Witnesses
Commentary
Object:
There is a marvelous little story tucked away in the pages of Edward Gibbon's seven-volume work The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It tells about a humble little monk named Telemachus living out in the farming regions of Asia.
Telemachus had no great ambitions in life. He loved his little garden and tilled it through the changing seasons. But one day in the year 391 he felt a sense of urgency, a call of God's direction in his life. Although he didn't know why, he felt that God wanted him to go to Rome, the heart and soul of the empire. In fact the feelings of such a call frightened him, but he went anyway, praying along the way for God's direction.
When he finally got to the city, it was in an uproar! The armies of Rome had just come home from the battlefield in victory, and the crowds were turning out for a great celebration. They flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, and Telemachus was caught in their frenzy and carried into the Coliseum.
He had never seen a gladiator contest before, but now his heart sickened. Down in the arena men hacked at each other with swords and clubs. The crowds roared at the sight of blood and urged their favorites on to the death.
Telemachus couldn't stand it. He knew it was wrong; this wasn't the way God wanted people to live or to die. So little Telemachus worked his way through the crowds to the wall down by the arena. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he shouted.
Nobody heard him, so he crawled up onto the wall and shouted again: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" This time the few who heard him only laughed. But Telemachus was not to be ignored. He jumped into the arena and ran through the sands toward the gladiators. "In the name of Christ, forbear!"
The crowds laughed at the silly little man and threw stones at him. Telemachus, however, was on a mission. He threw himself between two gladiators to stop their fighting. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he cried.
They hacked him apart! They cut his body from shoulder to stomach, and he fell onto the sand with the blood running out of his life.
The gladiators were stunned and stopped to watch him die. Then the crowds fell back in silence, and for a moment no one in the Coliseum moved. Telemachus' final words rang in their memories: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" At last they moved, slowly at first, but growing in numbers. The masses of Rome filed out of the Coliseum that day, and the historian Theodoret reports that never again was a gladiator contest held there! All because of the witness and the testimony of a single Christian!
The power of a faithful witness carries great impact. The disciples of Jesus modeled that in the pages of Acts, as we read about it today. They were only taking their cue from Jesus himself, the faithful witness who appeared to John, and remembered when the witness of Jesus and the witness of those who followed him were wrapped up in a single incident in which all were bound together by the Holy Spirit. We are witnesses...
Acts 5:27-32
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous!" said Winston Churchill. "In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
Politics is about power. Dale Carnegie knew that and created his popular seminars on "How to Win Friends and Influence People." In his famous treatise on politics, The Prince, Machiavelli said: "All the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed ones perished!" In the end, it seems, what matters is your ability to create your dream, not the rightness of the dream itself. Napoleon even confided in his journals that "justice means force as well as virtue." Your ideal can be noble, but you must be able to force it upon others you consider less noble than yourself.
In one of his essays, Albert Camus describes a powerful scene. John Huss, the great Czech Reformer of the church, is on trial. His accusers twist all his ideas out of shape. They refuse to give him a hearing. They maneuver the political machine against him and incite popular passion to a lynch-mob frenzy. Finally Huss is condemned to be burned at the stake. As the flames surround him, people who couldn't possibly have read his writings and who have no interest in either his perspectives or those of the governing authorities line up to assist in the murder. "When they were burning John Huss," writes Camus, "a gentle little old lady came carrying her faggot to add it to the pile."
The tragedy of politics often lies in passions, not platforms. "Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never!" says Lamartine. That's why there's an unwritten rule in many communities that when all the in-laws and out-laws get together for the annual "family rebellion" you can't talk about politics or religion. Both grab a person so deeply!
Maybe, when it comes right down to it, politics and religion are much the same thing. The kingdom of God is very political. It's a perspective on all of life. It's a way of holding things together and giving them meaning. It's a movement that's out to change the world, to reclaim lost territory in the civil war of the universe.
That's why Jesus' followers got into trouble with the political leaders of their day. Two visions of reality collided. Two perspectives on life challenged each other. Six times over in the book of Acts, the Christian community is called "The Way." Not "The Society" nor "The Institution," but "The Way"!
