"And You Will Be My Witnesses" - Rev. John Gorin

Two disciples walk the road to Emmaus, grief-heavy and uncertain. A stranger joins them. It is only when bread is broken at supper that they realize who has been beside them the whole way. In this sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, Rector John Gorin traces a thread that runs through Scripture, the modern courtroom, and the ordinary rhythms of our lives: the weight of witness. Drawing on the eyewitness accounts that ground the resurrection, the ethical tension at the heart of the film Juror #2, and Peter's letter to a scattered early church, Fr. John moves past familiar identity labels to ask a sharper question — beyond calling ourselves Christians, what would it mean to actually live as witnesses of the risen Lord? The sermon unfolds in three movements: 1. We are called to be witnesses. Not as firsthand observers of an empty tomb, but as those whose lives quietly testify to Christ's presence — sometimes in answered prayers, more often in the steady trust carried through difficult seasons. 2. Witness reorders a life. As it did for the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, and as Fr. John reflects from his own eighteen-year path through Silicon Valley tech into seminary and into ministry. 3. We grow as witnesses through holiness and love. The rhythms Peter names — alert minds, reverent fear, deep love from the heart — are how the Church becomes credible in any age. Recorded live at Holy Trinity Silicon Valley, an Anglican parish (ACNA / Diocese of C4SO) in Palo Alto, where ancient liturgy meets the questions of our moment.