Vows: Witness

Welcome to the weekly Dulin Podcast, a ministry of Doolin United Methodist Church in Falls Church, Virginia. Each week, we share a short reflection on faith and life in community, exploring how God's grace moves among us and through us. We're glad you're here.

Hello, Dulin Church. It is me, your pastor, James, and I am delighted to be with you. This is streaming live and the podcast is dropping live on Thanksgiving Day. So I want to first say to you, happy Thanksgiving. Whatever you are doing, if you have watched this on Thanksgiving or if you are caught up with family and you are not watching or listening to this until later, happy Thanksgiving to you.

I wish you the best. Today is the last in a five part series I have done on the stream and the podcast about our membership vows in the United Methodist Church. We promise to support the congregation of which we're a part with our prayers, presents, gifts, service, and witness. So, today I wanted to talk just a little bit about what witness is or what I think about when I think about witness. Because I think it's helpful to know.

Do you know that the most original word for witness in in to us in in the Christian faith particularly in Greek is the word martyr. It literally means we think of it as someone who dies for a cause. But it literally means witness, someone who witnesses to something. So when you think about that, the witness that the martyrs, the early martyrs of the faith showed was a willingness to die for their faith. And they were certainly well esteemed, highly esteemed in the early church.

And as we look back, people who are willing to die for their faith even today are lifted up as people who are witnesses, the martyrs are witnesses to what they believe so strongly that they would give their life for it. But for us who are people who follow the path of Jesus, the first witnesses come to us in if you're Protestant and you've got just the basic Bible without the Apocrypha, the additional books, you're talking 66 different kind of groupings of witnesses throughout the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Testament. 66 varying witnesses. And some of those books are compilations. So, it's more than 66 witnesses.

Opportunities for people to tell from their perspective, their inspired story of encounters with God. Their understanding of how God is involved in our lives. They witness to the fact that they believe that creation, they didn't try to give us a scientific understanding of exactly how it happened. Seven days, that whole picture. I don't think it's about the science of it.

What it's about is a witness to the fact that our God is an orderly God. Our God brings order out of chaos. And when we look around in a chaotic world, that witness is important to us. We need to hear that. That particular creation story rose to prominence during the exile when the Israelites had lost the promised land and their sense of connection to the land and to the temple and all of the things that gave them meaning gave them order to their lives and their lives felt chaotic and disordered, that story rose up and was retold and told and retold about an ordering.

You know, let there be light and all of the pieces of order that come in small segments that give us the picture. We have the four gospels, which gospel simply means most good news, a telling of good news. And the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, each in their own way witness to who Jesus was. Tell us stories so that we can come to know Jesus. And those witnesses set an example for us.

They set an example that we tell the stories that are authentic to us in ways that are authentic to us. So, being a witness for faith is being able to perhaps articulate in some way or another what brought us to faith. What brought us to a place where we made that leap and gave ourselves over to following in the path of God. So that fifth vow is all about sort of thinking for ourselves, what is my witness? Mine is a long story that has ultimately culminated here in my being the pastor at Doolin Church.

But there are lots of pieces along that journey where I tripped and I fell, where people helped me back up. Almost never did I get back up by myself. Someone helped me back up. God helped me find my way. There are lots for me witnesses being able to kind of reflect on and see the place in the story.

And you know, the funny thing is my life hasn't, obviously it continues to go on, the story and the way I tell the story has changed over time because I see new kinds of nuances to the things that have happened in and through me and to me in my life and what I did with them, how I overcame some difficult circumstances, how I fell down in circumstances that should have been triumphant. What brought me here and my ability to tell that story to be a witness comes from the authentic attempt to reclaim that story in ways that make sense to me in light of my understanding of God's unconditional love for me and everyone else. So to be a witness is to at least come to be aware and take seriously the story of who you are Because your story matters. To be a witness is not to try to be a copycat of me or anybody else that you went along with. Although there may be people that we emulate, that we want to be like, that we imitate.