The church of Jesus Christ is a political movement. It's on the way to somewhere. Every worship service is a political rally; a time when we refocus our energies, study our political platform and policies, and pay homage to the Party Leader.
In today's passage, the church leaders are arrested by the political leaders of their day. Peter and John have just healed a man with bad legs and have counseled a large crowd of troubled people. Then the high council challenges them: "What right do you have to practice medicine without a license?"
Peter and John have the answer. "We're under marching orders!" they say. "We must obey God rather than men!"
When they are released, Peter and John hold a prayer service that is really a political rally. They raise the song of trust and worship and witness to heaven. And the king of heaven and earth shakes the world as a promise of things to come (Hebrews 12:25-29).
"Onward Christian Soldiers" may sound too combative in an age of growing world accommodation and pluralism. But the community of God's people that speaks "Peace!" while the final armistice has not yet been signed before the judgment seat of heaven has capitulated to the enemy.
Revelation 1:4-8
The book of Revelation is non-historical in that it does not, apart from John's original encounters with Jesus, try to identify specific, recordable experiences of persons or cultures either past, present, or future. Instead, it is a type of allegory that powerfully pictures the perennial and ongoing combat between God and the devil, between the church and the world, and between good and evil generally. Instead of trying to find contemporary or past events linked to certain scenes in the book, we should interpret every situation of human history in light of the overarching themes of the book:
* Jesus is the powerful resurrected and ascended savior.
* Evil is constantly trying to usurp God's authority and destroy God's creation and God's people.
* We are living on a battlefield in which all people are affected by the scars and wounds of war and few signs of victory are ever seen.
* All human beings must choose to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior and stand firm to that testimony no matter what the cost, or they will slip into an alliance with evil that will eventually destroy them.
* Jesus is returning to make all things new, but before that happens this world will undergo even more powerful and threatening advances of evil.
* One day the faith of the faithful will be rewarded, and the dead and living together will enjoy the perfections of the new creation in which all evidence of parasitic evil will have been removed.
While the book of Revelation may seem convoluted and unrelentingly dense in many parts, there is also obvious movement in the flow of its passages. Driven by sevens, the images and happenings are grouped into delineated sections. And when these collections of sevens are identified, it becomes apparent that they follow upon critical scenes in which Jesus shown to play a pivotal role:
*Jesus Addresses the Church in the City of Humanity (1-3)
**Vision of Jesus as Risen Lord (1)
**Letters of Jesus to Seven Representative Churches (2-3)
*Jesus Judges the City of Humanity (4-18)
**Vision of Jesus as Lion/Lamb Redeemer (4-5)
**Three Series of Sevens:
***Seven Seals anticipate divine judgment (6-7)
***Seven Trumpets announce divine judgment (8-11)
--Interlude: Clarifying the Combatants (12-14)
***Seven Bowls of Plagues accomplish divine judgment (15-18)
*Jesus Restores the Holy City (19-22)
**Vision of Jesus as Bridegroom/Conquering King (19:1-10)
**Seven Actions of Restoration (19:11-22:5)
--Epilogue (22:6-21)
When observed in this manner, carefully responding to the literary movements of the text itself, greater clarity emerges. There are three major visions of Jesus (1, 4-5, 19) and each is followed by one or more series of sevens. Overall the progression moves from local congregations that are experiencing persecution, heresy, and compromise (2-3), to a global battlefield in which all citizens of planet earth are caught up in the horrible conflict between evil and good (6-18), and on to a transcendent victory brought about by the return of Jesus and the divine renewal of creation itself (19-22).
In this opening vision, Jesus is identified as the creator and consummator (the first and the last) and is shown symbolically in the temple (walking among the lamp stands) and bringing the glory of God into the human arena. While he is clearly human in his physical features, these have been translated by his resurrection (Revelation 1:18) so that they pummel the observer with transcendent power and glory.
Most important is that Jesus is the "faithful witness" of God's designs for planet earth. Obviously this was a necessary message late in the first century, when first Nero's and then Domitian's persecutions of the church killed many and caused thousands of others to huddle in fear. Since the language and cosmological perspectives in the book are very similar to those in the gospel of John and the letters of John, there is every reason to suppose that they, along with this book, were written by the disciple of Jesus who pastored the congregation in Ephesus late in the first century and was exiled to Patmos by Domitian as a way of undermining the courage of the Christian church, which he despised. Since Domitian ruled from September of 81 through September of 96 AD, the Revelation of Jesus to John was probably penned and sent sometime in the mid- to late-80s.
