Sermon: Testify

Texts: Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; John 1:6-8, 19-28

Date: December 11, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

This story is going around on the internet so maybe you’ve seen it:

An honest man was being tailgated by a stressed out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him.

He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in
frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection.

As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed and placed in a holding cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you and cussing a blue streak at him. "I noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk…

Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."

I don’t think that’s a true story. At least it’s not true in the sense of being a factual account, not true in the small-t sense of “true story.” I do think it’s true in the capital-T sense of True Story. If we took a moment to think about it, we’d probably all be blushing, remembering an incident in which we were that woman. It might not have happened just that way, in a car with an outburst of profanity, but most of us have had our spectacular failures as Christians, which are all the more embarrassing when they occur in public.

One of the great ironies in the story, of course, is that the woman had taken such pains to testify to her faith, using her car as a passive billboard. She had probably expected while attaching Jesus-y sayings and symbols to her car that she was serving and glorifying God. I don’t know if lives are ever changed or souls are ever saved by bumper stickers and chrome fish, but more power to her for testifying so publicly to her identity. If she had been a Christian undercover, the whole unpleasant arrest incident could have been avoided.

Our church is the sort that has more Christians undercover. I doubt there is a single “Follow Me to Sunday School” bumper sticker in our entire parking lot.

Is that a good thing, or not? There are complex reasons why we might be reticent to advertise our faith on our car bumpers, clothing, yard signs, and so forth. These might range from finding bumper stickers vaguely tacky to not wanting to be lumped in with certain of our Christian siblings in the public eye to actually not wanting our neighbors to know we aspire to something as old-fashioned as faith. Or perhaps the one thing we are most sure of as Christians is that we are frequently failures and we would rather be undercover than bad public representatives of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know that we should all go out and plaster our cars with evidence of Christian identity—although Wendy Johnson and I might urge you to consider a UCC “God is Still Speaking” bumper sticker, a few of which we have on hand. Testifying to faith is much more complicated than a 12 inch by 4 inch sticky vinyl slogan.

A pastor tells of making a hospital visit one day. The hospital seemed unusually quiet as he made his way down the hall to visit a church member who had suffered a stroke. After knocking on the door, he entered the room and before he spoke, the daughter said, “Daddy, guess who has come to see you?” The patient immediately replied, “It’s my preacher.” The daughter, surprised at his accuracy, asked, “How did you know that?” Her father simply replied, “I know that walk.”

Later, when he reflected on this comment, the pastor realized that this member had recognized the sound of his footstep. But then he wondered how many who heard and saw his walk would know that he walked as Jesus walked. Not a bad question, eh? How many people recognize simply from the way you walk that you are disciple of Jesus?[1]

Now we’re in the realm of not the small-w walk but the capital-W Walk, as in your Walk of Life. Is your Walk recognizable as a Christian Walk? Frederick Buechner comments that if you really want to know who you are, look at your feet. Your feet tell you a lot about who you are and what is important for you. Our feet take us to that which is important to us. Who do you walk to or for? Where do you go?

There’s a lot of truth in that, isn’t there? If you want to know who someone is, don’t look at their bumper stickers, although that may give you some clues. Look at their feet. Where do they go, what do they do? Do the tracks of the feet testify to faith?

Let me back up. Don’t look at other’s people’s feet. Our former conference minister, Randy Hyvonen, of Finnish descent, used to tell a joke about how to identify a gregarious Finn. A gregarious Finn is someone who looks at your shoes instead of his own while speaking to you. It’s a great temptation to behave like the gregarious Finn when assessing what makes a recognizably Christian life—looking at someone else’s shoes and relishing judging others (mostly others’ shortcomings). We should be looking at our own shoes, evaluating ourselves as witnesses, which should keep us busy enough until Judgment Day.

