Witness: Living the Legacy | 11/2/25
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The sermon described “witness” as more than just words: it’s “a way of life.” How might your daily actions serve as a witness to Christ’s love?
The story of the Literacy Project at The Gathering UMC in St. Louis showed witness through service. Where do you see opportunities in your community to be a quiet, consistent witness through presence and compassion?
Pastor Marisa lifted up the example of Alice Hebson and her faithful, joyful service. Who has been an “Alice” in your life, a person whose witness inspired your own faith journey?
How can your words and actions counter voices of hate or judgment in the world around you?
As a congregation, Trinity’s vision is “to be a courageous witness for Jesus Christ.” What might it look like for our church to live out that vision more boldly in the coming year?
Transcript:
If you have been a United Methodist since the great dinosaurs roamed the earth, then it’s very likely that you or your family joined the church, or you were confirmed, through the confirmation process. When you did so, your membership vows contained four commitments: that you would faithfully participate in the ministries of the church by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, and your service.
And for once in my life, I’m an old timer like you! When I joined the church through the confirmation process, it was about 2007 at First United Methodist Church of Lakeland, and it only said those four commitments. But if you’ve become a member of Trinity or any United Methodist Church (or are going to become a member), your question is just a little bit different.
In May of 2008, a change was made to add another commitment. And your question sounds a little bit like this: “As members of this congregation of the United Methodist Church, will you faithfully participate in its ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness.”
That fifth mysterious commitment was added: that we would faithfully participate in the ministries of our church with our witness. This change was made by our General Conference. It’s the big body of all the United Methodists all around the world gathered together to make decisions. The delegates who had gathered believed that adding “witness” would better describe who we are as a church and who we are continually striving to be: faithful witnesses of Jesus Christ.
But what does that mean, exactly, to offer our witness? Our Trinity Vision Statement challenges us to be a courageous witness for Jesus Christ. To help us understand how to faithfully live out this new commitment through our faith practice, we look to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, when Jesus turns to his disciples and asks a pointed question right after Jesus went toe to toe with a couple of religious leaders.
Hear now these words from the Gospel of Matthew:
Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
My friends, this is the Word of God for us, the people of God. And we all say, “Thanks be to God.”
Will you pray with me?
Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on this place today, that as your word is proclaimed, it would hit us anew. Refresh us, invite us into a different way of being by the power of your Spirit. Amen.
When we think of the word “witness,” what often comes to mind is the image of a courtroom setting, where there is someone on the witness stand testifying in a trial about what they have seen or what they know about the situation being judged. Growing up, this is an image that was in my mind a lot because my dad was a lawyer, and I enjoyed listening to the stories of his trials and all that came with it. But I also got a sense of unsettledness. That image of “witness” feels intimidating and cold, and many of us wouldn’t want to touch that kind of witness with a ten-foot pole.
In the scripture we just read together this morning, Jesus does put his disciples on the witness stand. He says, “Who do people say that I am?” And you can almost feel the nervous energy crackling off the disciples as they shifted their gazes to one another. It was almost like they didn’t want to rat out their neighbors or say something wrong to get someone else in trouble.
Then the question gets more pointed: “Who do you say that I am?” An eerie, anticipatory hush fell across the disciples. I can imagine that no one was willing to jump to answer that particular question from Jesus—except Peter. Good old Peter. We don’t know if Peter’s answer was simply given as the expectation of all that he’d come to know about Jesus, or if he fully believed that Jesus was the Messiah. We know that there would be a lot more experiences Peter would have throughout the rest of the Gospel that would help him put flesh on that powerful confession.
For many Christians, Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question is where the practice of witness begins and ends. It’s just a confession on our lips that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, spoken again and again and again until the whole world knows that Jesus is the true way.
The problem is that we often say those words and then conveniently forget Jesus’s imperative to “feed my sheep.” If “witness” was just about the words that we profess and share with all the people we see—about who Christ is—then the story we just read would have ended with Jesus’s praise: “Good job, Peter!” And that would have been the end of it – on to the next moment.
But that moment didn’t end. Instead, Jesus looked Peter in the eyes, placed his hands upon Peter’s shoulders, and gave him a new identity. “You are now Petra—Peter— Rock. On this rock I will build my church.”
The church would not be built on the foundation of Peter’s words alone, but upon his entire being, his entire person: heart, soul, mind, body, and spirit, would lay the foundation of the church. The church, the way that Christ’s life and legacy continue on in the world to this very day.
This identity was who Peter became. But we know that life for Peter wasn’t without its challenges along the way. Peter denied Christ. Peter watched Jesus die. Peter experienced Jesus’ personal resurrection for him and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. In the book of Acts, we see Peter fully step into the leadership role of creating this new faith community, along with the other disciples in that upper room.
