Testimony

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.  (2 Corinthians 6:3-10) 

After a discussion in my Adult Bible Study class, I keep thinking about this passage. In the denomination in which I grew up, a testimony was a statement one gave, the story of one’s faith. A person might be asked to share their testimony in a specific setting. In being asked to give a testimony, it was generally understood to that one was to speak of the arc of realizing one’s sin, coming to awareness of the need for God’s mercy, throwing one’s self on that mercy, and proceeding to live a changed life. 

In thinking about Paul’s words to the Corinthians above, it occurs to me that he is giving his testimony to them. His witness, however, is not in the story of his faith shared. Rather, what Paul points out to the Corinthians are his actions. He gives an accounting of how he lives and works, the way he acts and the choices he makes. This is his testimony- his actions reveal his true priorities.

The Greek μαρτυρία (marturia) is often translated as testimony in the New Testament. When it is used for testimony, it often means as a witness in the legal sense- as in one is giving a testimony before a judge. This means others used the testimony (maturia) of the disciples and apostles to examine their motives and means. It also means that false or implicating testimonies were used against Paul and others to harm or halt them.

And, yes, the term μαρτυρία is related to another term for witness, one that we translate as “martyr”. 
 

Understanding that most people don’t really want to be martyrs, we are not off the hook for being witnesses. Bearing false witness, in this instance, means having a testimony that is incongruent in its parts. The words of your testimony- the story of your faith- match up with your daily actions? Even in your doubts, is there a through line that someone else can clearly perceive regarding your motivations, your loyalties, your priorities, and your faithfulness? 

Like Paul, our testimony is not the story we tell in our best clothes to people who are predisposed to take us at our word. Our testimony is what we do and say with our checkbooks, in our homes, when we’re aggravated, when the car breaks down, when we are lied to (again), when we despair of change in the larger world. 

How’s your testimony? Is it the witness you want to give? What needs cleaning up? 

Christian Bill of Rights: Amendment V

Amendment V

The follower on the Way of Christ will not hold human institutions, including courts, governments, or social agencies, as sources of salvation or aids to sanctification. Those on the Way of Christ will, however, use all power and privilege to hold these institutions, adding the church catholic to them, to standards of justice and equity. Those on the Way are not in thrall to these institutions, but to the law of God- which is interpreted through the Living Word, the written word, and the on-going work of the Holy Spirit.

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and correct them when you are alone together. If they listen to you, then you’ve won over your brother or sister. But if they won’t listen, take with you one or two others so that every word may be established by the mouth of two or three witnesses. But if they still won’t pay attention, report it to the church. If they won’t pay attention even to the church, treat them as you would a Gentile and tax collector.”  Matthew 18:15-17

Don’t spread false rumors. Don’t plot with evil people to act as a lying witness. 2 Don’t take sides with important people to do wrong. When you act as a witness, don’t stretch the truth to favor important people. 3 But don’t privilege unimportant people in their lawsuits either. Exodus 23:1-3

Then Jesus said to them, “Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other. There will be great earthquakes and wide-scale food shortages and epidemics. There will also be terrifying sights and great signs in the sky.  But before all this occurs, they will take you into custody and harass you because of your faith. They will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.  This will provide you with an opportunity to testify.  Make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance.  I’ll give you words and wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to counter or contradict.  You will be betrayed by your parents, brothers and sisters, relatives, and friends. They will execute some of you.  Everyone will hate you because of my name.  Still, not a hair on your heads will be lost. By holding fast, you will gain your lives.

Sermon: Premeditated Action

Luke 21: 5-19, The Message 

 
One day people were standing around talking about the Temple, remarking how beautiful it was, the splendor of its stonework and memorial gifts. Jesus said, “All this you’re admiring so much—the time is coming when every stone in that building will end up in a heap of rubble.”  They asked him, “Teacher, when is this going to happen? What clue will we get that it’s about to take place?”  He said, “Watch out for the doomsday deceivers. Many leaders are going to show up with forged identities claiming, ‘I’m the One,’ or, ‘The end is near.’ Don’t fall for any of that. When you hear of wars and uprisings, keep your head and don’t panic. This is routine history and no sign of the end.”  
He went on, “Nation will fight nation and ruler fight ruler, over and over. Huge

earthquakes will occur in various places. There will be famines. You’ll think at times that the very sky is falling.  “But before any of this happens, they’ll arrest you, hunt you down, and drag you to court and jail. It will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, everyone at your throat because you carry my name. You’ll end up on the witness stand, called to testify. Make up your mind right now not to worry about it. I’ll give you the words and wisdom that will reduce all your accusers to stammers and stutters.
“You’ll even be turned in by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends. Some of you will be killed. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me. Even so, every detail of your body and soul—even the hairs of your head!—is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it—that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry; you’ll be saved."