Its message is timeless. With Jesus, we are witnesses:
* To be a Christian is to be in conflict in this world.
* If one tries to opt out of this conflict, one automatically joins the other side, and has been trapped by the powers of evil.
* Faithfulness to Jesus almost invariably leads to martyrdom, because this conflict is all or nothing.
* But those who trust in God will find the strength to remain faithful through suffering, die in hope, and have their confidence rewarded by Jesus' ultimate victory and the renewal of creation that includes the resurrection and glorification of all God's people.
John 20:19-31
How do we make our doubts work for us in the midst of life's struggles? Doubting Thomas may have something to teach us. We find him at center stage on several important occasions in the gospel of John.
In chapter 11, when Jesus tells his disciples he has to go to Jerusalem, Thomas is the first to speak. He says, "Let's go with him and die with him there!" He's not a doubter on that occasion -- he doesn't even waver.
John 14 paints a similar picture of Thomas. Jesus tells his disciples that he has to leave them for a time. He says they already know where he's going. But Thomas has no clue about what Jesus is saying. So he in effect blurts out, "Where are you going, Lord? I don't know what you're talking about!"
That's not doubt; that's honesty. Honesty is what characterizes Thomas, not mere doubt. Thomas is like a little boy in elementary school who raises his hand and says, "Teacher, I don't get it!"
For Thomas, doubt and faith work hand in hand. Because his doubt challenges his faith, his faith becomes stronger. His faith gains clarity -- he knows exactly what it takes for him to believe something. It gains conviction -- you hear this when he finally cries out, "My Lord and my God!" That's not a question or a wish; it's the conviction of great faith.
Because of his doubts, Thomas' faith also gains comfort. The early church claimed that Thomas went to India to bring the message of Jesus, risen from the dead. That's an extremely hard message for a Hindu society to accept. Yet to this day, a group of churches scattered throughout India calls itself the "MarThomaChurch." For generations these people have believed in Jesus because of the testimony of Thomas. Not Thomas the saint, but Thomas the doubter. Thomas the questioner. Thomas the honest.
When Thomas finally spoke about Jesus, he was certain. Doubt had clarified his faith, had given him a sure conviction, and had confirmed for him the true source of his comfort. Here was a man of faith, and he got there on the wings of doubt.
Do you believe in God? If you don't I can certainly understand, for I'm your brother in doubt, and my pilgrimage has led me through the territory you are going through.
But if you are struggling, let your doubt work with your faith! Go ahead and question your faith. Move the lines that you've drawn around your faith. But do it with the honesty of Thomas. And when the lines are drawn again, you'll know the clarity, conviction, and comfort of your faith.
It may not happen all at once. It didn't for me. And it won't bring you entirely beyond the struggles of your soul. I know that all too well.
But this I also know; your struggles will point you to the future instead of the past and will give you this song to sing:
Oh yesterday our little troupe was ridden through and through,
Our swaying, tattered pennons fled, a broken, beaten few,
And all the summer afternoon they hunted us and slew;
But tomorrow, by the living God, we'll try the game anew!
For the game is the game of life. And our doubts march with us along the way. But deep inside God has planted the seed of faith, and tomorrow we'll feel it grow strong again!
Of this we are witnesses.
Application
The word "witness" that is used in the New Testament has an interesting etymology. It actually comes into the English language in two forms. First, there is "witness" itself, which simply means "someone who has seen or experienced something, and is a reliable reporter of those events." This is the meaning of the Greek term.
But that Greek term is also the basis for a second English word, one which looks and sounds much more like the Greek original: martyr. For most of its life in the Greek language, the word "martyr" simply meant "witness." But because of the massive impact of the Christian movement upon the world of its day, and the strident Roman backlash against the early church, those who were "witnesses" about Jesus often were persecuted and abused and killed, turning them into what we today call "martyrs." The spelling and structure of the Greek word never changed, but its meaning certainly did. Those who testified about Jesus were likely to be tormented and hurt and assassinated because of what they said and how they lived. The "witnesses" became "martyrs." And in every subsequent language based significantly upon Greek, the change in meaning has stuck.
