Sunday, September 8, 16th Sunday after Pentecost
“What Is a Witness?”
Psalm 146; Isaiah 44:1-8; 1 John 1:1-4; Matthew 10:16-20
Divine Service III
Hymns: #826 “Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling”; #892 “Come, You Thankful People, Come”; #837 “Lift High the Cross”; #783 “Take My Life and Let It Be”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
“Every One His Witness: Lutheran Evangelism” is a workshop our church is planning, that I’d like to talk to you about today. What is a witness? To be a witness to something means “To see or know by personal observation.” A person who “bears witness” is someone who gives testimony about what it is they’ve seen. What does it mean to “bear witness” to Jesus? It means, first of all, to give your personal testimony of what you yourself have come to know through His Word - the cross, the resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, the hope you have of heaven – all those things we confess in the Creeds. Secondly, bearing witness to Jesus also means telling others about what He has done for you personally, and giving your personal testimony about what you’ve seen Him do in your life, telling your own personal miracle stories, simply by saying, “Let me tell you what Jesus has done for me.”
So what is “evangelism?” An evangelist is literally “a bringer of good news” or “one who brings good tidings.” The Christian Church has always had Gospel preachers and missionaries who we call evangelists, but the work of evangelism has never been reserved for them alone. Every Christian believer is called to be an evangelist. We’re doing the work of evangelism, whenever we bear witness to Jesus, and tell about the hope we have in Him, in the course of our everyday lives.
In the evangelism workshop we’re about to engage in, here in our dual parish, I noticed that Rev. Dr. Mark Wood, who created and wrote the program, chose to call it “Every One His Witness,” turning “everyone” into two words – “Every One His witness” instead of “Everyone His Witness.” Neither way would have been wrong; and what that tells me is that there are two parts to Christian evangelism and witness, and both of them are important and necessary.
The “Every One His Witness” workshop is about personal evangelism. It’s about teaching each individual Christian how to witness to Christ as opportunities and ”open doors” come up in the course of our everyday lives. It’s about “being ready to give an answer for the hope that you have.” Everyone His witness, if we put the word back together, is about corporate evangelism, about all of us working together as a Church to tell the world around us about Jesus. We can accomplish much more together than we could ever do alone, that’s why Jesus established His Church in the first place. Both parts of evangelism – the “every one” part and the “everyone” part, are necessary; and such a powerful and effective thing if we do them both at the same time. Bringing the world around us the good news about Jesus is what we’re all about.
Of course, there’s no getting around it, evangelism takes work. It takes time, effort, dedication, and prayer, and maybe even a little money, and it calls upon us all to make personal sacrifices if we’re going to get the Lord’s work done. So why do it? Why bear witness? Why take the time and the trouble? Is it to “save the church?” Is it to help the finances and the budget? Is it just to perpetuate ourselves? Is it to preserve this lovely little piece of the past that we’d all like to hang on to? Honestly, none of those things are valid, as far as the true purpose of evangelism goes. Anything we try to do for those reasons is bound to fail.
Our motivation for evangelism and bearing witness is that God loves us - and that He loves all those other human beings out there just as much as He loves us. Our Lord wants above all things for “all people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.” And He’s put us here, in this place, where this Church sits - and He’s put us out there, wherever we go when we leave this place - to reach whoever we can reach, and bring whoever we can bring to Christ. “That we might by all means save some,” St. Paul says.
Evangelism, “telling the Good News,” isn’t optional, but an imperative, for every Church and for every Christian. It’s a commandment from God; it’s a commission from our Lord Jesus, His “go ye therefore.” It’s our reason for existing, it’s why the Lord has put us here, it’s our purpose and our calling, and it’s what our Father in heaven wants from us most of all. “Open your eyes and look at the fields,” Jesus says. The world is full of hurt and heartaches and heartbreaks, and we’ve all been blessed with the Good News, which is the holy and healing balm for it all. Help for the lonesome, healing for the hurting and the sick, hope for the dying and hopeless and lost; it’s all available right here, through the grace God has given this Church of ours to share. We know this is true, from all the times in the past God has proven Himself to us, and brought help and hope and healing to us and our loved ones. We all have our own Jesus stories to tell. How could we ever live without Jesus? And how can we sleep at night knowing that someone else doesn’t know Him yet?
Our Gospel reading in Matthew 10 is more about the personal end of the thing, I believe, the “every one” part of evangelism. Jesus is talking to His disciples and followers, and to us, about what to expect when we open our mouths about Him. “I’m sending you out, like lambs among wolves.” The wolves have the claws, and the steel-trap jaws, and they run in packs; and you and I are defenseless as sheep. And yet, out we go, God’s workers cast out into His harvest field.
When Jesus tells us to be “shrewd as snakes,” He means for us to be practical, wise, and sensible when it comes to sharing our faith; not raving lunatics, but quiet voices in a crazy world. That means being patient with people who don’t know the Lord yet, taking the time to listen to their questions, and doing our best to explain things without being rude or condescending or looking down on anyone. The idea is to give a gentle, kind, sensible testimony; we’ll do no good by ranting and raving and yelling at people. And to be “innocent as doves” means we tell God’s truth in as winsome a way as possible. No lies, no half-truths, no using deception to try to trick someone into believing. “Speaking the truth in love,” St. Paul calls it; even if the truth should fall on deaf ears or makes somebody mad.
