We are Witnesses of These Things

Based on Acts 5:27-32

“Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” That’s the oath a person takes as they enter the witness stand during a trial. Telling the truth as a witness is critical to the trial process. All the witness has to do is to share what they know. A credible witness is one who is truthful and honest about what they saw or heard. They don’t have to make stuff up. They don’t have to explain or give reasons for what happened. No speculation. This is not a debate or trying to win an argument. Not an attempt to impress people with your rhetorical skills. All a witness has to do is tell us what they experienced.

Witnesses are critical in trials. We need witnesses to solve crimes. Witnesses can help track down suspects. Witnesses can say what happened when there is a vehicle collision. For those who weren’t there, and there are no cameras around, witnesses may be the only source of information so that we can know what happened. With no witnesses, we can never know for sure what took place.

There’s the old saying, “You can’t unsee things.” Sometimes we wish we could, right? But no. What we see is burned into our brains. Especially when we experience something significant, it’s going to stay with us. We might re-experience it in our dreams. Images might pop up in our heads at random times through the day. We can choose not to talk about what we saw or heard. We can try to forget about it or deny to others that it happened. But we can’t just get rid of the experience. Anything short of amnesia prevents us from unseeing what we saw. What we saw and heard really happened. It wasn’t a dream. It was a real experience.

Yes, things may not be as they appear. Magicians and con artists are great at deception. Illusions can fool us. What is scary is the increasing sophistication of deep fakes in which videos are manipulated to appear that someone is saying something when the real person didn’t say it. Apparently, a deep fake video was circulating in which it appears that the leader of Ukraine was giving a speech suggesting that the nation should surrender to Russian forces. Those who watched that video saw a fabrication. Just because we see or hear things does not mean it is true. I hate to break it to you, but just because you saw something on the internet or heard your favorite podcaster give a hot take on some subject does not mean it’s true.

But when you watch a crime being committed, or you see the auto collision, that makes you a witness to a true event. When a maniac opens fire in a grocery store or a delivery van suddenly explodes, you may not want to believe your eyes. But you just saw something that really did happen. This makes your testimony critical so that those who were not there can find out what actually happened. This is especially important these days when people who weren’t even at the crime scene can go on Twitter or the Citizen app and just make up stuff. Eyewitness accounts are necessary so that the truth can be known. And those who are eyewitnesses need to give their account of what happened. If they don’t, then the rest of us won’t know what really took place.

What happens though when there are people who don’t want you to talk? Here’s another old saying, “snitches get stiches.” The potential for harm to come your way if you come forward with your testimony is real. And it frustrates law enforcement to no end. A young man is shot and killed in broad daylight on a city street and nobody saw nothing. Or maybe you saw or heard something that is embarrassing or scandalous and could hurt the reputation of someone in the public eye. Here comes the hush money. People will use different methods to get witnesses to stay silent or to publicly deny what they saw to protect other people. Sometimes people in positions of power don’t want the truth to get out.

This is the situation that is happening with Peter and the disciples when they are brought before the religious council. Ever since the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit descended on the disciples, they have been out in the streets telling people about Jesus, that he died for our sins, that God raised him from the dead, and that through Jesus there is forgiveness of sins. The religious leaders weren’t having it. What the disciples were teaching was inconvenient for the religious leaders. They were the arbiters of the sacrificial system through which forgiveness of sins was made possible. A system, by the way, that was established by God through Moses. What the disciples were teaching was disturbing the status quo. They were undermining a system that God had established and that had served the people Israel for many generations. It should be no surprise that the leaders who are charged with maintaining this divinely appointed system would tell the disciples to stop teaching in the name of Jesus. But the disciples would not be silenced.

The high priest says to Peter, “You are trying to put the blood of this man on our hands.” Why did he say this? Seems the people are starting to look favorably on Jesus. It is putting the religious leaders in a bad light. They don’t like being pegged as culpable in Jesus’ crucifixion. But it wasn’t a lie. The truth is that the religious leaders were the ones who insisted that Pilate have Jesus crucified. Jesus’ blood was on their hands. And it was on Pilate’s hands as well in spite of him publicly washing his hands of the whole affair. Pilate didn’t have to give in to the leaders and the crowd they had juiced up to call for Jesus’ crucifixion. They were all culpable.

Peter’s response names the reality of the situation. He and the disciples aren’t seeking to undermine the authority of the religious leaders. They aren’t trying to bring the leaders down so that the disciples could be in charge instead. They were not trying to embarrass anybody. What does Peter say? “We are witnesses.” Witnesses of what? Witnesses of the resurrection. They saw Jesus with their own eyes. They heard his voice. They touched his body. They couldn’t unsee the fact that the one who was crucified was raised, not on his own power, but that God had raised Jesus. The God of their ancestors had done this. The God of Moses, the God who had established a sacrificial system for the purpose of cleansing the people of their sins, it was this God that had raised Jesus from the dead. They were witnesses of these things. What else are they supposed to do? Witnesses bear witness so that others who did not see what happened can come to know what took place. What Peter and the rest were saying may be inconvenient or even threatening to the authority of the religious leaders. But they were eyewitnesses. They would not remain silent. They had to testify to what God had done.

And it wasn’t just them. Peter says that the Holy Spirit was also a witness. Do you see it? In vs. 32, Peter says, “And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit.” The very Spirit of God is bearing witness to what the disciples are saying. They aren’t on their own. They aren’t just making this stuff up. This isn’t an illusion. The Spirit of God is also testifying to the same things. If the Spirit is bearing witness, the disciples are in good company. It is for these reasons that Peter says that he has to obey God instead of any other human authority. They have to bear witness. Indeed they can’t help it. The Spirit of God is within them, giving them courage, giving them the words to say, empowering them, speaking through them, to share what they saw and heard. They must bear witness.

We are witnesses too. We have our own experience with God to proclaim. Of course, we don’t have quite the same account as Peter and the disciples. We have not encountered Jesus like they did. But we have encountered Jesus nonetheless. The Spirit of God has revealed things to us. We have a story to tell. God wants us to tell our story. It’s not about winning a debate. It’s not about making stuff up. It’s not about knowing all the answers or having all our doctrines straight. It’s not about giving a great speech. All we are asked to do is to bear witness, to give a testimony of how we have encountered the living Christ. Let us be inspired by Peter and the disciples who accepted the responsibility as the Spirit enabled them to bear witness to what they have seen and heard. With the Spirit of God as our helper, let us tell our stories as well.