If the definition of the gospel is a scripture reading or artwork or song or conversation that shows us the character of God and how God meets us in our very human need, it is very difficult to see this passage as gospel. By narrower definition, it is in Luke- one of the four gospels, the others being Matthew, Mark, and John- but everything in the gospel writings is not necessarily good news. When the gospel according to Luke and its companion, Acts, are written around 85 A.D./C.E., the temple has been destroyed by Rome and Jesus's followers are scattered, not only around Jerusalem, but also truly into Judea, Samaria, and across the world. 

So Luke is writing about Jesus predicting a thing that his readers have already experienced. Did you get that? Luke is writing about Jesus predicting a thing that his readers have already experienced. It was probably hard to hear then and it's hard to hear now. Wars. Rumors of wars. Destruction. Violence. Division in families. Hunger. Poverty. Imprisonment. 

The hardest thing for me to hear is actually this: 

"So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance" Luke 21:14 (NRSV)

Make up your mind not to prepare your defense in advance? What does that mean? The passage goes on to say that the words will be provided to you. This is some consolation, but not much when it notes that the followers of Christ are likely to be imprisoned anyway... if they're not killed outright. (Keep in mind that when Luke is writing, Peter and Paul have already been killed.) 

I rarely ever do deeper Greek word study beyond reading the scripture, but I went in further for this word. Do not prepare in advance. It turns out that in a more strict translation, the verse would read "So make up your minds not to premeditate to defend yourselves." 

Premeditation is a word that has different connotations and connections... time thinking. Possibly time worrying. Time planning. Time getting things in order. Time spent rehearsing. 

In the long run, when the realities of this passage come, they will not be things for which any of the disciples had rehearsed. There will not have been a drill. There will not have been cards in the seat back pocket. There will be no note cards, no tele-prompters, no practice sessions. 

That's pretty much how this week felt for me. I did not have any practice in beforehand in going down to Mad Myrna's on election night because I was called to listen to grieving and fearful LGBTQ people and their allies. 

I did not have any practice in consoling a friend who felt outside in her evangelical church and wasn't sure where she belonged. 

I didn't rehearse what to say when someone mean-spiritedly asked me what Jesus has to do with an election. 

I did not prepare for what it would mean to listen to many stories of fear, pain, and exhaustion. 

I did not get ready to wake up at 3 am for four days in a row to talk to people who were stressed, afraid, or confused. 

Since I didn't prepare for all those things, you can bet that I didn't have a lot of time to premeditate what to say to you, to us, a congregation that espouses and practices a deep welcome and inclusion, but is very divided politically. 

What happens when you are not prepared? 

If you don't prepare for a race, you get blisters, muscle tears, deep physical pain, and discouraged. 

If you don't prepare for a diet, it is easy to cheat, to lose track, to be hard on yourself for failing and you get discouraged. 

If you don't prepare for a test at school, it is easy to miss answers, feel overwhelmed, fall behind, and feel discouraged. 

If you don't prepare for weather events, it is easy to run out of staples, to be disconnected, to be scared and discouraged. 

If you aren't prepared for death, it is to be overwhelmed, terrified, and discouraged. 

If you are not prepared to talk about what your faith means to you in election years and non-election years, in the stores and at work, with your family and your friends, in letters, emails, and texts, when it's scary and when there is no pressure... if you are not prepared to talk about your faith, you can be silent when it matters, you may not see critical connections between faithfulness and living, you may get discouraged. 

Jesus warns against premeditation because thinking about what you would say if you were arrested for your faith takes away from your time and energy to actually be doing the thing that might get you arrested.

