You Are My Witnesses

Acts 1.1-11; Psalm 47; Ephesians 1.15-23; Luke 24.44-53

The passage from Acts 1 we have read just now seems to make four basic points about our lives as Christians:

1. that we are called to be witnesses to Jesus and his kingdom
2. that we receive the power to become his witnesses by waiting, together with our brothers and sisters in Christ, for an empowering that comes through the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit
3. that we are called to be witnesses not only in the comfortable, familiar places where we live most of our lives, but also in uncomfortable, unfamiliar places – like that of another nation or ethnic group
4. that we are not alone in all of this because while Jesus might have gone from us in the flesh, he is still very with us ‘in the Spirit’.  The work we do as witnesses is therefore his own work as well.

This morning I have time to say something about only the first of these points.  The others will have to wait for another time.

I want to challenge you to take this calling very seriously.  Being a witness means being willing to testify, in both word and deed, to the difference that knowing Christ makes in your life.  Since I joined the Uniting Church in 1995, I have observed that Uniting Church people are very good at witnessing to Christ with their deeds.  And that is to be applauded! But many Uniting Church people seem very poor at witnessing to Christ with their words.  How many of us actually talk with our friends or our families about Christ?  How many of us invite our friends and family along to worship, or to a bible exploration, or to a lecture or workshop in which the Christian faith is being discussed? Not many, I suspect. And why is that so?  Well, let me guess at a few of the most common excuses we make to ourselves.  (1) ‘I don’t know what to say’; (2) ‘I find evangelism distasteful – I’m worried that my friends will be offended’; (3) ‘I don’t believe that it is our words that make a difference to people, it is the quality of the lives we live’.  Let’s take a look at each of these excuses, one by one, and see how they look under the pressure of a bit of scrutiny.

What of the first excuse, ‘But I don’t know what to say’.  It is certainly true that many Christians do not know what say by way of bearing witness to friends and families.  So I won’t deny the truth of the excuse.  It is an excuse, nonetheless.  For if we don’t know what to say, then surely there is a reason for that:  either that we do not know our faith very well, or we are not confident in that faith.  In either case, the solution is certainly not to remain unknowledgeable, or to remain unconfident.  It is certainly not to remain an infant in matters of faith, a little baby Christian who can say nothing of Christ to anyone.  It is to seek the kind of help that will enable us to become more mature, more grown-up in the faith, so that we know who we are in Christ and can speak confidently of what we know, believe and feel.  Such help is ready at hand – in the personal counsel of the more mature members of one’s own church, in spiritual directors and mentors from other churches, in courses, seminars and bible-study groups, and in books, videos and websites by the bucket-load.  The resources are everywhere about.  So what are you waiting for?  Take the initiative.  Go our there and get yourself some decent spiritual food.  Grow up in the faith, and start to bear fruit!

What of the second common excuse for not bearing witness to Christ:  ‘I find evangelism distasteful – I’m worried that my friends will be offended’.  Again, I actually believe the people who say this.  I don’t think they are telling a lie.  They do, indeed, worry that bearing witness to Christ will endanger their friendships.  There are two things to be said in response.  The first is that our allegiance to Christ and his commandments will indeed endanger our friendships sometimes.  That is because, as Christians, we are called to listen to Christ first and others second.  If there is a disagreement between what Christ asks of us and what our friends or family ask of us, we must of course do what Christ asks, even if that means offending our friends of family.  That is what it means to follow Christ as our only Lord.  Of course, having said that, we should also remember that amongst the commands that Christ has given us are these:  ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself’ (Mt. 22.39); and, ‘so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everyone’ (Rom 12.18).  What that means in the context of bearing witness is pretty clear, is it not?  That in speaking about Christ to our friends and family, we should do so in a way that is as gentle and respectful as possible.  ‘Speak the truth in love’ say the Letter to the Ephesians (4.15).  That is how we are to bear witness to Christ.  If our witness, a speech that shares Christ with our friends and family, is not couched in a respectful tone and in the context of respectful relationships, then we are not being Christian when we speak.  Word and deed fail to match up.  Yet, we are called to speak.  Even at the risk of being rejected - even as Christ spoke, and was rejected.

And so we come to the third common excuse: ‘I don’t believe that it is our words that make a difference to people, it is the quality of the lives we live.’  What makes this an excuse is the first part of the sentence, the ‘I don’t believe that it is the words that make a difference to people’.  I’m quite o.k. with the second bit, the bit about the quality of our lives, because I certainly agree that the character and quality of our lives bear witness to Christ in very powerful ways.  But that is no excuse for not talking about Christ with our friends and neighbours.  There are several reasons for this apart from the obvious fact that the New Testament understands ‘bearing witness’ as a unity of word and deed.

The most important of these is that speech is the mode by which we make sense of what we do; or, to put it another way, words and speech are the means by which we interpret what we do to ourselves and to each other.  There is a fundamental problem, you see, with assuming that people will always see our behaviour as a manifestation of Christ or the kingdom; or even with assuming that they will interpret our actions as manifestations of a desire for love or justice.  For most people know longer know anything of Christ or the kingdom.  They do not know that Christ, justice, peace and love all belong to a mutually interpretive field of meaning.  Therefore, it is rarely clear to others that what we do, we do in the name of Christ, in imitation of his love.  What we see as an act of faith in God, others may see as a gamble with chance.  What we see as diaconal service, others may see as an unhealthy ‘need to be needed’.  What we see as an act of redistributive justice, others may see as ‘rewarding the lazy’ out of a sense of unhealthy guilt.  See what I mean?  The meaning of what we do cannot enter the public realm, the public realm of a discourse that we share with other people, unless we are able to articulate an horizon of meaning for what we do, first for ourselves, but then for others.  In this sense, the witness to others can perhaps be characterized as a public act of worship.  For it is in worship (as ritual, or 'embodied story) that we articulate the meaning of our Christian lives most profoundly and holistically.  But when the worship of the community comes to a close, the Spirit drives us out into the world to share both who we are, and what we are becoming, with everyone else - in speech as well as in action. Worship is again the model.  In worship we do things, but we also say what we do, we bring its meaning to speech.

SO . . .  there is, is fact, no excuse (if we are Christians) for failing to share our faith with the world in speech as well as in action.  Of course there will be hesitancy. Of course there will be a little fear and trembling.  Indeed, I’d be a little worried if there wasn’t!  But speak we must.  Not, first of all, because we are commanded by Jesus to do so.  No, even before the command there ought to be (surely!) some sense in us that the good news of God’s love is so good that we would be selfish indeed not to share it with our friends and neighbours.  Besides, God has promised that (a) we are not given this task as isolated individuals, but as a community, and (b) we are given this task in the power of the Spirit, who will help and encourage us to say and do what Jesus has called us to say and do.  So, if you are not sharing your faith with others, I encourage you to take a good hard look in the mirror and ask the question:  ‘am I a Christian or not?’  I hope you will answer ‘yes’ and I hope you will join with your brothers and sisters to share our common faith with the world in which we live.