“Be on your guard against people,” Jesus says. Maybe the business about being handed over to councils and flogged in the synagogues doesn’t really resonate with us today, here in America, like it would if we were living in Iran or Afghanistan or North Korea. Unless you happen to be the man who lost his business because he wouldn’t bake a same-sex marriage wedding cake, or one of the Christians arrested simply for praying outside an abortion clinic and charged with a “hate crime.” It isn’t going to get any easier to bear witness to Jesus in this country; all the more reason to be ready when the time to bear witness comes.
“On my account,” says Jesus - because of Me, because of your testimony about Me, because you won’t back down from what you know and believe – “you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.” (The Lord may also ask you to bear witness before hostile relatives and family members, or ornery neighbors, or a cranky co-worker, in which case you might prefer the governors and kings!)
But when they arrest you for your faith, or when you’re confronted by a skeptic, and the times comes to defend your faith, “Do not worry about what to say,” Jesus says. The word for “worry” here means literally “to be torn to pieces, to be torn in different directions.” One of the excuses I often hear about not wanting to tell people about Jesus is, “I won’t know what to say. What if they ask a question I can’t answer? I’m afraid I’ll stutter and stammer and trip on my tongue, and end up looking like a fool.” (Moses tried that excuse, told God he couldn’t talk to Pharaoh because he had a stutter; it didn’t work for him, either; God sent him anyway!)
Jesus doesn’t mean here that God’s Word will pour from an empty head. The promise here is that if you have God’s Word in your head and in your heart - if you have God’s good Word and Spirit in you, and if you’ve taken the time to read and study and know at least the basic things about your Christian faith – then the Lord won’t leave you hanging out to dry when the “holy moment” comes. The Good Word in your heart will come into your mind, and out of your heart, in a way the person you’re bearing witness to will understand. “For it will not be you speaking,” says Jesus, “but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” So “every one” of you can be and should be His witness. If His Word is in you, then His power will work through you, and His Holy Spirit will give you the words you need to touch a life and change a soul. Come to the workshop. Come and see!
Now, the other half of evangelism - the everyone His witness part - desperately needs to addressed in our Dual Parish as well, if we’re going to survive and thrive and even grow in the next few years. To that end, I’m calling today for us to form a Dual Parish Evangelism Committee, a committee that will be tasked with selecting events and activities that will introduce our Church to the community around us, and introduce our community to our Church; all, of course, to bring our community and our neighbors to know our Lord Jesus. There’s a sign-up sheet in the back of the Church for those who’d like to be part of the work of evangelism in this place. Please pray about it and lend your support, either by serving on the committee or supporting whatever the Lord inspires us to do. There’s work to be done, and time and effort will be required of us all. There will be disappointments along the way. Heartaches and heartbreaks go along with the deal. Sometimes those we bear witness to will say no, or get angry, or laugh and walk away. Most of the people we do reach will be down and out and having troubles, in need of our time and attention and help. The Lord never promised otherwise
So, one part of “Why bear witness?” is that’s it’s a commandment, a “go ye therefore” from God, and nothing we can ever consider optional or dare to say no to when our Lord calls us. But the other part of “Why bear witness?” is the joyful part of it. God has given us this particular work to do in the world for our own blessing, and so we’ll have the joy of seeing others saved – the joy of success! “I have no greater joy,” apostle John says, “than to hear that some of my children are walking in the truth.”
In our Epistle reading from 1st John, can’t you just hear the joyfulness pouring out of the man? John had literally been through hell on earth for the sake of Jesus. He’d been beaten, abused, and harassed for the sake of his faith, thrown in jail more than once by those governors and kings because he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop talking about Jesus. When John wrote this letter, he was an old man in exile, separated from everyone he loved, on an island called Patmos off the coast of what is now Turkey, so small you could walk around it less than a day. You’d think the poor man would be broken – but look what he says as he writes to his loved ones and dear ones and friends in God’s Church:
The life – Jesus – has appeared. We – I and my fellow apostles – have seen Him! We testify, we bear witness, we proclaim, that He is who He claimed to be. He came down from Heaven from the Father, and He’s come down here to earth, and we’ve heard Him and seen Him and touched Him for ourselves. John, you’ll recall, was “the disciple Jesus loved,” the disciple closest to Jesus, the one who reclined on His breast. John stood by the cross with Mary when Jesus was crucified, and he stood in Jesus’ tomb and found it empty; and he was there in the upper room to touch Jesus’ scars after He’d been raised from the dead. John stood there with the rest of them when Jesus was taken up into heaven again, and heard His promise to come again soon with his own ears.
So John proclaims, bears witness, to what he’s heard and seen. And what is his reason? Why has he put his life on the line, and even given up his freedom, to tell what he knows? So that “you also may have fellowship with us,” and “so that our joy may be complete.” “You” in this case is everyone John’s letter may reach that doesn’t know Jesus yet, and “us” is God’s Holy Church on earth and everyone who’s come to be a part of it. The reason we “bear witness to Jesus” is so that those we reach with our testimony can come to have fellowship with us – that is, to be part of us, to be part of the family of those who believe. Jesus says there’s “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” – and that’s the greatest joy we can know in God’s Church down here on earth.
The “Every One His Witness” workshop will be a very small beginning in this work of evangelism we need to do. Please come to lunch this afternoon, watch the introductory video, and ask any questions you might have. The program has been designed to get us over the “fear factor” many of us have in talking to people about Jesus, so we’ll be “ready to give and answer for the hope that we have.”
Lord, it’s just a small beginning, but Lord, we begin today with what we have, and we start right here from where we are, trusting that You who began a good work in us will be faithful to help us see it through. “Do not tremble and do not be afraid,” You tell us in Isaiah. “Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one." Bless us, O Lord, as we turns our hearts and out hands and our feet to telling our world about You. In Jesus’ name; Amen.