20130407 Can I get a Witness? Acts 5:17-32 (c) Chris Bowman @ Oakton Church of the Brethren

Sometimes you can make the most powerful witness to your Christian faith from right where you’re seated at a given moment in time.

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, after working all day as a seamstress at a department store, Rosa Parks boarded a bus to go home. She paid her fare and sat down in the first row of seats that were reserved for blacks.

I know it seems really weird nowadays, but back then the white folks sat in the front of the bus and [quote] colored folks [endquote] sat in the back.

When the front of the bus reserved for white people filled up, the bus driver moved the "colored" sign behind Parks, he told her and three other blacks to move to the back to accommodate the white passengers. Her three seat-mates moved; Rosa Parks did not.

She later recalled, “when he waved his hand and ordered us up and out of our seats, I felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.”

“He asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, 'No, I'm not.' And he said, 'Well, if you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested.' I said, 'You may do that.'"

The bus driver did call the police, who arrested Parks for violating Montgomery's segregation laws. She was also fired from her job. About twenty-four hours later, a friend bailed her out of jail. Her quiet act of civil disobedience jump started the Montgomery Bus Boycott three days later on December 4. The non-violent protest lasted 381 days, until the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was illegal.

Today Parks's many awards included a Presidential Medal of Freedom (1996), the highest award given by the executive branch of government, and the Congressional Gold Medal (1999), the highest honor bestowed by the legislative branch. When she died in 2005 at the age of 92, Parks became the first woman, the second black, and only the third private citizen to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda.

A biography about Parks published this year explains that she was no meek or accidental heroine. In fact, Parks had been an active member of the civil rights movement for ten years prior. And to the point this morning, her biography shows how her political activism and civil disobedience were deeply rooted in her Christian faith.

Rosa Parks was "a staunch and active Christian." She carried her Bible with her, and was a lifelong member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. "That's sort of in my family background, too," said Parks, "the Lord's power within me to do what I have done."

She led a life of “rich and active worship" in both Montgomery and Detroit (where she was a deaconess). Her Christian faith nourished her beliefs in human dignity, equality, the long struggle against racism, and the "Christian responsibility to act." When she began to receive death threats she responded with a prolonged period of prayer in church, after which "an intense calm swept over her."

"From my upbringing and the Bible," Parks wrote in her autobiography, “I learned people should stand up for rights just as the children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh."

And Rosa Parks helped change the world by giving her Christian witness from right where she was seated at a given moment in time.

Unfortunately, as we discovered in this morning’s scripture reading, sometimes our witness to the power of God puts us at odds with the powers that be.

The scripture reading this morning is about the call to be witnesses to our faith. For Peter and the Apostles that call stretched from the spoken word in the temple to the lived-word in the streets. And when the Kingdom of God encounters the kingdoms of this world...... There’s trouble.

Peter and the Apostles were continuing the work of Jesus, healing the sick and preaching the Good News, and the high priest had them arrested and put in jail. Then, later that night, with an Easter-like miracle, the jail doors were opened.

It says that an angel of God opened the door for them and also told them where to go and what to preach.

This is the essence of the biblical model of God’s assistance:

There is liberation and command.

God frees us, then calls us.

We witness God’s freeing action and then we become witnesses.

In the case of the Apostles, they were freed from jail and sent back to where they were in the first place … in the Temple. It rings true that God frees us not to escape the dangers and troubles of our world but to re-enter them in new ways. God removes the power from them and empowers us to re-enter in a new way.

So they left their jail and returned to the temple.

But the authorities didn’t realize it at first.

In the morning they sent to the jail to bring the prisoners for trial and the guard went to the jail cell, found it locked up tight, but the prisoners where nowhere to be seen.

And they went back and reported to the chief priests and the captain of the guard who (as the text says) where “much perplexed” --- a phrase that’s a favorite of Luke’s.

Then someone shows up and says, “Oh, the men you’re looking for are back in the temple, preaching again.” So they arrested them again, brought them in for questioning, and asked them: “Hey! We told you to stop teaching about Jesus and here you are; at it again!” And Peter responded with the words that are etched deeply in the Brethren and Anabaptist heart: “We must obey God rather than any human authority.”

This phrase holds the essence of our understanding of authority. We are citizens of the world and we are under the rulers appointed over us. And we follow those rules and submit to their authority until we discern (with the help of our community of faith) that God calls us to disobey. It is not a decision to be taken lightly or without humility. But it is one that includes puts believers at risk and urges the question to the front of our conversation: does God really want me to change my seat to conform to a segregated system? Does God really want me to participate in warfare --- remote or hand-to-hand, international or inter-personal?

When we come to these questions we can anticipate some trouble.

And so did Peter and the Apostles. Trouble enough to imprison them; power enough to free them. A presence enough to guide them. And they witnessed to the truth in the temple.

Back where they started again.

Sometimes you can make the most powerful witness to your Christian faith from right where you’re seated at a given moment in time.

We may never have the spiritual authority of a Peter or Paul.

We won’t be a Rosa Parks on the bus or a Ted Studebaker who died for peace in Alternate Service in the Vietnam war. Or any of those other famous witnesses for Christ.

But we are no less called, no less freed; no less part of the Kingdom of God. From the pulpit or the pew, all of us carry a witness that matters in the work of the Lord for where we are, when we are, how we are, in God.

