As a witness

As a wit­ness

Ser­mon preached at Enmore, 3^rd Sunday of Advent, 17^th. Decem­ber 2017

Read­ings: Isai­ah 61. 1–4, 8–11; 1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5.12–28; John 1.6–8; 19–28

Last week we had a taste of Mark’s Gos­pel, read­ing the open­ing verses and being intro­duced to John the Baptist. This Sunday the lec­tion­ary gives us some of the pro­logue to John’s Gos­pel and we read John’s account of the min­istry of John the Baptist. The two John’s are rather dif­fer­ent. Mark’s John wears camel hair, eats locusts and wild honey and is known as the bap­tiser. John the Evan­gel­ist intro­duces him simply as a man sent from God who came as a wit­ness to the light. His primary role is not as a bap­tiser but to be the one who test­i­fies to the light com­ing into the world.

Wit­ness is a word that John is rather fond of and most often he uses it of the wit­ness or testi­mony giv­en to the per­son of Jesus. John uses the noun ‘witness’ 14 times and the verb ‘to wit­ness’ 33 times- far more than any oth­er New Test­a­ment writer. In the fourth Gos­pel, John is the first to bear wit­ness to Jesus. Later in the Gos­pel there will be oth­er wit­nesses to Jesus: the Scrip­tures, God, Jesus’ own works, and his dis­ciples. In chapter 5 in con­ver­sa­tion with his crit­ics after heal­ing a man on the Sab­bath day Jesus declares: “I have a testi­mony great­er than John’s. The works that the Fath­er has giv­en me to com­plete, the very works that I am doing, testi­fy on my behalf that the Fath­er has sent me.”

In the Chris­ti­an world in which I grew up people talked a lot about ‘witnessing’. It was the term used for shar­ing your faith with oth­ers and there­fore a word which, in my view, had scary con­nota­tions. Wit­ness­ing was some­thing we were meant to do but most of us found dif­fi­cult. These days the word is out of fash­ion but it is a good Bib­lic­al word and one that we prob­ably need to reflect on. In Acts 1, Luke gives us Jesus’ farewell speech to his dis­ciples before his ascen­sion which include the words, “you will receive power when the Holy Spir­it has come upon you and you will be my wit­nesses in Jer­u­s­alem, in all Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.”

So what does it mean to bear wit­ness? The first thing to note is that the task of a wit­ness is not to draw atten­tion to them­selves. When John is first intro­duced to us in John 1 the Evan­gel­ist makes it clear that John was not the light but only a wit­ness to the light. John under­stood that very clearly. When the reli­gious author­it­ies came to ques­tion him about his iden­tity he was unshake­able in his con­vic­tion of who he was not. Three times he is asked who he is. In reply he declares “I am not the Christ.” “I am not Elijah.” “I am not the prophet.” John denied that he was the anoin­ted one, the Mes­si­ah and denied that he was Eli­jah reborn. There was a wide­spread belief based on a proph­ecy in Mala­chi that Eli­jah would return before the “great and dread­ful day of the Lord.” Jesus actu­ally said on one occa­sion (Matt.11.14) that the com­ing of John the Baptist ful­filled that proph­ecy but John would not claim that title for him­self. Nor would John accept that he was the great proph­et spoken of in Deu­ter­o­nomy 18 who would be like Moses. In the face of John’s deni­als, the reli­gious lead­ers ask in exas­per­a­tion, “What do you say about yourself?” John claims no title except the “voice of one cry­ing in the wil­der­ness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’.” In John’s Gos­pel, Jesus is the great ‘I am’. “I am the bread of life.” “I am the light of the world.” “I am good shepherd.” “I am the resur­rec­tion and the life.” “I am the way, the truth and the life.” “I am the true vine.” In stark con­trast, John is the great, “I am not.”

Yet, even in his res­ol­ute state­ments about who he is not, who John really is and his pur­pose are insep­ar­able from the Word made flesh, the one who is the true light. John’s iden­tity is bound up with the iden­tity of Jesus. As I men­tioned last week John the Baptist is a famil­i­ar fig­ure in reli­gious art through the ages and he keeps pop­ping up even when least expec­ted. So a num­ber of great paint­ings of the cru­ci­fix­ion have John the Baptist at one side point­ing to Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Can we loc­ate our iden­tity as closely with Jesus? Is the ground of our being that we are loved and known by God? Is our self- regard based on what we have achieved or what we pos­sess or is it groun­ded in the know­ledge that we are loved by the God revealed in Jesus.

