By Mark Azzara
My Dear Friend,
I attend a weekly men’s Scripture-study meeting and I have been blown away many times by the observations that my friends have made. The most recent example came when my friend Dan said, “The disciples weren’t theologians; they were witnesses.”
I am still savoring Dan’s words because they have helped me focus on who I am, not what I am. As I’ve written before, I am not a Christian. Rather, I am Christian. It is my name. It is who I am.
I am Christian because of what I have witnessed. I have seen my sins forgiven by a loving God. I have been led into spiritual, emotional and psychological growth that would have been unimaginable without Jesus. I have seen others who have been deeply touched by the simplest things I’ve done from time to time without thinking, all as a result of the changes God has wrought in me.
I am not a theologian. I know we need theology but I detest that word because, literally translated from the Greek, it means “the study of God.” How absurd! We don’t “study” God. We digest what he reveals to us about himself. Our problem is that we often create our own theologies to justify beliefs about God that have nothing to do with who he really is.
We are all meant to be witnesses. But it can be a costly undertaking. The Greek word for witness is martyr. This is of particular interest to me in light of something written by Kaitlyn Schiess, which I quoted in my Nov. 12 letter. She pointed to Luke 14 in which Jesus said we have to count the cost of being witnesses.
In this last week before Christmas, Christians are once gain preparing to celebrate the arrival of Jesus Christ in our midst. We are about to receive the greatest gift ever. The question is: What will we do with that gift?
Will we put it back in its box and shove it into the closet alongside all the other decorative detritus until another 12 months have elapsed?
Will we look at it fondly but curiously, wondering what practical purpose it might have?
Will we leave it fully in view on some shelf, polishing and cleaning it regularly but never daring to touch it otherwise for fear we might break it or in some way mar its perfect beauty?
Or will we take the gamble that this gift can absorb all the abuse we can give it as we struggle to understand how to turn it on, how to make it work, how to take full advantage of all of its features? Will we read the instruction manual to learn more about it? Will we let the gift affect us in ways we didn’t dare imagine? And will we tell others how valuable this gift has become to us – more valuable than any other gift we have ever received?
There is a price to pay for “witnessing” like this – for being a witness to who this gift is, what this gift means to us, how this gift has changed us. We may lose a friend now and then. We may be dismissed as naïve or pedantic. We may be ridiculed by those who point to the past failures of Christians to justify resenting what we believe, say and do. I sometimes wonder if that’s how you view me.
But there also is a price to pay for not being a witness. We will lose the best friend we’ve ever had. He will dismiss us for living lives that may have been good but weren’t good enough. We will certainly fail, and we will have only ourselves to blame.
Usually when we receive a gift we thank the giver, whether we’re really thankful for that gift or not. But once the giver has departed, leaving the gift behind, we can pretty much do what we want with it. Box it. Trash it. Use it. Treasure it.
But this time the giver is the gift. There is no separating the two. What we do with that gift can never be divorced from the one who gives himself to us.
As Advent nears its end may I suggest that we think deeply about this reality: The giver is the gift. If we really value that gift, we will “study” it by getting to know the giver, and then we will share that gift with others by speaking about the resulting changes in us and around us that we have witnessed, regardless of the personal cost for doing so.
All God’s blessings – Mark