By their faithful testimonies, Christians changed the language.
An Alternative Application
Acts 5:27-32. Syndicated columnist Robert Fulghum said that long ago he gave up any significant relationship with God. He didn't really want God, the church, or religion to cramp his style.
Then he met someone who prevented him from banishing God from his life. He was so amazed that he put her picture on the mirror above the sink where he washes each morning. Every time he cleans his hands, she's there to cleanse his heart. Whenever he scrubs his face, she's there to wash his soul.
He met her a few years ago in Oslo, Norway, during the Nobel Prize ceremonies. He was standing among the crowd of guests that filled the doors and hallways of the auditorium.
Then she passed by. She stopped for a moment and smiled at him. For a brief moment, it seemed as if she reached into his heart and understood him. There was no condemnation in her look, only genuine care. Then she went to the front of the auditorium to receive the Nobel Peace Prize from the hand of the king of Norway. It was Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Somehow, said Fulghum, she reminded him of the things that were missing in his life -- the quotation marks that hung empty, the meaning that had slipped away.
A couple of years later he met her again, this time in Bombay. She was speaking at an international conference in a large hotel. There she stood in her sandals and sari, a simple person in a very complex world.
"We can do no great things," she said, "only small things with great love." With that, says Fulghum, "she upsets me, disturbs me, shames me. What does she have that I do not?"
But he knows. Deep inside, he knows. That's why he keeps her picture on his mirror. That's why he looks into her eyes again and again. That's why he writes about her. He knows that between the quotation marks of her life, she has God. That's the source of her strength, her energy, her inner beauty.
"He that has God as his Father," said Cyprian, "has the church as his mother." And in that church, as Mother Teresa would be the first to testify, you find the great quotation that makes your life matter. In the church you find the Word. The Word of God incarnate, the Word of Easter resurrection that feeds the other quotations of life, and makes you a living witness.
Telemachus had no great ambitions in life. He loved his little garden and tilled it through the changing seasons. But one day in the year 391 he felt a sense of urgency, a call of God's direction in his life. Although he didn't know why, he felt that God wanted him to go to Rome, the heart and soul of the empire. In fact the feelings of such a call frightened him, but he went anyway, praying along the way for God's direction.
When he finally got to the city, it was in an uproar! The armies of Rome had just come home from the battlefield in victory, and the crowds were turning out for a great celebration. They flowed through the streets like a tidal wave, and Telemachus was caught in their frenzy and carried into the Coliseum.
He had never seen a gladiator contest before, but now his heart sickened. Down in the arena men hacked at each other with swords and clubs. The crowds roared at the sight of blood and urged their favorites on to the death.
Telemachus couldn't stand it. He knew it was wrong; this wasn't the way God wanted people to live or to die. So little Telemachus worked his way through the crowds to the wall down by the arena. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he shouted.
Nobody heard him, so he crawled up onto the wall and shouted again: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" This time the few who heard him only laughed. But Telemachus was not to be ignored. He jumped into the arena and ran through the sands toward the gladiators. "In the name of Christ, forbear!"
The crowds laughed at the silly little man and threw stones at him. Telemachus, however, was on a mission. He threw himself between two gladiators to stop their fighting. "In the name of Christ, forbear!" he cried.
They hacked him apart! They cut his body from shoulder to stomach, and he fell onto the sand with the blood running out of his life.
The gladiators were stunned and stopped to watch him die. Then the crowds fell back in silence, and for a moment no one in the Coliseum moved. Telemachus' final words rang in their memories: "In the name of Christ, forbear!" At last they moved, slowly at first, but growing in numbers. The masses of Rome filed out of the Coliseum that day, and the historian Theodoret reports that never again was a gladiator contest held there! All because of the witness and the testimony of a single Christian!
