Testifying to the Light

“It is because of Jesus that we dare to believe that things don’t have to be

as they are.”

T he most powerful words spoken in the entire Gospel of John might just be those spoken by John the Baptist in our passage for today: “I am not the Messiah.” They are words we might learn to say aloud to each other, and perhaps in private, to ourselves. Not that we aren’t to imitate Christ as best we are able. As the Lutheran writer John Stendahl puts it, there are any number of ways in which are called to do what Jesus would be doing: to be his agents in the world, his hands and feet, bringing good news to the oppressed and binding up the brokenhearted. Martin Luther famously said that we are to be “little Christs,” which is about as intimidating a suggestion as you might make. It is good for us to do these things, so long as we guard against imagining that we have become Christ in the process.

Equally problematic is laying the messianic mantel on others, wanting others to rescue us, and giving that power over to them, whether that person is a charismatic movement leader or even a president-elect. As Stendahl puts it, messianic expectations, whether of ourselves– where we seek to be too much for others– or of others– where we wish too much from them– can diminish both parties. We need to let go of the seducing desire either to rescue or to be rescued by charismatic others.

Not that this is a danger for most of us. Lindsay Armstrong, who is pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, tells the story of falling down the front steps of her house on the way to work. She wasn’t hurt, but as she lay there in a messy heap at the bottom of the stairs, her family gazing at her in astonished amusement, she writes,

I realized that I actually feel like a klutz rather regularly. The difference is that I usually feel spiritually clumsy. There are days or even months when I know I do not pray as I should, read the Bible as I ought, or even hold my tongue as loving God, self, and neighbor demands... I do not even drive my car in a manner that consistently reflects the grace of God, let alone have the strength to “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, as I Thessalonians commands.

S o Advent begins with this hope: Jesus is coming. It is God who will save us, and not we ourselves. Peter Gomes, Director of the Chapel at Harvard University, was asked in a recent interview his definition of the “good news.” He replied, “You don’t have to be as you are.” This sort of good news is both liberating and unnerving, even frightening. Gomes goes on to say, “We can’t rely on things always being the way they are.” No kidding.

So John the Baptist goes out in to the wilderness, preaching to the Jews at a time of Roman occupation and economic deprivation, and proclaims, “Things don’t have to be as they are.” The world will not always be as it now is. Change is possible– for ourselves, for our nation, for the world. This will require something of us. The word John uses is “repent,” which means to turn around, to go in a different direction. But John does so not by pointing to himself, but by pointing to Jesus. As the prologue to the Gospel of John puts it, “he himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”

So I wonder: What would it mean for us to testify to the light? This sounds so modest, but is it really? What would it mean for us to be so bold as to say, “You don’t have to be as you are,” and to give our own lives as a testimony.

It wouldn’t mean pretending that we have our own lives together. No one would really believe that anyway. It wouldn’t be about lifting up Church of the Pilgrims, as if we have cornered the market on goodness and righteousness. We know ourselves too well to pretend otherwise. It would be about pointing beyond ourselves, to something that we have seen, experience, known. Testimony– to the light.

It might begin with worship, how worship grounds us and shapes us, by regularly anchoring our lives in a power that is larger than we are, reminding us that the world does not begin and end with our own concerns, or how the act of giving thanks actually makes us more grateful, and how church is just about the only place anymore where people sing together, and how wonderful it is to actually participate in something rather than just spectate.

Or we might tell about Bible study and Sunday School and Theology on Tap and the Lenten series, and what it means to reflect deeply on what God wants for our lives, and how we ask questions of each other at church that no one else asks, like Why are we here? Who is God calling me to be? What does God want for the world?

We might testify about the young people who come here and ask such questions about themselves and actually change their lives as a result, and go off and join Americorp or Teach for America and the Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer Corp, in such places as Boston and Kenya and New Orleans.

We might tell stories about sitting in the lounge in the Pilgrimage on those big floppy couches listening to junior high school kids coming back from a day serving meals to the homeless and listening to the speakers from the National Coalition, and watching them wrestle for the first time with the realization that the world is not exactly as they had always thought it was, and maybe there is something that they are called to do about it.

Or we could tell about the light that dawns inside us when we have served at Open Table often enough that we begin to recognize the homeless guests that we serve, and they smile and nod in recognition and appreciation and you begin to feel not just like a server to strangers but like a friend among friends.

We might also testify to that mysterious reality called community, where you gather with strangers and forge relationships that are not just about friendships, but about sharing your lives in such a way that you support one another through good times and bad, holding one another accountable, challenging each other to deeper levels of faithfulness, visiting each other in the hospital, walking with each other through family crisis, celebrating at times of renewal, even holding vigil at the time of death.

We might give witness at the same time about what it is like to gather in the midst of the wider faith community in corporate expressions of our shared values, and what it is like to be in a sanctuary packed to the rafters with people of every race and background from every ward in the city coming together to push publically for such unfashionable causes as affordable housing and code enforcement and condo conversion and every once in a while to win on behalf of those who are furthest removed from the corridors of power.

Or we might mention the children and how amazing it is to watch them so easily and naturally give of themselves in such open acts of generosity that we are utterly stripped of any excuse not to give to give of ourselves in the same way.

And we might tell how all of this is finally about Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth who God raised up from the grave, whose life and death and promised coming is what motivates, animates, agitates, inspires and informs all that we do as a community of faith, and how we may not know everything there is to know about Jesus, and we may not be biblical scholars, and we are not always model citizens, and we have as many problems in this life as the next person, but we know enough to believe that Jesus was sent by God into the world so that we might have life and have it abundantly, and that through him we are brought into the presence of God where we are loved and accepted and forgiven and made whole, so that in him we are set free to live a new life. Or, to put it another way, it is because of Jesus that we dare to believe that things don’t have to be as they are.

P erhaps that is something of what it means to testify to the light. This is what we are called to do in the Advent season, even as we pray, in the words of my friend Paul Rack: