TESTIFY, BROTHER!

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life -- and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us -- what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too many have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.
(1 John 1: 1-4)

The shepherds witnessed the proclamation of the angels and sought out this unusual child, and then they talked about these wonders to those they met. When Zacharias was confronted by Gabriel, he was too anstonished to believe the wonder, and instead resisted it - with the result that he was muted for nine months, until his son was born. But then he testified to the wonders and glory of God, first thing out of his mouth.

John wrote his letter at a time when Gnosticism was beginning to infiltrate the community of believers. Gnosticism in its teachings questioned the very basic nature of the Incarnation of the Christ, that the divinity of God would merge with the material flesh of human beings. They also wanted to keep a sense of "specialness" about spiritual knowledge, a sense that only a few knowledgable persons could know the deepest truth about God and our relationship with Divinity.

Since the indications are that the writer of this letter was indeed the disciple John, son of Zebedee, it must have been frustrating in his old age to see such thinking start to take root in the community of faith. It ran counter to everything he had known in those three precious years of walking with Jesus. All the things he had seen and done in that short but powerful time was being treated as something ethereal.

Walking back and forth over Galilee and Judea with Jesus, talking with people. Watching Jesus lay hands on the sick and heal them. Listening to Jesus teach to crowds and see people changed. Hauling in baskets of food after a crowd had been fed, when all they started with was a handful of loaves and fishes. Holding the broken, empty body when it was taken down off the cross, getting it hastily wrapped and placed in the tomb before the Sabbath began, and then coming back after the Sabbath and finding the tomb open and the loved one he knew was dead instead standing in the garden, bright and living. Walking with the risen Jesus for days after that event, lost in the wonder of what had happened. And then standing watching as Jesus was taken into heaven. And in the years since those events, watching how the teaching of Jesus changed lives, healed lives. Enduring perseuction from a determined young Pharisee, who felt the followers of Christ were an offense to God, only to be smitten by the Lord and changed into a powerful voice, a devoted lover of Jesus. All this John had seen and endured, and now there were those who treated the heart of those events -- that God had become flesh and walked among us -- as a sort of fiction.

He cannot be slilent. It was no fiction. It was no joke.

He had seen it, touched it, walked with it. And he spoke of it so that others could join in the fellowship. Because John had discovered that his experience with Jesus was communicable. It could be passed on to others, so that they too would know that intimate relationship with God through Christ. He (and the other apostles) discovered that by teaching others to know Jesus, the students really did come to know Christ personally. It wasn't just the absorbtion of information about an admired "historical figure." If nothing else, the conversion of Saul into Paul showed the community that the Lord was pro-active, interactive. It was no flat, exterior, untouchable entity they were following now, but rather Someone beyond mere flesh, and yet as immediate as the touch of a child.

"I saw this. I touched this. This happened to me."

There is a tendency in society around us to dismiss many aspects of personal experience as "merely subjective." Those things which cannot be pulled out as objects so that others can directly handle them get treated as mere personal fictions rather than anything "real." Oh, my own experiences and feelings and emotions are real (so the mindset goes), but since you cannot objectify your experiences in such a way that I can have them too, they're not "really real." It's not the truth, of course, or else the act of communication would not be possible at all. Nor would storytelling be the least bit effective. If it were impossible to share non-material experinence generations of storytelling would never touch anyone's heart. And we know that is not true. We respond to the heroics of Homer's Iliad, we understand Odysseus' desire to get home to his wife, we fall into the dreams of Don Quiote because we've had those dreams too. Generation after generation we share the hearts of those who went before. And those are "just stories."

So John insists. The stories of Jesus and his power, and his being as the Son of God made flesh, they are not "just stories." John had walked with the man, talked with the man, ate fish with the man, fish cooked on an open fire by the Sea of Galilee even after his very public and definite execution on a Roman cross. It happened and he was there for it.

How is it that we manage to be so silent about the presence of the Lord in our own lives?

Are we really subdued by the fiction that subjective experience cannont be conveyed to others? Do we really think that because we cannot hand someone a material object the presence of the Lord is not with us?

Years ago, I regularly attended a Bible study lead by a wonderful teacher. It met in someone's home, and was usually packed to the gills with people, sitting on every possible surface - the chairs, the sofa, the footstools, the floor. And when the group prayed, there was an electricity to the air. At one period, one of my friends (who did attend this Bible study as well) was going through a time of trouble and doubt. He wasn't "feeling" the presence of Christ. At one point he actually said he needed the assurance of actually touching Jesus, very much like Thomas and his doubts. This particular night, I was thinking and praying about my friend and his doubts, praying very intensely that if that was what he needed, that Jesus manifest Himself for my friend in order to be reassured. Deeper and deeper into that prayer I went as the time of group prayer continued. And suddenly, I had that sense that Someone had walked into the room, the way people often do when someone arrives late to a function. The sense was so strong, that my eyes flew open, I jerked my head up and looked to a specific spot across the room in the entry way to the living room. There was nothing "extra" there for my eyes to see, but I knew that Jesus was present.

Oh, we pay lip service to it often enough: "Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, I will be there." But I'm not sure how seriously we take it. But that night, I knew with a certainty the Lord had been among us.

Of late, I've had my cage of certainty rattled a bit. I've had questions about whether the Lord will indeed provide for my needs. I have wondered if my own lapses and inconsistencies have put me out of the favor of God. But I couldn't quite let go, and the prayers of many have strengthed my grip. And the Lord has met me in my need. I have been touched by the care and concern of others, knowing that their expressions have been boosted by the Lord's hands. I do not believe that God was making anyone do anything that was not already in their hearts. But I do believe that the Lord gave them more power to act upon what was in their hearts, giving them that extra little jolt of energy that made them move. This I have seen with my own eyes. I have seen a man who had once been told that he only had three years left to live because of cancer in the fourth year after that diagnosis (the year I met him) have the joy of the birth of a son, and in the following years endure recuring challenges to his health (that experts expected would kill him), and yet continue on in his ministry (for yes, he is a pastor). This man is still among us, touchable, accessible, and a walking witness to the power of God, and it's now over twenty years since I first met him.

"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life .... These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.

Testify, brother!