The power of a faithful witness carries great impact. The disciples of Jesus modeled that in the pages of Acts, as we read about it today. They were only taking their cue from Jesus himself, the faithful witness who appeared to John, and remembered when the witness of Jesus and the witness of those who followed him were wrapped up in a single incident in which all were bound together by the Holy Spirit. We are witnesses...
Acts 5:27-32
"Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous!" said Winston Churchill. "In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."
Politics is about power. Dale Carnegie knew that and created his popular seminars on "How to Win Friends and Influence People." In his famous treatise on politics, The Prince, Machiavelli said: "All the armed prophets conquered, all the unarmed ones perished!" In the end, it seems, what matters is your ability to create your dream, not the rightness of the dream itself. Napoleon even confided in his journals that "justice means force as well as virtue." Your ideal can be noble, but you must be able to force it upon others you consider less noble than yourself.
In one of his essays, Albert Camus describes a powerful scene. John Huss, the great Czech Reformer of the church, is on trial. His accusers twist all his ideas out of shape. They refuse to give him a hearing. They maneuver the political machine against him and incite popular passion to a lynch-mob frenzy. Finally Huss is condemned to be burned at the stake. As the flames surround him, people who couldn't possibly have read his writings and who have no interest in either his perspectives or those of the governing authorities line up to assist in the murder. "When they were burning John Huss," writes Camus, "a gentle little old lady came carrying her faggot to add it to the pile."
The tragedy of politics often lies in passions, not platforms. "Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never!" says Lamartine. That's why there's an unwritten rule in many communities that when all the in-laws and out-laws get together for the annual "family rebellion" you can't talk about politics or religion. Both grab a person so deeply!
Maybe, when it comes right down to it, politics and religion are much the same thing. The kingdom of God is very political. It's a perspective on all of life. It's a way of holding things together and giving them meaning. It's a movement that's out to change the world, to reclaim lost territory in the civil war of the universe.
That's why Jesus' followers got into trouble with the political leaders of their day. Two visions of reality collided. Two perspectives on life challenged each other. Six times over in the book of Acts, the Christian community is called "The Way." Not "The Society" nor "The Institution," but "The Way"!
The church of Jesus Christ is a political movement. It's on the way to somewhere. Every worship service is a political rally; a time when we refocus our energies, study our political platform and policies, and pay homage to the Party Leader.
In today's passage, the church leaders are arrested by the political leaders of their day. Peter and John have just healed a man with bad legs and have counseled a large crowd of troubled people. Then the high council challenges them: "What right do you have to practice medicine without a license?"
Peter and John have the answer. "We're under marching orders!" they say. "We must obey God rather than men!"
When they are released, Peter and John hold a prayer service that is really a political rally. They raise the song of trust and worship and witness to heaven. And the king of heaven and earth shakes the world as a promise of things to come (Hebrews 12:25-29).
"Onward Christian Soldiers" may sound too combative in an age of growing world accommodation and pluralism. But the community of God's people that speaks "Peace!" while the final armistice has not yet been signed before the judgment seat of heaven has capitulated to the enemy.
Revelation 1:4-8
The book of Revelation is non-historical in that it does not, apart from John's original encounters with Jesus, try to identify specific, recordable experiences of persons or cultures either past, present, or future. Instead, it is a type of allegory that powerfully pictures the perennial and ongoing combat between God and the devil, between the church and the world, and between good and evil generally. Instead of trying to find contemporary or past events linked to certain scenes in the book, we should interpret every situation of human history in light of the overarching themes of the book:
* Jesus is the powerful resurrected and ascended savior.
* Evil is constantly trying to usurp God's authority and destroy God's creation and God's people.
* We are living on a battlefield in which all people are affected by the scars and wounds of war and few signs of victory are ever seen.
* All human beings must choose to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior and stand firm to that testimony no matter what the cost, or they will slip into an alliance with evil that will eventually destroy them.
* Jesus is returning to make all things new, but before that happens this world will undergo even more powerful and threatening advances of evil.
* One day the faith of the faithful will be rewarded, and the dead and living together will enjoy the perfections of the new creation in which all evidence of parasitic evil will have been removed.
