The last line of Luke is, “You are witnesses of the things.” What things? I read backward and find a dead guy eating a fish and saying, “watch me.” So the first thing we as Christians witness to is the fact that God has totally disrupted the natural order of the earth by sending to us an ordinary appearing individual, who happens to have the power to rise from the dead. This changes everything. We’ve all had that speculative conversation, usually late at night with a glass of wine in our hands, about how things would be different if we encountered aliens and that we are not alone in the universe. Now we have proof that, not only are we not alone, but our alien god has inserted itself into a particular moment in time.

Put plainly, the Easter story is startling. It is news worthy. It is worthy of much discussion and suitable for changing lives. It changes everything. So the first thing we must say is, I know someone who has come back from the dead. Then, with this crazy fact out of the way, we can witness to how we discovered the fish-eating one to be God and that God is merciful. We can go on to witness to our own miracle; how we were saved by our own strange encounter with Truth or God-with-Us.

Thirdly, we can witness to the social changes that Jesus advocated. Jesus ate with the poor and the outcast. He valued life and hated the violence of those who oppress their neighbors. He witnessed in parables and simple teachings like the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) to the distance humankind has come from the loving expectations of God. He died and then got up and ate fish with his friends so that we might seek to be loving, peaceful people, witnessing to others about the grace of God.