Transcript
Practice Resurrection: Witness
First Baptist Richmond, June 1, 2025
Ascension Sunday
Acts 1:1-11
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.
A biography is the story of a life, and maybe that’s why we don’t call the Gospels biographies. Because if you were telling the story of a famous person—like Alexander the Great, or Joan of Arc, or George Washington Carver—you would eventually come to the end of that life and the end of that story. But with Jesus you come to the end of that life, and then, three days later, you start all over again. If you were writing a gospel you might wonder: “How am I supposed to end this thing?” Well, Matthew does it like this:
§ 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.”
Mark ends his gospel like this:
§ As the women entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was
crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Luke ends his gospel like this:
§ Then [Jesus] led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
And finally, John writes:
§ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
But then John remembers one more story, which he tells in chapter 21, and then ends his gospel again by writing:
§ There are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
Each of the evangelists finds a way to bring his gospel to a close. Some of them do it more than once. But only one of them tries to answer the question of what happened to Jesus next and that’s Luke. And I think I know why: I think Luke was already working on the sequel to his Gospel; I think he was itching to tell the story
of the early church. But in order to do that he had to get Jesus off the stage (so to speak) so his audience could focus on something else. And so he tells us that Jesus “led his disciples out as far as Bethany, and then, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them he withdrew from them,” and in the version you heard this morning, “he was carried up into heaven.” But the earliest and best manuscripts don’t include that line. They simply say that Jesus “withdrew” from his disciples, and they headed back to Jerusalem.
But someone must have asked, “Where did he go, Luke? When Jesus departed from his disciples where did he go? And where is he now if he’s still alive and well? Pittsburgh?” And so, in the Book of Acts, Luke answers that question. He writes: “As they were watching, [Jesus] was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” We call it “the Ascension,” and whether or not it happened just that way it reminds us that we need to stop looking up toward heaven and get on with our business.
And what is our business? I’m glad you asked. Luke says that after his resurrection, Jesus presented himself alive to his disciples by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
And then, as if they had never heard anything he had said, his disciples
asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” It doesn’t say this in the text but I believe that Jesus let out a heavy sigh before saying, essentially, “That’s none of your business. That’s the Father’s business. Your business is to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” And if we can agree that it was not only their business but our business, too, and if we can assume that their “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth” would be our Richmond, Henrico, Hanover, Chesterfield, Central Virginia, the State of Virginia, the United States of America, and the ends of the earth, then the question becomes, “What is a witness?” and “What do they do?”
Again, I’m glad you asked. Because the Greek word for witness is martyr, and you may already know what they do. They die for something they believe in. One of the definitions of martyrs in my Dictionary of the New Testament is: “those who after his example have proved the strength and genuineness of their faith in Christ by undergoing a violent death.” And while it’s true that many of Jesus’ disciples did exactly that, I don’t think that’s what he was asking them to do. I don’t think that’s what he’s asking us to do.
So, I looked it up in a regular dictionary and found that a witness is, “One who can state, or assert to be the case, what he himself has seen or heard or knows by any other means.” And that’s the way you see the word being used in the opening chapters of Acts. Peter and the other disciples talk about Jesus. They talk about the things he did and said. They talk about how he was crucified, and how he rose from the dead. They were bearing witness to the things they themselves had seen and heard.
For us it’s a little different. We fall into that second category of witnesses:
we are not those who have seen or heard for themselves, but those who have come to know the truth about Jesus in other ways: by the testimony of Scripture, by the preaching of the gospel, by the power of the Holy Spirit, or the fellowship of the saints. But if we have been paying attention we have reached the point where we can tell others about Jesus. The problem is that we don’t always do it. But that’s why I keep coming back to this story, because Jesus says to his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and then you will be my witnesses.” Not before—after! As if you couldn’t be his witnesses on your own, or by your own power. As if you needed the help of the Holy Spirit.
I agree. When I was in seminary I thought it was my duty to witness to people. My evangelism professor had told me so. I remember once sitting down with a complete stranger at Burger King so I could share the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. It didn’t go well, but it might have been because I was trying to do it by my own power, you know, because I was in seminary and had learned so much about Jesus. I thought I could overwhelm that poor fellow with my superior biblical knowledge. Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to do that. He told them to go back to Jerusalem and wait for the promised power from on high. I’ll have more to say about that next week, on the Day of Pentecost, but for now it may be enough to say that when that power arrived the disciples couldn’t help witnessing.
Jesus was all they could talk about.
It sounds like all we need to be witnesses is a good, fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and that got me thinking. Luke 3:22 says that when Jesus was baptized the Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, like a dove. Luke 4:1 says that when he went into Galilee he was “full” of the Holy Spirit: it was in him. But John 19:30 says that when he died on the cross he “gave up his spirit.” It was no longer in
him. You may know that in Greek the word for breath and spirit are the same word: pneuma. When Jesus died the breath went out of him, the spirit went out of him, and for three days his lifeless, breathless body lay in the tomb.
But on the third day the Father breathed the Spirit into the Son and Jesus rose from the dead. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of that story from the Book of Genesis where God makes the first man out of the dust of the earth. As James Weldon Johnson tells it:
Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty,
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the Most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth
In the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;
Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And the man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.
Was it God himself who rolled back the stone on that first Easter morning, entered the tomb, and knelt beside the broken body of his Beloved Son like a mammy bending over her baby? Did he breathe the Spirit of life into those empty lungs so that Jesus was able to stand up and stride forth into the world? Did he then present himself alive to his disciples by many convincing proofs before
returning to the Father, but not before promising them power from on high? Was it that power that lifted him off the ground, and carried him up to heaven, before returning ten days later to empower his disciples?
If you think of the Holy Spirit as “divine breath,” and if you think of the church as “the body of Christ,” you can almost imagine that for ten days after the Ascension the lifeless, breathless, body of Christ gathered in that upper room as the crucified body of Christ had lain in that borrowed tomb: waiting for God to work a miracle. But the church was not only waiting, it was praying; praying for the power from on high. And when it came those people couldn’t help themselves—they poured out into the streets of their city, filled with the Holy Spirit, telling anyone who would listen everything they could about Jesus.
They were witnesses.
And here’s the thing I really want to say: those witnesses didn’t approach people as I approached that poor stranger at Burger King, trying to impress him with my knowledge, trying to convert him to my religious worldview. No, on the day of Pentecost the church was filled with the Holy Spirit, and it became the living, breathing body of Christ in this world. If you read the first few chapters of Acts you will see that those witnesses did exactly what Jesus would do; they said exactly what Jesus would say. And that’s what I want to pass along to you this morning.
When I suggest that we can practice resurrection by becoming witnesses for Jesus I don’t necessarily mean that we confront strangers with the Four Spiritual Laws, or help them walk the Romans Road of Salvation, or teach them to say the Sinner’s Prayer. I mean that we pray for a fresh outpouring of the same Spirit that brought the early church to life, that we ask God to raise up the Body of Christ in
this place so that we might do the things Jesus would do and say the things Jesus would say. I’ve read the headlines. I’ve watched the news. I know that these days there are a lot of so-called Christians doing things Jesus would never do and saying things Jesus would never say.
I’ve told you before, but I love it that Jesus says, “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.” He doesn’t say, “You might be my witnesses”; he says, “You will be.” The only question is whether you will be good one or a bad one. I believe that if we are the body of Christ, and if we are filled with the Holy Spirit, then we will be good ones. We will do what Jesus would do. We will say what Jesus would say. And God’s beloved Kingdom will come closer,
Every day.
—Jim Somerville © 2025