The way of following Jesus Christ is a way of doing, then believing. Doing always comes first. We baptize first. We feed first. We welcome first. We house first. We listen first. We clothe first. We visit first. We heal first. We hold first. In our doing- even when we are discouraged, we come to a better, deeper, broader understanding of who Christ is because we have been imitating him in our actions first. In John 14, Jesus tells his disciples that if they have seen him, they have seen the Father. If we have imitated Christ, we have imitated God. 

In this imitation, in this doing, we cannot help but come to a different understanding of welcome, inclusion, grace, and mercy. Imitating Christ, imitating the Father, being led by the Holy Spirit in that imitation... that will shape our belief. It will shape how we see the world and what we will say about it. The words we have to describe our fellow human beings, the realities of land and water, the powers and principalities... these words will be shaped by what we have learned in imitating Christ, in being Christian in our deeds first. 

The truth, the gospel truth, is that we cannot prepare for what it means to be on trial or persecuted for our faith. And, let's be real, most of us have not experienced that before. We are not afraid of being here in a church. Even if discouraged, we are not afraid of wearing cross necklaces or having a Christmas tree in our window or praying in a restaurant or making the sign of the cross when an ambulance goes by. We have not premeditated a defense for those actions because they come naturally to us and because if we were asked, we would reply, "It is because I follow Jesus." 

The reality of today's reading and this week's events and the nature of the world is that standing up for injustice, speaking out against hatred, calling out racist or anti-Semitic or anti-LGBTQ words or actions, fighting for the marginalized- be they poor or addicted or underemployed or uninsured or unhoused or of uncertain immigration status, standing with neighbors of all religions and no religion... all of these things must become as smooth in our way of being imitators of Christ, as connected to "It is because I follow Jesus", as knowing the words to Amazing Grace, being able to finish the sentence "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall [not want]", or folding your hands for prayer. 

We practice for persecution by doing the right thing when it is safe. Then our muscles get ready. Our faithfulness becomes rooted in our whole heart and mind and body, regardless of our emotional reactions to any event. And no one is waiting on us to get our defense right... through premeditation... because we have put the doing first, where it belongs in the life of faith. 

The temple fell. King Herod had even decorated it with golden eagles- Roman symbols- to make nice with the occupying force, but occupying forces don't care about niceties when they want to destroy and cow the people of the land. We know from the book of Acts the kinds of persecutions that the followers and imitators of Christ faced, but they persevered. And how do we know that? 

Because we are here. We are a testament to the work of the Holy Spirit in them and through them. Not their buildings. Very few of their letters. Not their words. But we are a testament to their deeds- to their sharing of their resources, healing the sick, remembering the marginalized, inclusion of racial and sexual minorities (see Acts 8), feeding and housing one another and visitors, and daring to speak the truth to power. The church of Christ remains today because of that work and nothing else. They didn't take time to premeditate a defense. They went to work. 

And we... we who have received grace in Christ Jesus, we who are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we who have eaten at this table- once or a thousand times, we who have the written word in our own language, we who are united by faith, hope, and love, we who wish to imitate Christ and to be on his side... we can do no less. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we don't premeditate our defense... we get to work. 

Amen. 

The Pirate's Guide to Lutheran Bible Interpretation

A Pirate’s Guide to Lutheran Bible Interpretation

1. The LAW makes ye feel keelhauled. The GOSPEL makes ye feel like LAND-HO!

          - Lutheran pirates read the Bible with awareness of law and gospel.

- The law is the part of Scripture that makes us aware of our need for grace. The law makes us aware of our tendency to MUTINY (our brokenness).

- Grace is the part of Scripture that shows us how God heals and forgives our mutinous tendencies and works to heal us from them.

- The law is not “bad” and grace is not “good”. They go together.

- The wise Lutheran pirate knows that law can be found in calm waters (in the gospels and in other places) and gospel can be found in stormy seas (in hard passages to read and understand).

2.        marks the spot.

- The pirate’s Bible is a Jesus book. It’s not for recipes or instructions for swabbing the deck. It doesn’t show how to use the stars for navigation or which kind of fish are okay to eat.

- The Lutheran pirate looks at the whole Bible with a Jesus lens. The parts of the Bible that precede the Gospels reveal God’s character and what pirates (people) are like. These writings help the faithful pirate understand God’s history and navigation plan for God’s crew. Jesus is the eternal First Mate who was sent to set the crew and any would-be pirates back on the right course.

