6 April 2015 - we are all witnesses

God raised this Jesus;
of this we are all witnesses.

Jesus, you want to make us witnesses of your resurrection today. You want to change us from people who know about the event to people who have been changed by it. You want to change us from people who are "fearful yet overjoyed" to people who can raise our voices and proclaim the truth just as Peter and the eleven do.

From a worldly perspective there are probably reasons to be fearful. There are still people who try to conceal the truth of the resurrection. There are still those who oppose it. There are still those who can't accept it. They may simply laugh and mock us. But they may go further. Our finances may be on the line, especially if we own businesses. Or in some cases even our very lives might be on the line as with Christians living in the middle east.

“You are to say,
‘His disciples came by night and stole him while we were asleep.’

So, Jesus, in the face of this opposition we need you. We are tempted to hide in the upper room and lock the doors. But we are all supposed to be witnesses. We are supposed to say with Peter, "God raised this Jesus; of this we are all witnesses" no matter what the world thinks about it.

Jesus, you yourself transform our hearts. You pour out your Spirit upon us and move us from fear to faith. 

Exalted at the right hand of God,
he poured forth the promise of the Holy Spirit 
that he received from the Father, as you both see and hear.”

You give us the grace to speak your truth. You make us bold because the proclamation is accompanied by signs and wonders and doesn't rely on mere human wisdom. If it was up to our own human wisdom we would not feel adequate to the task and we'd be right. But it is up to God's power working through the Holy Spirit and we can therefore be fearless.

my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God (cf. 2 Cor. 2:4-5).

We don't have to worry about what we are to say, specifically, because we know that we will be given the words in the hour when we need them by the Holy Spirit himself (cf. Luk. 12:12).

Peter is given words of such power and boldness that we can hear the Spirit dripping from them even all these years hence:

But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death,
because it was impossible for him to be held by it.

Jesus, you will give us words like these when we need them. Fill us with your Spirit so that we can be fearless witnesses to you. The same confidence that you have in the Father even as you face the cross now empowers your people as we proclaim your truth:

I bless the LORD who counsels me;
even in the night my heart exhorts me.
I set the LORD ever before me;
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.