...for you will be his witness to all the world of what your have seen and heard.
Acts 22:15
Perhaps the greatest gift of the faith community is the gift of story...testimony. God’s command to Paul is also God’s command to us, we will be God’s witnesses.
We as faith community have lost much of our ability to witness. We have confused it with the obnoxious “witness” of some denominations who visit your home or workplace, ask if you are saved, and condemn you to burn in hell if you haven’t or won’t follow their prescribed method. Or we assume that witness takes some special education, practice, and method for which we are not qualified.
But our charge is to witness to what we have seen and heard. God at work is part of our experience. Many of us have heard our whole lives about the goodness of the Lord and the transformation that can happen when God stirs the mix. We tell the faith stories just like we tell the stories of our kid’s first date or the best vacation ever--only these stories have life-changing implications.
What makes our stories compelling, what makes them different from the knock-on-the-door-irritation-story, is the content. When we are witnesses to God’s transformative work in our own lives or the lives of those we love, the story compels. When we speak about our experience of grace and unconditional love, the story compels. When we live in ways that love God and neighbor, and when we speak the reason, the story compels. When we acknowledge and confess our imperfection, God’s love in spite of our shortcomings, the story compels.
Culture tells a different story. We are individuals; our worth is based on our achievement. We are responsible for ourselves and must care for ourselves regardless of those around us. Everyone is out to get what we have; we must protect ourselves from the other. These messages creep into our being and spill out of us without much training. Remember the carnations that your middle school teacher would put in food-colored water to show you the process by which flowers suck up the water? The coloring was absorbed by the flower and the flower was changed in spite of its best efforts not to be oranged by Betty Crocker. Like those poor carnations, we live in toxic water that destroys community and our own souls in the process.
Witness changes the water. Stories of God’s work reveal the possibility of new life, of transformation. This is the gift of the faith community. We are the ones who have eyes to see. We have been made aware of the grace that makes reconciliation and redemption possible. We are the storytellers of grace.
Give us the words, O God, to tell the story of your work. Give us the joy and gratitude that compel the story’s birth. Give us the love that backs the story with actions that reveal your love for all creation. Amen.
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