"… Listen to your life," Frederick Buechner tells us. "See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace." (Buechner, Now and Then)

Have you seen the beauty within you? Have you recognized the finger-print of God’s mystery in your life? Even in moments of uncertainty or non-belief or doubt have you noticed the pesky little tugging in your heart? The God-shaped hole that nothing else can truly satisfy?

You have a witness, a story, a word that needs to be heard in the home in the street and in the temples of God. Even if comes through as stumbling incomplete sentences or the grunt or groan of un- worded wonder. It needs to come from you.

Ryan Ahlgrim, a friend of mine in Peoria Illinois, pastored a small church of 25--- they were small enough they could sit in a circle for church and everyone knew everyone else’s stories. As part of their tradition, after each sermon, the congregation would share their reactions ... as part of the worship experience.

Following the sermon there would be a quiet time of reflection and then folks would offer inspirations and, sometimes, arguments, in response to the spoken Word.

It was an orderly, thoughtful, tidy sort of witnessing.

But once a year Ryan exchanged pulpits with a large African- American church they partnered with in the struggle for civil rights and racial harmony in Peoria. And when they swapped congregations the whole preaching experience changed.

Heavens! Their choir there, sitting behind him as he preached, was bigger than his whole congregation back home. And the experience of the spoken word was anything but tidy. He’d talk a little bit, and someone would interrupt with a word or two.

When he got to an especially significant or momentous point in his sermon ... you know, those points where good Brethren and Mennonites get especially quiet and reflective, someone in that African-American congregation would shout out: “Yes. Lord!” or “Amen.” or “Preach it brother.” At times there was almost a constant chorus from the choir behind him and the congregation in front of him.

He got used to it over the years and learned to pace his preaching to expect the flow of feedback. He learned that these were not interruptions. They were assists.

Like in a basketball game, when someone throws a shot up from behind the three point line and it’s off the mark a little bit and one of their teammates tips it in.

These witnessing words from the pew were part of the message. Sometimes, according to Ryan, the feedback was more powerful than the original point that elicited them.

That church’s preaching tradition is participatory; the whole room is involved with the receiving of the word.

And they even helped the preacher know when the words aren’t quite hitting home.

While they didn’t usually do it for the guest preacher, sometimes, along with the affirming words of “Yes Lord” and “preach now” when the preacher need a little help there would sometimes come the words: “bring it home,” or “Help him Jesus.” They understood, you see, that preaching is a team sport.

Now the difficulty wasn’t for my friend when he visited the African American church. He loved the experience. It was more difficult for the other preacher who showed up in Ryan’s church that Sunday.

That Black pastor would get to his most powerful moment in the sermon, a line he felt came directly from the mouth of God and that thoughtful, reflective, Germanic congregation didn’t say a word. In fact, the louder he got the quieter they became.

They were used to waiting until after the sermon to say anything. But that didn’t stop the preacher. He’d just pause after his point and say “Can I get a witness?” And finally someone would say “Amen!” Or he’d say, one of my favorites: “Is there a witness in the house?” Or even more instructive, “somebody say Amen!”

And given that invitation, someone would tip it in.

That’s the witness of the pew in the preaching.

My Grandfather did it more powerfully than almost anyone I knew.

Now don’t get the wrong picture; Grandpa was one of the most stoic, quiet, unexpressive people I ever knew. I never saw him give any expression of affection or excitement. He was the definition of unexcitable. Others might describe him as a “bump on a log.”

But he was God’s bump on a log.

And I remember sitting next to my grandfather one Sunday when the preacher must have said something during the sermon that was important. I don’t know what it was because I wasn’t paying attention when all of a sudden my grandfather grunted, “Uhhhh Hu” and nodded slightly.

And I listened to the rest of the sermon.

This is what it means to be a witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ: not only that we witnessed it, but that we are sharing it.

Sometimes that sharing is an Easter-morning type of celebration --- full choir, full sanctuary, baptisms, memberships, and enthusiastic hymns.

And other times it is the quieter, simpler, still small voice of the ordinary --- granted extraordinary power because it comes from real people.

To a fragile, near-dead soul listening half-heartedly as a preacher proclaims that God’s life-giving love is made alive in faith ... well, that’s one thing .... it’s an easily-dismissed thing because, well, it’s just the preacher and preachers are supposed to say those things.

But it means something much deeper ... more soul-shaping ... when my neighbor in the seat next to me, my sister in Christ, one who’s own faith recently brought her through the valley of the shadow of death .... when my teammate, playing power-forward in the pew, leans over to me and say, “That’s true” and tips it in.

It’s a witness to the power of God.

Or when the silver-haired grandfather just beginning to struggle with the signs of dementia, hears the preacher say “even when we forget God, God remembers us,” and he nods slightly and says “uhhh hu.”

That’s the power of the pew in the preaching.

The voiced, embodied, witness of faith from our neighbor oft brings the Spirit’s presence in our deepest need.

With the help of that witness we are, together, experiencing the freedom and calling of God in Christ.

Joan Chittister wrote “We are surely called to believe that God who is everywhere is with us. And we are called to believe that this God is … Love. Not the Grand Inquisitor. Not the Great Circus Master. Not the Indifferent Professor who does distant research on our lives. God is the one who made for us a good world and walks with us to hold us up as we go.”

This is what we have experienced in this place, is it not? From the bold “Amen” from the back after a particularly powerful choir number; or “yes; that’s right” from the front after a point in the message that matters.

The risen Lord has met us, freed us, called us, and carries us to make a difference for Christ right where we’re seated at this particular moment in time.

Can I get a witness?

Amen.