The Witnessing Community
1991 (Year B), 6 October / Pentecost 12
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
The Quarrier family went to the Amazon jungle to witness to the truth of the gospel and they believed their witness would lead to the conversion of the indigenous people. Things didn’t go as they expected and their young son, Billy, died of fever. The leaders of the mission were disappointed with the family’s results, and as the preparations for the child’s burial are took place, this conversation takes place.
‘You say you have no converts here! Not a single believer in all this time! Not even that old woman wailing ... surely Taweeda wishes to believe!’ Huben grasped Quarrier in a rough embrace and smiled at him, tears in his eyes. ‘I can feel it in my heart – these lost souls are ready for the Lord! Did you see them on their knees? And perhaps the Lord, in all His wisdom, has seen fit to take Billy Quarrier to His great fold in order that these poor souls might see the light and know His Son Jesus Christ at last. Let us lift up our voices!’ Quarrier, gone pale waited for Huben to stop singing, he wore such a look of rage and grief it seemed he might go mad. ‘The Lord,’ he said in a strange voice, ‘did not take my son. Death took my son. But if He had, the Lord would not be welcome to my son. Do you understand that? He is not welcome to my son!’
This is a story told in a book and a film, At play in the Fields of the Lord. It’s not a unique story. There are vast chunks of our Christian history which cause sorrow and embarrassment. Battles have been fought and persons killed in attempts to witness to the gospel of love. For centuries parts of the church at least have operated with a notion that the Christian faith is something which can be witnessed to and communicated to another person rather like you would a shopping list. Some things must be told, Virgin Birth, Resurrection of the dead, some notion of salvation. And for the witness to be effective they must be accepted by another. It’s all there, solid, immutable. After all it’s only what we’ve inherited from our ancestors in the faith.
It continues: to witness properly to the truth of the gospel we must be faithful to that inheritance. We may not change it. We must obey its injunctions, living lives in accordance with its commands. In turn we must pass it on, lock stock and barrel, to our children and to all who come after us in the faith.
I guess we can all see some of this in ourselves, certainly I know it’s there in me and I’ve heard it expressed in one form or other in most of those here today. The clergy are the professionals and therefore supposed to be the most effective witnesses to the truth. They are called in if we get into difficulties or maybe need some support. ‘You tell ‘em Rector,’, I was told in my last job when I was called in to read the riot act to some child who was misbehaving, ‘You tell ‘em.’ For all of us find it baffling when someone won’t be told or they express their notions of God or morality in different ways from us.Now it’s all very well to criticise those who have abused and misused the gospel in their attempt to witness to its truth. How are we to do any better? It seems to me that witnesses are those who attempt to walk in the way of truth. They are those who know that they hold no monopoly of truth, nor do they understand everything.
They are those who feel they have grasped an inkling of the light and are willing to live lives with that as a base. They are those for whom faith is a living, growing, exciting and dynamic thing which can, if it’s allowed, permeate their whole being. They are those who will change their minds in the light of some other glimpse of the truth, another shaft of light, which has been given to them in a moment of grace. They will continue to grow in holiness.
They are those who will recognise and affirm the worth of others and their insights into the nature of the divine. They will seek to give expression to those insights. They will enter dialogue with them and be prepared to learn from them for they will realise that wherever they go God is waiting for them. They are those who manage to show the love and the joy of Christ in their lives.
It is to this ministry of witness that this church community is called. We are not expected to do it on our own, we do it together and in the name of him who said, ‘All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.’ AMEN