Beyond the Patio

Witnessing To the Light
John 1: 1-18

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for a testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not that light, but came to bear witness to the light (John 1:3)

The word that sticks in my mind as I read this passage this morning is witness.  I am certain that witness conjures up in your minds many images. Many things flash before my eyes: people knocking at my door ready to spring on you with the latest pamphlets of their religious group; football players being interviewed in the middle of a game, saying how important the Lord is in their lives and in play;  people marching and protesting almost anything under the sun that they don’t agree with…..just a great many types of witnesses come unto the stage of my mind and disappear.

Then, in the midst of all these kinds of witnesses, we have John appearing for a brief moment in the reading of the Gospel. It is said of him that he came as “a witness to the light”  He leaves. All that is left is a slight memory of his appearance  and a question in my mind. “What does it mean to witness to the light?”

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We can only witness to something that is a part of us. We can  only witness to our experience.  It is not a memorization of what someone else has written, not something that someone else wants us to do. Witness is a natural outpouring of ourselves. If we know the light of the world, the light will be seen in our life. A little boy was asked what a saint was. The little boy thought of the saints pictured in stained glassed windows, and replied, “Someone who the light shines through”. That is true. That is what is means to be a saint and that is what it means to be a witness: Someone who the light shines through.

In a book Man at work in God’s world  the author, Red Barber, a sports writer, tells the story of a church service that he attended before the Hall of Fame Baseball game. It was held at Christ Church, Coopertown, N.Y., and the rector asked Warren Giles, the president of the National league, to read a lesson. He accepted without hesitation. He not only read the lesson but also put on robes in order to do it. Barber, who had known Giles for some years, said to him, “Warren I’m surprised, that you are putting on vestments, and that you are going to read the lesson. I didn’t know you were interested in religion. At least, I’ve never heard you speak of it.” Gile’s answer was what really got to him. He said, “I never thought it was necessary to speak of it.  I regard religion as natural and as necessary as my next breath. ” (1)

Our testimony about God is always based on our own personal experience of God. That is when witnessing becomes natural. If we have Joy, people see it in our face? If we have happiness, happiness flow from us like our breathing?  So when we know the light and to have experienced the light in our lives, the light shines through us in a way that everyone can see.

Some of our problems with witnessing is that it isn’t personal and so it doesn’t come naturally. Our belief and our experience of light in the midst of this dark world is something we hear of, and others seem to have, but we really don’t have it ourselves. So when we talk of witnessing we are talking about continuing a job that we have never seriously began. As another person has put it, “we have been inoculated with little bits of faith and religion, so that it is almost impossible to catch the real thing. But if we don’t catch the real thing, we can’t witness, for what are we to witness to.

Do you know the Light of which John speaks in the Gospel today?  

It is the light that enlightens everyone who comes into the world and it is not overcome by darkness.

Georges Bernanos, the French Catholic writer, put it this way in his The Diary Of A Country Priest:  “It may be in the darkness, God will light our way.  Through our doom we see…..what is beyond our doom,  God’s love.” (2)

Do you know that light? We see and experience in Christ that light.

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There is a difference between observing and witnessing. We often use those words interchangeably but in the biblical sense there is a difference. An observer is more of an onlooker or passive observer.  A witness is never really a passive observer. As we read in the laws in the book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Scriptures, witnesses had a responsibility. For example, in the event of a death sentence, the witness had to cast the first stone. In the New Testament the word martyr and the word witness are closely connected. A witness is one in whom their faith is so much a part of them that they give their whole life to it. They would rather die than to give up what has become an indispensable part of them

Many people enjoy the role of the observer a lot better than witness. There is a part of all of us that want to be observers rather than participants and true witnesses. We really don’t want to be involved that much.  We see faith as just receiving something. We come to church to be entertained or to just breath in the atmosphere and go away with a good feeling. We don’t really want any responsibility for what we have heard or what we have seen.  We go to church only to “get something from the service”. Don’t we say that?   That is what is mostly likely to be that reason that people give when they leave churches. They say “I’m not going back there for a long time, because I didn’t get anything out of it”

However,  we have come this morning not just to receive but to give of ourselves –  to rejoice, to give thanks, to sing, and to pray and witness, because that light has come into the world, and into our lives. We know it to be that true light that it enlightens every person who comes into the world and that darkness cannot overcome it. Yes, we do have to receive something, but we are channels of God’s grace, not reservoirs. We are conductors of God’s love, not receptacles  Whatever we do receive here we are going to take with us as we leave and we are responsible for it.

There a sign in many churches that people see as the leave the church after attending a service :

  “You are now entering the mission field.”

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(1) Pulpit Resource,Vol 8, No 1,Glendon Harris publisher and editor , 1986, p. 4

(2) George Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest,. Macmillan Co., 1937