I rather like those Family Circle cartoons that show in dotted black lines where one of the children go when sent on an errand by their parents. You know the cartoons I’m talking about? I wonder what my dotted black line would look like on the map of my life if I were given the opportunity to see through hindsight where I had walked after being sent out by God on an errand. Do you think I have been sent out by God on an errand? Do you think you have? I think we both have. Listen again to the errand given to John the Baptist as the gospel of John tells it: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.” [John 1:6-8]

A person sent to testify to the light. That’s John’s “nutshell” take on what John the Baptist was supposed to do. But that errand, that mission, was not limited to John. As the gospel story unfolds, you see people becoming disciples—seeing the light, and then testifying to the light, so that others might believe. We who are among today’s disciples can claim the same errand. We are sent by God to testify to the light. We can slide John’s name (and gender, where appropriate) out from those verses and slide ours in.

We may testify with bumper stickers or words, as in this definition of “testify”: “To express or declare a strong belief, especially to make a declaration of faith.” The fourth definition of “testify” at dictionary.com especially grabbed me, though, in light of the Isaiah reading: “To serve as evidence.” To testify is to serve as evidence. To serve as evidence. To bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to comfort all who mourn—to serve as evidence that light has come into the world.

We will each have a unique way to testify, to witness to the light. We will each have a unique way to serve as evidence of God’s love in the world. I will testify to this truth by telling you a story I found in one of Robert Fulghum’s books, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It.

Near the village of Gonia on a rocky bay of the island of Crete, sits a Greek Orthodox monastery. Alongside it, on land donated by the monastery, is an institute dedicated to human understanding and peace, and especially to reconciliation between Germans and Cretans. An improbable task, given the bitter residue of wartime.

This site is important, because it overlooks the small airstrip at Maleme where Nazi paratroopers invaded Crete and were attacked by peasants wielding kitchen knives and hay scythes. The retribution was terrible. The populations of whole villages were lined up and shot for assaulting Hitler’s finest troops. High above the institute is a cemetery with a single cross marking the mass grave of Cretan partisans. And across the bay on yet another hill is the regimented burial ground of the Nazi paratroopers. The memorials are so placed that all might see and never forget. Hate was the only weapons the Cretans had at the end, and it was a weapon many vowed never to give up. Never ever.

Against this heavy curtain of history, in this place where the stone of hatred is hard and thick, the existence of an institute devoted to healing the wounds of war is a fragile paradox. How has it come to be here? The answer is a man. Alexander Papaderos.

A doctor of philosophy, teacher, politician, resident of Athens but a son of this soil. At war’s end he came to believe that the Germans and the Cretans had much to give one another—much to learn from one another. That they had an example to set. For if they could forgive each other and construct a creative relationship, then any people could.

To make a lovely story short, Papaderos succeeded. The institute became a reality—a conference ground on the site of horror—and it was in fact a source of productive interaction between the two countries. Books have been written on the dreams that were realized by what people gave to people in this place. Fulghum met Papaderos, by then a living legend, at a conference there. He was an extraordinary person, vivacious, intelligent, passionate, electric. At the end of the two week seminar on Greek culture which Fulghum attended, Papaderos got up and walked to the front of the room, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight and looked out at the iron cross marking the German cemetery. He turned toward the class and asked, “Are there any questions?”

There was silence for a moment. Fulghum says that in such a situation he occasionally asks the Big Question: What is the meaning of life? Usually when he does this people think it’s a joke and get up to leave. Anyway, he asked it: “Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?” The usual laughter followed and people stirred to go.

Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at Fulghum for a long time, asking with his eyes if the question was serious, and seeing from Fulghum’s eyes that it was. “I will answer your question.”

Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this:

“When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.

“I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine—in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

“I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child’s game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light—truth, understanding, knowledge—is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.

“I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world—into the black places in the hearts of men—and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life.”

And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto Fulghum’s face and his hands folded on the desk.[2]

We are men and women sent by God to testify to the light. We are not the light, but we are here to testify to the light. Reflect the light in as many dark places as you can so that we might have a part in bringing others into the true light. In this way, our lives will have meaning.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Hughes, David in Drop Everything! Smith and Helwys Publishing, 1994 Cited in Aha!, December 15, 2002

[2] Fulghum, Robert It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It New York: Villard Books, 1989, p. 173-177