While the book of Revelation may seem convoluted and unrelentingly dense in many parts, there is also obvious movement in the flow of its passages. Driven by sevens, the images and happenings are grouped into delineated sections. And when these collections of sevens are identified, it becomes apparent that they follow upon critical scenes in which Jesus shown to play a pivotal role:
*Jesus Addresses the Church in the City of Humanity (1-3)
**Vision of Jesus as Risen Lord (1)
**Letters of Jesus to Seven Representative Churches (2-3)
*Jesus Judges the City of Humanity (4-18)
**Vision of Jesus as Lion/Lamb Redeemer (4-5)
**Three Series of Sevens:
***Seven Seals anticipate divine judgment (6-7)
***Seven Trumpets announce divine judgment (8-11)
--Interlude: Clarifying the Combatants (12-14)
***Seven Bowls of Plagues accomplish divine judgment (15-18)
*Jesus Restores the Holy City (19-22)
**Vision of Jesus as Bridegroom/Conquering King (19:1-10)
**Seven Actions of Restoration (19:11-22:5)
--Epilogue (22:6-21)
When observed in this manner, carefully responding to the literary movements of the text itself, greater clarity emerges. There are three major visions of Jesus (1, 4-5, 19) and each is followed by one or more series of sevens. Overall the progression moves from local congregations that are experiencing persecution, heresy, and compromise (2-3), to a global battlefield in which all citizens of planet earth are caught up in the horrible conflict between evil and good (6-18), and on to a transcendent victory brought about by the return of Jesus and the divine renewal of creation itself (19-22).
In this opening vision, Jesus is identified as the creator and consummator (the first and the last) and is shown symbolically in the temple (walking among the lamp stands) and bringing the glory of God into the human arena. While he is clearly human in his physical features, these have been translated by his resurrection (Revelation 1:18) so that they pummel the observer with transcendent power and glory.
Most important is that Jesus is the "faithful witness" of God's designs for planet earth. Obviously this was a necessary message late in the first century, when first Nero's and then Domitian's persecutions of the church killed many and caused thousands of others to huddle in fear. Since the language and cosmological perspectives in the book are very similar to those in the gospel of John and the letters of John, there is every reason to suppose that they, along with this book, were written by the disciple of Jesus who pastored the congregation in Ephesus late in the first century and was exiled to Patmos by Domitian as a way of undermining the courage of the Christian church, which he despised. Since Domitian ruled from September of 81 through September of 96 AD, the Revelation of Jesus to John was probably penned and sent sometime in the mid- to late-80s.
Its message is timeless. With Jesus, we are witnesses:
* To be a Christian is to be in conflict in this world.
* If one tries to opt out of this conflict, one automatically joins the other side, and has been trapped by the powers of evil.
* Faithfulness to Jesus almost invariably leads to martyrdom, because this conflict is all or nothing.
* But those who trust in God will find the strength to remain faithful through suffering, die in hope, and have their confidence rewarded by Jesus' ultimate victory and the renewal of creation that includes the resurrection and glorification of all God's people.
John 20:19-31
How do we make our doubts work for us in the midst of life's struggles? Doubting Thomas may have something to teach us. We find him at center stage on several important occasions in the gospel of John.
In chapter 11, when Jesus tells his disciples he has to go to Jerusalem, Thomas is the first to speak. He says, "Let's go with him and die with him there!" He's not a doubter on that occasion -- he doesn't even waver.
John 14 paints a similar picture of Thomas. Jesus tells his disciples that he has to leave them for a time. He says they already know where he's going. But Thomas has no clue about what Jesus is saying. So he in effect blurts out, "Where are you going, Lord? I don't know what you're talking about!"
That's not doubt; that's honesty. Honesty is what characterizes Thomas, not mere doubt. Thomas is like a little boy in elementary school who raises his hand and says, "Teacher, I don't get it!"
For Thomas, doubt and faith work hand in hand. Because his doubt challenges his faith, his faith becomes stronger. His faith gains clarity -- he knows exactly what it takes for him to believe something. It gains conviction -- you hear this when he finally cries out, "My Lord and my God!" That's not a question or a wish; it's the conviction of great faith.