The second thing about being a wit­ness is that a wit­ness is com­mit­ted. Wit­ness­ing is a leg­al concept. In Jew­ish law the wit­ness of two people was required in order to prove any­thing. To be a wit­ness is to com­mit one­self to a state­ment. Yes, the man I saw rob­bing the bank was very tall and had dark hair. The car that was speed­ing through the red lights was a white Camry. A wit­ness is required to tell plainly and clearly what he or she knows. John knew what was required of him and he faith­fully per­formed it. John the Evan­gel­ist gives us some oth­er faith­ful wit­nesses. In John 9 we have the won­der­ful story of the man born blind who has his sight restored by Jesus. The man is inter­rog­ated by the reli­gious lead­ers about his heal­ing and espe­cially about the heal­er, Jesus. When pressed by them as to what he knows about Jesus he responds with the insight­ful response, “One thing I do know is that once I was blind but now I see.” That is true wit­ness­ing. We are not asked to have the answers to all the deep theo­lo­gic­al ques­tions that life throws at us but we are asked to bear wit­ness to what we know and have exper­i­enced.

John’s wit­ness was to declare that Jesus was the light. Verse 9 that our lec­tion­ary omits states that ‘the true light which enlight­ens every­one was com­ing into the world.’ Christ­mas is the fest­iv­al of light. In the 4^th Cen­tury Chris­ti­ans in Rome chose the 25^th Decem­ber as the day to cel­eb­rate Christ’s nativ­ity because there was already a Roman fest­iv­al on that day in hon­our of the unconquered sun; which after the winter sol­stice began again to increase in light. They con­ver­ted the fest­iv­al into the cel­eb­ra­tion of the nativ­ity of the Son of God, the one who was both light and life. John the evan­gel­ist tells us that the true light which enlight­ens every­one was com­ing into the world but also says that the light shines in the dark­ness but that the dark­ness did not under­stand it. How do we make sense of that appar­ent para­dox? Wil­li­am Temple, the fam­ous Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury of the mid twen­ti­eth cen­tury explained it in a way I find help­ful. He wrote, “From the begin­ning the divine light has shone. Always it was com­ing into the world; always it enlightened every per­son alive in their reas­on and conscience…….All that is noble in the non- Chris­ti­an sys­tems of thought, or con­duct or wor­ship, is the work of Christ upon them and with­in them. By the Word of God- that is to say by Jesus Christ – Isai­ah and Pla­to and Buddha and Con­fucius con­ceived and uttered such truths as they declared. There is only one divine light and every per­son in their meas­ure is enlightened by it. Yet, this light is often not recog­nised for what it is. If it were, its fuller shin­ing would always be welcomed.”

John the wit­ness reminds us of the import­ance of point­ing to even the tini­est point of light and say­ing, ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ To be a fol­low­er of Jesus is to be one who believes that even in the darkest hour, some­where and some­how the light will still be shin­ing. The pas­sage also chal­lenges us to answer the ques­tion asked of John the Baptist: “Who are you?” So let me close by read­ing a poem writ­ten by Diet­rich Bon­hoef­fer while in pris­on shortly before his exe­cu­tion by the S.S. in April 1945.

Who am I?

Who am I? They often tell me/ I stepped from my cell’s confinement/Calmly, cheer­fully, firmly/ Like a squire from his coun­try house./ Who am I? They often tell me/ I used to speak to my warders/Freely and friendly and clearly,/As though it were mine to command/ Who am I? They also tell me /I bore the days of misfortune/Equably, smil­ingly, proudly,/Like one accus­tomed to win.

Am I then really all that which oth­er men tell of?/Or am I only what I myself know of myself?/Restless and long­ing and sick, like a bird in a cage,/Struggling for breath, as though hands were com­press­ing my throat, Yearn­ing for col­ours, for flowers, for the voices of birds/Thirsting for words of kind­ness, for neighbourliness,/ Toss­ing in expect­a­tion of great events,/Powerlessly trem­bling for friends at an infin­ite distance,/Weary and empty at pray­ing, at think­ing, at making,/ Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other?/ Am I one per­son today and tomor­row anoth­er? /Am I both at once? A hypo­crite before others,/And before myself a con­tempt­ibly woe­be­gone weak­ling? Or is some­thing with­in me still like a beaten army, Flee­ing in dis­order from vic­tory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me these lonely ques­tions of mine/ Who­ever I am, Thou know­est, O God, I am thine.

Philip Brad­ford