You know, it's the highest form of flattery I'm told is imitation. And for us, the highest one to imitate is the life of Christ. You know, there was even a wonderful devotional book written called The Imitation of Christ. It's a wonderful, if challenging book to read sometimes about how we work to imitate Christ. And that is a witness.

But certainly, there have been people in our lives, I would love to be as at peace and loving as my father was. In a way, in more than just a way, he was a witness in my life. People I never even knew were witnesses in my life. For instance, the story of Mother Teresa. Now I lived while she was still alive and I still live now that she's dead.

And after her death, we found out about her in her own writings, how much she struggled looking for God every single day. It always appeared she was living it out and that she was a person of this kind of faith that must just feel close to God all the time. And we find that not at all. What a witness it is to keep at it even when you're struggling on the inside. What a witness.

I appreciate that. Saint, now Saint, Oscar Romero, someone who died for his faith in modern day El Salvador in the 1980s, assassinated for his taking a stance against the oppressive regime of El Salvador in the 1980s and standing up for the common people as mattering to God and mattering to the church. For standing up, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the most unlikely of martyrs when he first came to faith, became a witness, died while serving the Eucharist communion, was assassinated while doing just that. I find in him something to emulate not in someone who is willing to stand for what they believe so strongly that whatever the consequences are, they would be willing to go there. Same thing for Martin Luther King Jr, Doctor.

Martin Luther King Jr. These are people, modern day saints, modern day witnesses for whom their faith shown out in the way that they lived. So, if you take seriously your vow to support the church with this last piece, your witness, what would that look like? Your life is writing a gospel story in the way that you speak to people, in the way that you care for people, the way that you listen to people, in the way that you spend your money, in the way that you support other people and other organizations around, even in the very thoughts you have. You are a witness.

You are a witness. You get to be a witness on behalf of Jesus and on behalf of if you're a member of Doolin or a part of our community. On behalf of Doolin United Methodist Church here in Falls Church, Virginia. Isn't that a powerful opportunity? Look at that whole great cloud of witnesses that surround us.

From the writers, the biblical writers, to the early founders of the church, to those who have stood up for their faith at various points along the way, calling all the way up to now. How will we, the question that comes from this last of the vows, how will we stand for faith? How will we be a part of witnessing to the faith we have? You don't have to stand up at your desk at work or at school and preach a sermon. Your life is doing that for you.

You know, a quote that is attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, it's not clear whether he really said this or not but it's certainly been attributed to him. Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words. Think about that for a minute. Preach the gospel at all times.

Let the good news be preached in and through your life as your life. When necessary, use words. How are you and I living into this vow for witness? It's part of my ordination vow. I was ordained to word, order, sacrament, and witness in the world.

How are we living into that? Well, ponder that and I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. I hope that you will look for ways in your life to be a witness and at the very least to be aware to name your story. To kind of begin to piece together how you came to a place where you could not only just believe something in your mind, but act on that reality in your life. How did you get here?

Because it matters. It matters that we're going to take those vows seriously. Well, that's the last of the five vows. Starting next week, I'm doing a four week series on Advent. We're going to talk about each of the weeks of Advent and maybe some ways to to make Advent a spiritual celebration in preparation for the celebration of the incarnation, the birth of Jesus, of Christmas, of God becoming one of us, Emmanuel, God is with us, that kind of thing.

So, starting next week, the Advent series. Hope you've appreciated this. If it's been helpful to you, it with someone else. If you have questions, comments, responses or concern, or you'd like to share your faith story with me, pastordoolinchurch dot org is my email address. Or call the church office, make an appointment to come and see me.

You can email me, make an appointment to come and see me or drop by the office. Sometimes that's an uncertainty. I can get called out of the office with regularity. But I'd love to sit and talk to you, listen to your faith story, get to know you better. In any case, thanks so much for listening today.

Happy Thanksgiving. Until the next time, farewell.