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Uncertainty is something we have all experienced at one point or other in our lives. Uncertainty is a miserable thing. It robs us of our confidence. It prevents us from acting. It hinders our progress. Uncertainty causes us to doubt our ability. It is the opposite of confidence.

Every sporting coach knows the difference between uncertainty and confidence. It is that split second decision or hesitation that can win or loose the day.

Uncertainty is rife in the church. We live in a culture and a time when the church is uncertain. Falling numbers, questions about the truth-value of the Bible, and an insidious scepticism pervades church life. Now if you are saying in your head right now. Well, it’s good to be uncertain; you can’t just rush into things! Or, saying well I don’t want to be one of those confident self-opinionated Christians. Then I wonder whether you are justifying your uncertainty? For the opposite of uncertainty is not arrogance but confidence. And uncertainty is not the same as evaluation and consideration, but the same as indecision and doubt.

Uncertainty is precisely what Jesus encountered after his death and resurrection. The consistent picture we get from the Gospels is that the disciples are uncertain, frightened and doubting meeting behind shut doors [Jn 20:19]. Luke tells us that it wasn’t only Thomas who doubted [Lk 24:38].

Now the way Jesus deals with the disciples’ doubts and uncertainty is to say firstly, Get the Facts folk. Look what is before you. Luke tells us they supposed they saw a spirit [Lk 24:38]. Jesus is saying look at me I am real. This isn’t a ghost, or an allusion, or a dream, or a spiritual feeling, it is I, your Lord really before you.

Let us pause and get some facts about the resurrection. When you read the writings of the first and second generation of Christians about the resurrection they emphasise a bodily resurrection. Why! Well, they want to distinguish between a dream, vision, allusion, ghosts, or spiritual feelings. A wide spread religious view during this time was the separation of the body and spirit. This view is still around today. The particular strain of this view said that the spirit was good and the body was bad. This religious view went so far as to say that what you do with the body is unimportant. Physically you can live an immoral life. It doesn’t matter because it is the spirit that matters. They applied this to Jesus emphasising the spiritual to the neglect of the physical saying his suffering was of no consequence. Christians, like their Jewish cousins, understood that God was concerned with the whole of life. There was no divide between the physical and the spiritual. They not only wanted to avoid turning the resurrection into some spiritual experience but also recognised its reality to include the whole of life.

You may say to me, Peter do you believe in a bodily resurrection? And I would respond by saying that the question is unhelpful. It pushes us down a narrow one-way street. There are some things in life that are difficult to understand so we define them by what they are not. So the first Christians working with the concept of Resurrection wanted others to know that what they experienced was not a dream, allusion, ghost, vision, or a nice warm feeling we might label spiritual. They experienced a reality, which they speak of in physical terms. What the Resurrection declares is the lordship of Jesus over death and life. Jesus is alive in a new way. The victory is his; evil’s power has been faced and shown inadequate.

Now I can’t explain the mechanics, the physics or the biology of the Resurrection of Jesus. But this is what resurrection means to me: Jesus is Lord of Life as God is the Lord of Life; and, death has lost its sting as evil its power.

The second thing, Jesus says, is get the facts into the big picture. Uncertainty tends to freeze us in the frame of life. We need to move our of the frame and see the whole film of life. Jesus does this. He reminds them of their history. Firstly, he reminds them of their immediate history with him. His teachings and his ministry with them as his disciples [Lk 24: 44]. Jesus would have recalled the plan of God revealed in the covenants with Abraham and down through the centuries [Lk 24:44-46]. He no doubt reminded them of the words of Jeremiah who spoke of God writing the Law in our hearts [Jer 31:31]. And no doubt he spoke of Isaiah who had said that all nations would come to know God [Is 55:5]. And Jesus would have reminded them that God had always called the people of God to witness in their words and actions to their identity as the people of the Lord God.

The third thing Jesus tells them is to get the task [Lk 24: 48]. They are to be witnesses. That’s their task. Yes that demands courage. But it doesn’t demand them to do something they can’t do. Everyone can say what they have experienced – what they have seen. They are not asked to do much more than be witnesses to Jesus as his followers. Naturally as his followers we pattern our lives on Jesus and his values. We are examples of the Christian life.

The task of witnessing can be broken into small parts to see how easy it is. Someone says to you what did you do this morning? What is you reply? Do you say I went to church (full stop – nothing more)? Why not say, “ I went to worship, and it was good!” And then stop. Leave it at that. They may come back and say, “Oh what was good about it?” Then tell them, but in a way that the focus falls on God. More questions may follow that demand you to explain a bit more. But what we must seek to do is witness to Jesus Christ. It’s not a witness to self. When you just say, I went to church, and say no more, it sounds if you don’t want to talk about.

Finally Jesus says to his followers, get the promise of power [Lk 24: 49]. Jesus says, this is the reality, this is the big picture, this is the task, and I will see you are equipped. The power of God does come to us. Not before we have the reality of the situation or the big picture in place, or before we witness. It comes as we enter into those things. As we move step by step towards the action of witnessing we find ourselves growing in power. Part of that is growing in confidence. But God does empower us when we step out in ministry.

These principles apply to us today in every situation we find ourselves in, but most of all as Christians. Uncertainty is our enemy. So when you feel uncertain get the facts, then get the facts into the big picture, get the task, and get the promise. Every situation is pregnant with promise, get it, and step out in confidence. Don’t step out with certainty, that’s arrogant; step out in confidence trusting God.

Have you wondered why Jesus after three years of intense ministry which ended in sacrifice and resurrection, ends up giving his disciples only one task. Go and tell this story to others. Jesus doesn’t say change the world. Get onto the temple board and change the way they do things. Enter local politics and change the rules for the poor. No, he simply says, go and be my witnesses, because if you seek the kingdom everything else will follow in place.

Let me show how Jesus’ plan is more powerful. The black preacher, Martin Luther King Jnr, during the sixties spoke against racism in the USA. “His goal”, his close colleague Andrew Young says, “was not to defeat the white man but to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority … the end was reconciliation, redemption and a creation of a community.” Martin Luther King did not set out to change laws, but hearts. Hence early in the piece fellow black American activists laughed at him, like Roy Wilkins, who pointed out that King’s methods had not achieved a single victory in 1963.

Interestingly enough 15 years after his death a national holiday [proclaimed 1983] was proclaimed in 1983. Today every state in the USA has a national holiday in January named after King. His name honours the momentous changes that took place. He is the only African-American, the only minister, and indeed the only individual American, so honoured. His goal, like Jesus’, was to change hearts not laws. I think I lot of justice advocates forget this.

There is nothing more powerful than a changed life. And there is nothing more needed than witnesses to the changed life. Step out confidently with me men and women of God and witness to this Reconciler of Creation – Jesus the Christ.