Dear Edgeboro Friends & Family,

This year will mark five Easter sermons that I’ve preached at Edgeboro. Each one of them has exclusively focused on one of the gospel accounts – and understandably so – but in this newsletter, I want to spend some time with a story from scripture that is assigned to Easter Sunday every year in the Revised Common Lectionary and never gets used.

So let’s focus on Acts 10:34-43 for a moment. (To get a full grasp of this story, just read all of Acts 10.) 

In this part of Acts, Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, was called by God to go to the household of a man named Cornelius, who summoned Peter after he had his own encounter with God. Upon hearing about Cornelius’ experience, Peter began preaching a short sermon (verses 34-43) in which he shares the entire story of Jesus.

The first things that catch my attention about this sermon are how short his sermon is and how powerful it was – everyone that heard it wanted to be baptized afterward! Can’t say I’ve ever done that or seen that before! After those initial surprises, the next thing I noticed was his use of the word “witness.” (Honestly, I think this stood out because “witness” was one of the words for our final Wednesday evening Lenten gathering, but it’s still timely!)

“Witness” is an important word for people of faith. God’s love has been shared over the millennia because of faithful people that understood the assignment of witnessing. They saw what God was doing and heard what God was saying, and then they’d communicate that to others in word and deed.

–Moses witnessed to the Israelites of God’s new plans of provision for them.

–Prophets like Isaiah witnessed to many of God’s desire to see people return to God.

–Jesus witnessed to everyone of God’s endless love for all people.

And then we get to Easter when the witnessing continues:

–The women ran from the tomb and witnessed to the disciples of a spectacular miracle.

–Peter witnessed to Cornelius and his household of Christ’s love, which is outside of Jerusalem, thus fulfilling part of what Jesus said to his disciples right before ascending to heaven, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

During Easter, we celebrate that Christ is not dead, which means that Christ is still at work in the world today, and as prophets and disciples of old once did, it is now our turn to be witnesses of Christ’s love in the world. During Easter, we claim our role as witnesses, perhaps most boldly during the last words typically sung at Edgeboro and other Moravian churches on Easter morning:

“But not for us alone this news was brought by Christ our Lord. ‘Twas meant for all the world to hear and thus with one accord with all God’s children everywhere his name and sign with pride we bear. To us, to us, this task is giv’n: to spread God’s word. Amen.” (Written by Bishop Edwin Kortz, 1986)

Acts 10:34-43 can remind us that “witness” is an important Easter word. So let’s claim our role once again this Easter – it’s our turn to be witnesses of God’s love in all that we say and do!

Witnessing with you,

Pastor Dan