And he did so not just with powerful messages, but through his prayers, upholding the community, his presence in the relationships that were being built, his gifts of material goods, and his service of leadership. All of his being communicated Christ’s life, death, and resurrection in a way that impacted others—so much so that it built the church. It was who he was.
And this is who we are. The church is given the task to carry the life and legacy of the living Christ into the world through the way each and every one of us live, move, and have our being.
Eusebius, the first Christian historian, described the task of offering witness as en philosophia biou, or very literally, “a way of life.”
Our witness—our way of life—has changed just a teensy bit since Eusebius roamed the earth. Over the centuries, the collective church has had to discern time and time again what our witness looks like and how we communicate Christ authentically in different ways and in different cultural contexts.
The Gathering United Methodist Church, a congregation in St. Louis, Missouri, has done some of that discernment work in recent years to discover who they are in this moment. They noticed that in the community around them, the literacy rates were the lowest at the two elementary schools closest to the church. So some of the laypeople started the Literacy Project, where members of the church would go into those schools, read to the children, and also provide support to the teachers, staff, and families of the students attending.
Talking about their shift in mission, their pastor, Sable Sabara Engelbrecht, said this: “Our witness is being present in some of the lowest-performing schools in our state—places that the public has largely overlooked or forgotten.” This was their witness.
You know, there’s a saying that no one can really pinpoint who said it, but I bet many of you have heard it before: Preach the gospel at all times, and use words only when necessary.
I bet none of those parishioners who participated in the Literacy Project even spoke the name of Jesus when they were in the public school setting. And yet they were a witness to Christ simply because of who they were. They showed up authentically with their entire beings, and I bet they showed up undergirded by their prayers—leaning into the time with the children before they even arrived on campus.
Their presence as they built relationships with the children they were reading with, their gifts as they met the needs of families and teachers with food and school supplies, and their service—reading book after book with student after student—all of that was rooted in the love of Jesus Christ. In doing so, they communicated the gospel of Jesus Christ embodied in their very being.
It was who they were. And it is who we are, and who we have been since the days of John Wesley, who began the Methodist movement way back yonder. He said, Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
This is a reminder to us not only to do the good but to be the good—as a function of who we are in the world.
If you notice, as you leave our campus, we have the beginning of this quote on signs as you go out into the world. We have them at the front, and we also have them at the gate near Talbot Elementary School—for parents who are dropping off or picking up their students after school. You want to know how I know that? Because I do it every day.
It’s a reminder that in all the spaces we live and move and have our being in this community, we participate in and bring about what is good to all the places and to all the people.
This is our witness. Because everything we do and everything we say points back to Jesus Christ. And, friends, there has never been a more important time to have our witness point to a Jesus who is nothing but love, nothing but grace, nothing but mercy. It has never been more important for us to have our being point to a Jesus who heals, who advocates, who empowers, as an alternative to the Jesus of hate and condemnation that seems to be receiving all too much airtime these days.
This is our call. This is our witness to the living legacy of Christ in our world: to communicate it with our very lives, that hope and love are stronger.
You know who understood that assignment? Her name was Alice Hebson, and she was a member of this congregation. She sat right there for years, and I had the privilege of getting to know Alice because she heard about the service I was leading monthly at The Village.
In the fall of 2023, she approached me right after the 11:00 service and said, “The Atrium needs a service like that. No Protestant church has stepped foot into the Atrium since before COVID. Our residents are hungry for hope and for Jesus.”
And so, with all the fire and grace that her small frame could muster—and make no mistake, this woman in her 90s could run circles around me—I showed up that first Monday with my big box on the side that says “Salvation.” (That’s another story for a different moment.) But in this box were all the things I needed. As I was walking up into the Atrium, this woman stood up and said, “Your back is worse than mine. Give me that box.”
So, with all of that fire and grace, she made possible the beginnings of this service. This monthly service we kicked off in November of 2023, and on that first service, Alice told all of her friends and packed out that tiny little chapel. It’s really only supposed to hold about twelve people comfortably. But as I was walking to the chapel, let me tell you, there was walker after walker lining up that hallway. I turned in, and it was packed out.
They came not because of who I was. They came because of Alice and her witness. With every fiber of her being, Alice reflected Jesus Christ. She was authentic. She was genuine. And she was sassy, and she was until the day she died. She lived that legacy and the life of Jesus Christ until her breath was no longer in her body.
I bet you’re sitting here today because of someone like Alice or someone like the saints we will recognize in just a few moments. I bet you’re sitting here because someone took the time to authentically reflect and communicate the Jesus of love, of grace, of mercy.
And, friends, it’s now our turn to live the legacy of the living Christ—to exist in the spaces that we inhabit daily, undergirded by our prayers, our presence, our gifts, and our service—so that we might be a courageous witness for Jesus Christ, for the transformation of the world.
This is who we are. Amen.