bridge between those 40 days after the Resurrection when Jesus continued to appear to his disciples, and the days following his ascension, when his disciples would have to get along without him.

This is the last Sunday in the season of Easter.  Next week begins the season of Pentecost.  These past seven weeks the Church has been living in the heady glow of the Resurrection.  This morning’s text tells the story of how, just before the Ascension, the Risen Christ gives the early Church “her” marching orders.

This is a good time for me to give my periodic lecture on why it’s important for Christians to stay connected to a religious calendar – a calendar that orients us to a different notion of time than the secular world uses.  Time is money the old saying goes.  Time is probably the most precious commodity in our culture.  How we spend our time may reveal even more about each of us than how we spend our money.  And – more and more often – the culture in which we live challenges people of faith to live their lives as if their time were not in God’s hands, but rather belonged to the world.  We are challenged to give up our day of rest for a myriad of activities that the world tells us we should want to participate in.  When people of faith let go of the spiritual practice of keeping time in a religious framework, when every day is in danger of becoming like every other day, we stand in jeopardy of losing our particularity.

Keeping a religious calendar is a way of keeping apart from, keeping ourselves separate from the world on some levels.  It is a daily reminder that we believe all of our time is in God’s hands.  So, on one level, the observance of a religious calendar protects our hearts and minds and psyches from becoming completely overtaken by cultural values and encourages us instead to orient our time in accordance with the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus which, for Christians, is a main event.

Our Confirmands have spent the year living with a much keener awareness of the church’s calendar this year.  The reason being, their lessons were formed around it -- as opposed to simply being formed around relevant subject matter.  I would venture a guess that this year’s class has a deeper understanding of the story of our faith because they spent the past eight months living it.

One week from today, on the day of Pentecost, these confirmands will confirm their faith by saying “yes” to the baptismal promises which were made by their parents for them when they were infants.  All religious traditions have some kind of rite of passage at this time in a child’s life.  Ours is called Confirmation and in our tradition is celebrated on the Day of Pentecost, which is one week from today and 10 days after Ascension Day.  So, for those of you studying up on your Bible Jeopardy skills: the Day of Ascension is 40 days after Easter (the Day of Resurrection); the Day of Pentecost is 50 days after Easter; Pentecost coming from the Greek word meaning, “the 50^th day.”

This is a day which is all about witness.  The secular calendar reminds us of the witness of our veterans and the religious calendar presents to us the story of the Ascension.  Let’s hear some of that text again:

⁶So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. ⁸But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” ⁹

Within the first eleven verses of the Book of Acts we hear how Jesus instructs his disciples to be his witnesses “witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria” and even to the ends of the earth.  The last thing that Jesus says to his rag tag group of followers is, “and you will be my witnesses.”

Someone said that there “is no better proof that Jesus was who he said he was than the before-and-after pictures of the disciples.  Before Pentecost, they were dense, timid bumblers who fled at the least sign of trouble.  Afterwards, they were fearless leaders.”[3]  Clothed in the power of the Holy Spirit, these timid followers of Christ would ensure that the witness of the gospel would be known across nations, across cultures, across centuries.  And we are called to be witnesses too.

The keynote speaker for my niece’s graduation turned out to be Hillary Rodham Clinton.  In her powerful address to the graduates she charged them all to engage in a life of service on behalf of those with less opportunity.  Speaking to the graduating class of 2009 she said:

I want to talk about a particular area where I think you can, you should, and you must make a difference. It's important to me personally and it's especially important in my new job, and that is the plight of women and girls around the world. As women with strong voices and strong values, you are in a unique position to support women worldwide who don't have the resources you do, but whose lives and dreams are just as worthy as yours and mine. I have concluded after traveling many miles and visiting many places in the last decades that talent is universally distributed, but opportunity is not. The futures of these women and girls will affect yours and mine. And therefore, it is not only the right thing to do, but also the smart thing.[4]

In other words, she called them to be witnesses.

Commencement addresses are a particular kind of communication.  They basically say, ‘We’ve taught you everything we can.  Now go out and change the world.’  And when you think about it, that’s pretty much what’s going on between Jesus and his disciples on that hill outside Jerusalem: “I’ve taught you everything I can.  Now go out and change the world.”

It’s a tall order.  It was for Peter and James and John, and it is for us.  We are called to bear witness to the gospel wherever we are, whether it is convenient, profitable, or politic.  And were it not for the Holy Spirit which clothes us with power, this work might be completely beyond our ability.  But the good news of the Ascension story is this: not only does Jesus trust us to be His witnesses in the world, he also empowers us through the Holy Spirit.

The work of Christians is to be a witness in the world, and to expect lives to be changed because of your witness.  For as the 16^th century mystic, St. Teresa of Avila reminds us:

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world…
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

On this day of national remembrance, may we witness to the true costs of war; may we honor those who know its pain more deeply than the rest of us; and may we never forget what we are here to do: to witness to our Lord Jesus Christ in Chalfont, in Doylestown, in Philadelphia, in New York – even to the ends of the earth.  May it be so.  Amen.