3. Use yer Bible to understand yer Bible.  

- Non-pirates refer to this as “Scripture interprets Scripture.”

- This means that when a pirate is confused, she uses the whole Bible to figure out what to do, not just one verse all by itself.

- For example, the Bible says, “Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ.” Eph. 6:5

If the Bible says this, be it lawful for the pirate ship to keep some swabbies around with no pay, even with pretty good hardtack? Can the cap’n own them?

- Other parts of the Bible discuss loving mercy (Micah 6:8), doing unto others as you would have them do to you (Matthew 7:12), and following the law of love (Romans 13:8-9). The Lutheran pirate sees that the larger view of the Bible does not favor holding captives and enslaving them.

4. Thar be NO secret treasures in them thar stories.

- The Lutheran pirate looks for the plain meaning of the text.

- He might need some context for a story or a cultural frame of reference to help.

- However, there are not secret treasure maps hidden in Jesus’ parables. The story of the prodigal son is about a landlubber with 2 ungrateful crew members and their actions. You don’t have to be a Lutheran pirate to understand the story at its plainest meaning. You don’t even have to be a pirate.

- The pirate uses common sense when reading her Bible. A miracle is a miracle. A parable is a story. An event is a memory or a retelling from people who knew people who were there.  Pirates might disagree, but that’s no reason to divide the crew. There are metaphors AND literal actions.

5. Avast! Ye need a crew!

- Lutheran pirates don’t keep their Bibles in their bunks and never talk about them.

- A good captain encourages pirates to read their Bibles at home AND during crew meetings. No pirates should read the Bible alone and expect to come to an (a)vastly personal revelation of the Big Captain (God) speaking only to them through a Scripture.

- A personal reading of Scripture can move a pirate! However, yer Bible is the same words that have been given to all pirates. There’s no special messages for just ye!

- That’s why a crew (a group or congregation) matters for public interpretation. Pirates weigh their experience and learning of Scripture within and against the community experience where Jesus, First Mate and Pirate Pioneer, has promised to join them!

Now yer ready to read that Bible! Swab the poop deck first, pirate! 

Wheat and Weeds (Essential Passages #13)

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

24 [Jesus] put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' 28 He answered, "An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, "Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 29 But he replied, "No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.' " 

36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." 37 He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

And now a few words:  Nothing sounds quite as fearsome as “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. It’s a colorful phrase and even if you aren’t entirely sure what gnashing teeth sound like, it is still possible to understand and to know that where those two things exist , you don’t want to be. This natural conclusion causes many people to focus intently on being wheat, on rooting out sin, on pointing out the weedy behavior of those around them.

            The problem with that arises in the fact that wheat and weeds are in all of us. We each have behaviors, make choices, take action that are “wheat”- productive, healthy, God-revealing and God-reveling parts of our lives. Within this nature, which is God’s plan for our true selves, the forces that oppose God sow the weeds of dissention, frustration, idolatry, neglect, and antipathy. The Holy Spirit works to water what is good and to pull us toward enjoying the fruiting of the wheat. As we acknowledge and enjoy the gifts of God all around us, the wheat flourishes and the weeds languish.

            In the time to come, when the forces that oppose God are silenced forever, the weeds will be burned away. Fully sanctified, we will have been brought into perfect love by the unending love and grace of the Creator of the universe. Jesus is teaching his hearers this truth and how to behave until that time. He assures his disciples, then and now, that the wheat- the good things in our minds and hearts and habits- will not stop being tended by the Spirit, by the angels, by the prayers of the saints. 

          We can collaborate in this work for and with one another. And we should. The tending of one another’s wheat, of lifting up, of watering with compassion, of fertilizing with forgiveness, of cultivating with community, is exactly the work of the kingdom to which we have been called. 

Hope Looks like My Pruned Lilac Tree

Job 14:7-9 (out of context) NRSV

For there is hope for a tree, 
Though its root grows old in the earth, 

If it is cut down- that it will sprout again, 

and that its shoots will not cease. 

and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud

and put forth branches like a young plant. 

..........................................

Interpretation:


The scent of hope is 
Water, wafts on the fragrant
Breath of the Spirit.