THOUGHTS OF A MONK

Witness

January 7, 2007
Sunday after Theophany

Scripture: Ml 3: 20-4; Ep 5:8-20; Jn 1:19-34 

Raise your right hand. Put your left hand on the Bible. In the testimony you are about to give do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?  This oath was the traditional way to swear in a witness before they would give testimony in a trial.  Some of you may remember the hit TV show from the 1950s and 60s, Perry Mason. When I was growing up this show was a must see in my family. It was a murder mystery drama that featured a defense lawyer created by the writer Erle Stanley Gardner. Raymond Burr starred as the famous Perry Mason who, no matter how long the odds were against him and his client, he always won in the end, usually in a dramatic courtroom scene where the guilty person was exposed.  Those shows, which live on in the world of cable TV, look pretty campy today next to the Law and Order series of the present generation.  But they shaped the views of millions of American on how the American legal system worked. Season after season, witness after witness took the stand and either had to withstand pointed questions from the district attorney or a grilling from Perry Mason.

One thing Americans saw in that TV drama was how different court witnesses could be.  The witness who turns out to be the guilty one would often put up a strong front on the stand and then suddenly break down and confess. Another type is the witness Perry Mason thinks might be hiding or protecting someone else.  The dramatic moment comes when Perry Mason pressures the witness until that person can’t take it any more and finally points to someone else in the courtroom and says: “That one did it.”  Many witnesses lead the search for the guilty party down dead ends while others might witness the very same incident and yet describe it in completely different ways leading to confusion.  Then there are those who might testify that they didn’t actually see the incident but heard something about it only to have their testimony thrown out as hearsay or second hand knowledge. From this morning’s Gospel we know that John the Baptist is the one who is able to give first hand testimony when he says of Jesus: “I have seen and I testify that he is the Chosen One of God.” [Jn1:34] But what kind of witnesses are we?

When we recite the creed, as we will again this morning, we are taking the oath that prepares us to be witnesses for Christ. But we are not first hand witnesses of Christ’s physical presence on earth or of the specific event we celebrate today, Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan.  So once sworn in, what do we say?  We say that we believe what John the Baptist attests to the Gospel.  However, for each one of us to be able to say: “I have seen,” we have to experience what Johns the Baptist experienced different ways.  First, the church gives us the feast itself to enable us to experience in our time bound existence an event that is in God’s realm of timelessness. The church is where the timeless and the time bound intersect.  But in Perry Mason’s earth bound court testimony based on such an experience would probably be thrown out as hearsay. But St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians shows us another way to witness to Christ.

St Paul points out how we, by the way we live our lives, are witnesses to the message of Christ, or as one commentator put it: “witnesses enable persons to come to Christ, and that role is a privilege of the highest kind.” St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians calls on us to live as children of light. He exhorts us to live as sensible not senseless people.  He argues [v 17] that through self-understanding in fellowship with God one discovers the path to wise living. The images he stresses are that light banishes darkness [v 8-14] and wisdom corrects folly [v 14-20]. Beyond the images, St Paul says to each of us, “try to discover what the Lord wants of you” [v 10].

The Lord wants our faith in his promise that he is with us always. As Br David reminded us yesterday on the Feast, when the waters of life rise and we might feel we are on the verge of drowning, God is with us. The waters that carry away our sins are the very same waters that Jesus enters for us, and takes all our sins on himself for our sake. This is the revelation of God’s love for us. Our faith in that promise, our witness to that love, is to live with the assurance that Christ did come to save us. 

When the Lord calls us to himself, as he is about to do with our Brother Elias, we know that Jesus has made that journey before us and is with us on that journey and is that journey’s destination.  The early Christian baptismal hymn that St Paul quotes has a double purpose. It reminds the one who has just been baptized to leave the past behind and live in the light of Christ. It also is a forecast of what is at the other end of the passage from death to eternal life.

Awake, o sleeper,
And get up from among the dead,
And Christ’s light will shine on you!

God sees into our hearts and knows who we are: nothing else matters. All the defenses and barriers surrounding the real person can only keep mere humans out; God cannot be kept out. And the greatest witness we can give to God’s love for all human beings is to constantly challenge ourselves to pierce through the outer wall of defensiveness and fear people so readily erect and strive to see what God sees inside each person: the very inner essence of holiness. At the end of our days we offer, and God accepts, our whole being, because God, the ultimate witness in our defense, knows the goodness that is in the heart.

Glory be to Jesus Christ!