Because of his doubts, Thomas' faith also gains comfort. The early church claimed that Thomas went to India to bring the message of Jesus, risen from the dead. That's an extremely hard message for a Hindu society to accept. Yet to this day, a group of churches scattered throughout India calls itself the "MarThomaChurch." For generations these people have believed in Jesus because of the testimony of Thomas. Not Thomas the saint, but Thomas the doubter. Thomas the questioner. Thomas the honest.
When Thomas finally spoke about Jesus, he was certain. Doubt had clarified his faith, had given him a sure conviction, and had confirmed for him the true source of his comfort. Here was a man of faith, and he got there on the wings of doubt.
Do you believe in God? If you don't I can certainly understand, for I'm your brother in doubt, and my pilgrimage has led me through the territory you are going through.
But if you are struggling, let your doubt work with your faith! Go ahead and question your faith. Move the lines that you've drawn around your faith. But do it with the honesty of Thomas. And when the lines are drawn again, you'll know the clarity, conviction, and comfort of your faith.
It may not happen all at once. It didn't for me. And it won't bring you entirely beyond the struggles of your soul. I know that all too well.
But this I also know; your struggles will point you to the future instead of the past and will give you this song to sing:
Oh yesterday our little troupe was ridden through and through,
Our swaying, tattered pennons fled, a broken, beaten few,
And all the summer afternoon they hunted us and slew;
But tomorrow, by the living God, we'll try the game anew!
For the game is the game of life. And our doubts march with us along the way. But deep inside God has planted the seed of faith, and tomorrow we'll feel it grow strong again!
Of this we are witnesses.
Application
The word "witness" that is used in the New Testament has an interesting etymology. It actually comes into the English language in two forms. First, there is "witness" itself, which simply means "someone who has seen or experienced something, and is a reliable reporter of those events." This is the meaning of the Greek term.
But that Greek term is also the basis for a second English word, one which looks and sounds much more like the Greek original: martyr. For most of its life in the Greek language, the word "martyr" simply meant "witness." But because of the massive impact of the Christian movement upon the world of its day, and the strident Roman backlash against the early church, those who were "witnesses" about Jesus often were persecuted and abused and killed, turning them into what we today call "martyrs." The spelling and structure of the Greek word never changed, but its meaning certainly did. Those who testified about Jesus were likely to be tormented and hurt and assassinated because of what they said and how they lived. The "witnesses" became "martyrs." And in every subsequent language based significantly upon Greek, the change in meaning has stuck.
By their faithful testimonies, Christians changed the language.
An Alternative Application
Acts 5:27-32. Syndicated columnist Robert Fulghum said that long ago he gave up any significant relationship with God. He didn't really want God, the church, or religion to cramp his style.
Then he met someone who prevented him from banishing God from his life. He was so amazed that he put her picture on the mirror above the sink where he washes each morning. Every time he cleans his hands, she's there to cleanse his heart. Whenever he scrubs his face, she's there to wash his soul.
He met her a few years ago in Oslo, Norway, during the Nobel Prize ceremonies. He was standing among the crowd of guests that filled the doors and hallways of the auditorium.
Then she passed by. She stopped for a moment and smiled at him. For a brief moment, it seemed as if she reached into his heart and understood him. There was no condemnation in her look, only genuine care. Then she went to the front of the auditorium to receive the Nobel Peace Prize from the hand of the king of Norway. It was Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Somehow, said Fulghum, she reminded him of the things that were missing in his life -- the quotation marks that hung empty, the meaning that had slipped away.
A couple of years later he met her again, this time in Bombay. She was speaking at an international conference in a large hotel. There she stood in her sandals and sari, a simple person in a very complex world.
"We can do no great things," she said, "only small things with great love." With that, says Fulghum, "she upsets me, disturbs me, shames me. What does she have that I do not?"
But he knows. Deep inside, he knows. That's why he keeps her picture on his mirror. That's why he looks into her eyes again and again. That's why he writes about her. He knows that between the quotation marks of her life, she has God. That's the source of her strength, her energy, her inner beauty.
"He that has God as his Father," said Cyprian, "has the church as his mother." And in that church, as Mother Teresa would be the first to testify, you find the great quotation that makes your life matter. In the church you find the Word. The Word of God incarnate, the Word of Easter resurrection that feeds the other quotations of life, and makes you a living witness.
