Sermon: Testimony

Text: 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. Matthew 28.18-20

When I was in the SPCK shop here in the Cloisters on Wednesday I saw something that I had not noticed before, and it made me laugh out loud. The bookshelves have headings which were printed in gold on the wood at the top when the building was refurbished some years ago. On one of them it says, quite clearly, 'General Christian Fiction', and below it are three shelves devoted to 'Testimony'.

Now I was brought up in a Christian sub-culture in which 'giving your testimony' was important; and the idea that 'testimony' might come under the heading of 'General Christian Fiction' is perhaps not so far-fetched when you have heard the kind of statement, 'Nobody can know the depths of depravity and sin to which I had sunk before I was gloriously saved at the age of four.'

But there is also a serious point to be made, which I could not have countenanced before I started reading around in the area of literary theory. The title of a book by Douglas Templeton published in 1999 focuses the issue with beautiful clarity: The New Testament as True Fiction [Sheffield Academic Press, 1999]. And the issue is that fiction deals with 'truth' at a far deeper level than any attempt at accurate description. Indeed, when we need seriously accurate description of what is going on - in Law courts, say, or in the reporting of scientific experiments - we have to resort to highly stylized forms of writing, because it is nigh-on impossible to get historical accuracy about 'what actually happened'.

Daniel Schacter's book, Searching for Memory [Basic Books, 1996], explains what seems to be the case with memory: namely, that, when we recall something in the memory, the brain reassembles the data which constitute the 'memory' partly on the basis of the circumstances in which the need arises for the recall.

This has implications for 'testimony', because testimony is the speaking - or writing - of what we say has taken place, and, in the case of religious testimony, our beliefs about it. But clearly, we can never be absolutely certain that what we recall is absolutely what happened, because there is a creative process which goes on.

And when we are dealing with a text, the issue is more complicated still, for further layers of creative activity are present. Matthew's 'testimony' to the resurrection is a case in point; and I want to draw your attention to just three aspects of what I am trying to say.

First of all, the women who are there in the story. Matthew based his Gospel on that of Mark; so when he says, After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb, it is instructive to note what Mark says. And that is: When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

We note that Mary Magdalene is there in Matthew, but the expression, the other Mary, is puzzling. Which Mary does he mean - and what ever happened to Salome? The puzzle becomes all the greater when we note that, at first sight, she could be the mother of James; but back in ch.27, v.61, Matthew has used the same expression where Mark has written, Mary the mother of Joses.

All this is quite strange. But it is made all the more so, when we realize that, in the culture of the day, a woman's testimony could not be regarded as reliable in a court of law; so what the text presents us with is a story which contains the very elements of doubt which, you might think, it would want to exclude, if the story was concerned mainly with 'what actually happened'.

Secondly, I want to draw your attention to what the women say after they have met the angel. The text of Matthew is quite clear: So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, 'Greetings!'. At this point, Mark says, 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.

Now that is quite a difference. It is as though Matthew wants to say, 'No, that is all wrong; it is not the case that they were so frightened that they told nobody. Rather, they ran off precisely in order to tell the disciples what they had experienced. And as they did so, they were met by the risen Lord himself, who greeted them, confirmed the angel's message, their own intentions, and the angel's promise that they would see him in Galilee.

The third point I want to make concerns the conclusion of the Gospel. The disciples go to Galilee, and they see him on the mountain to which Jesus had directed them - though there is no indication in the text of which mountain that might have been. (And, incidentally, there is no mention of the women here; they have been left out of the story.)

And Jesus does three things: He claims, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. He commands, 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 he promises, And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

In other words he does in these three verses what Luke later does in two chapters, for he presents the gist of what we know as the Ascension and Pentecost. Exaltation to authority joined with a great commission and the promise of his presence. And, it is important to note, he does not go away! The words, And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age, are the last words of Matthew's Gospel. He stays there, with them.

It was important for Matthew's readers that he should. They were probably a group of Jewish Christians, recently ejected from the synagogue for believing in the resurrection and lordship of Jesus, and wondering who they were and what they were to do.

So, how shall we read the testimony that Matthew gives?

First, it is that two women went to the tomb, not three: just enough, in other words, for the requirement of the Jewish Law. But there again, says the text, you might be justified in doubting whether this is reliable - unless something else happens.

Second, having gone to the tomb and seen it empty, and having been told by an angel that Jesus had been raised, it is not the case that they were frightened into silence; rather, they were determined to tell the (male) disciples what had happened. And it was in the context of that desire and intention that they met the risen Lord.

Third, the resurrection of Jesus means that he is around in the world, with those who are open to the possibility of his presence - just as it was said of him at the beginning of this Gospel that his name would be 'Emmanuel - with-us-is-God'. And that he is God means inevitably that he must be talked about as the one to whom all authority belongs. The nations are invited to see that his being with his people after birth, ministry, death and life again is of such a kind as to embrace the whole of humanity, in all its difference, its conflicts and its pain.

'Giving testimony', 'bearing witness', is a partial, a lonely business, for only we have seen what we have seen - and yet we have seen it. And the language in which it comes to expression is implicitly rhetorical rather than descriptive: it sets out to persuade rather than merely to inform.

And this is the good news - at what could well be the eventide of our culture and civilization. Confused, frightened, at war with what we fear, subject to fears of random death and to images of terrible human cruelty, With us is God, and this God is the one God of all.

So we may step out of our fears, we may find the risen Christ ahead of us and turning back to greet us as we walk towards him. We may join with our neighbour, not in battle, but in embrace, in listening, in exploration of a shared, human future.

This is the gospel truth that we are invited to dig down to find in our scriptures, in our lives, in our understanding of what it is to be right - and righteous! - and in our politics. And we have to hold on to it, repeat it and live it - and trust that God, with us in Christ, will yet bring it to completion.

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.