We Are In the Season of Witness

Gospel Reflection John 1:29-42

There are things we do alone. I like to read by myself. I like to clean my house when I’m by myself. Otherwise those around me rightly say that I’m an angry cleaner. Another one. We all die alone. 

Yet we are the Church and in church we are together. We’re baptized together. It’s not the parents and godparents and baby and priest alone in the house, it’s the whole household of faith. We worship together — it’s not nearly as much fun to say Morning Prayer alone as it is in community. Even sitting in silence is way easier when you’re not alone. We live in community together as we have fellowship and formation, omelette Sunday, book club, coffee and lunch, facilities meetings. We move towards one another and we strive to increase the bonds of connection between us as we live out the kin-dom of heaven in this here and now. 

A few years back, when I still lived in Richmond, we got word the the Westboro Baptist Church was going to protest at the Virginia statehouse. Remember them? To call it a church is a bit of a misnomer; they're the ones who protested at the funerals of the Sandy Hook children. It wasn’t me who organized it, it was the leader of a death metal band, but he invited all of us, anyone who wanted to, to go and be a witness. We all got dressed up, me, my colleagues, people from church, a whole bunch other folx from Richmond, my children, and my dog — she was a rainbow Pegasus that day and her picture in the paper. We stood together and met those few from Westboro Baptist with kazoos and singing. We were there to witness. It was way easier because we were together. 

We witness. We observe and then we tell about it. Jesus even told his disciples that they were called to be witnesses of the whole story, first in Judea, and then in Samaria — right by Judea, and then to ends of the earth. 

We see it in our texts today. In our gospel text, we’ve got witnesses. 

John the Baptizer. He was the first one, the one who testifies. He was there and he saw something a little funny, a plot was a foot, something about Jesus and baptism, the Holy Spirit in the form of the dove, made John think there was something else happening. “Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” 

Just for a moment, think about this. We say some of these words every Sunday we say the Gloria, “Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world” and we say this because of him! Because of his witness, because this story got passed down for us to live into. 

And then there was our favorite saint, obviously Andrew! it was because of John’s witness that Andrew notices and then follows Jesus, but the goodness did not stop there. Andrews brings Simon Peter. Come and see! We have found the Messiah, the one who is the anointed one, who will save the people from their sins. 

Andrew gave witness. He observed and then he shared. He was not alone, he brought in other people, and together the disciples witnessed the life and then the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus. They are the reason we know about what happened on the day of Pentecost, about the healings, about the Spirit falling on the Gentile Cornelius and his household, and about Ethiopian Eunuch coming to faith through Philip’s witness.

We witness not because want to know everything that’s happening, because we want to be in the know, because we want to gossip, or rubberneck or have great stories but so that we can share what needs to be shared.  

We witness, not for ourselves, but for our community. 

We witness, not to gossip, or to rubberneck but so that we can share the good news and the bad news. 

We witness because otherwise the story remains untold. 

We do this work for and in our communities. 

We witness because we’re part of God's kindom.

We witness because to ignore is to turn our backs on our neighbors, the ones we promise to love in our baptismal vows, that rite of passage that reminds us that we’ve passed through death into life so that death no longer has dominion over us.  

This work, our Christianity is not something we do only in our minds and our hearts, alone. This work is work that we do together, to share the gospel, to live the gospel without our bodies, to tell others what is happening in us, within us, so that it doesn’t go to waste. We do this work by caring for our neighbors, for the foreigners in our land, for our siblings in Christ the people of Sudanese Grace, for those who perform unseen labor, for those who don’t have anything either power or money, for those who oppress, for those who don’t know they are oppressing, so that the light of Christ continues to shine among us. 

We do this work together so that centuries later they’ll know that John called Jesus the Lamb of God, so that we understand what it means for Jesus to be called the Lamb of God.  

This week I sat together in a classroom with 13 other pastors. I say together, because even though it was an amazing week, there were many challenges. My professor, a sweet and lovely human, struggled to understand why his perspectives of twenty years ago where he decried same sex relationships and he led the Presbyterian movement to fight against same sex relationships, hurt and continues to hurt people. It was a painful week of truth telling, as together we witnessed his discomfort, as we witnessed the stories of my classmates — delayed ordinations, struggles in their community, living in times where there was little trust between colleagues, and where my classmates shared their stories. 

It was very painful. Yet. Together we witnessed. Together we observed and we told our stories and they became lighter. 

We are in the season of witness. 

All around us things are not right. We are not showing hospitality and love to the foreigners in our land. We are not loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

And we are the ones, God’s hands and feet, God’s body in the world today, witnesses. We must be Church together, to be light so that we together, like Isaiah can be God’s servant not only for those we know, our own tribes, but so that the light of God’s salvation may reach to the ends of the world. 

We must look and see. We must tell these stories to one another. But we are not alone and this work is not impossible. We have one other; we’re in this together.