Incarnational Witness

 

 

“One of the two who heard John [the Baptist] speak and followed Him [Jesus] was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said, ‘We have found the Messiah (which translated means Christ).’” John 1:40 – 41.

 

“The next day He [Jesus] purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’”

 

Andrew hears John the Baptist say, “Behold the Lamb,” and Andrew follows Jesus. Andrew finds his brother Peter and says, “We have found the Messiah.” Jesus finds Philip and Philip finds Nathanael and Philip says, “We have found Him…come and see.”

 Sometimes Jesus calls us directly to know Him, but most of the time He calls us to follow Him through others; through John the Baptist, through a family member such as Andrew, or through a friend such as Philip. John the Baptist was certain when he cried “Behold the Lamb of God.” Andrew and Philip were seminally certain, that is, they had a certainty about Jesus, but it was a certainty that would go through a process of being more and more certain - is it not true that most of us, if not all of us, are in this process?

 

However, even when Jesus calls us directly, as with Paul on the road to Damascus, we soon find that He continues the call through others – Paul immediately needed Ananias, and then later he needed Barnabas, and still later he needed the affirmation of the prophets and teaches of Antioch (Acts 9:10; 11:25 – 26; 13:1 – 2). The original Apostles needed one another, and others, as they grew in Christ – as they grew individually and as a foundational group (Ephesians 2:20; Rev. 21:14).

 

May I say that witnessing is less a matter of what we do, than of who we are in Jesus Christ…and of who Jesus Christ is to us. When we reduce witnessing to techniques we profane Christ’s command to go into all the world, to all peoples, and make disciples, teaching others to obey all that Jesus Christ has commanded us. Witnessing is more than proclaiming, though proclaiming is certainly an element of witnessing, the Great Commission is more than the dissemination of information, it is the command to “make disciples.” How can we make disciples if we are not living as disciples? If we ourselves are not disciples of Jesus Christ – and this goes far beyond what we consider normal Christian living – how can we make disciples? If we don’t know who Christ is in us and who we are in Christ how can we live sacramentally so that we are broken Bread and poured out Wine for our generation?

 

Andrew and Philip said, “We have found…” While naturally from their perspective they found the Messiah, we can also say that the Messiah found them, as they would come to understand. Jesus would say in the Upper Room, “You did not choose Me but I chose you…(John 15:16). Earlier Jesus would say, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…(John 6:44). We have the freedom to speak either way, “I found Him,” or “He found me,” are both accurate; just as we have the freedom to say, “I saw the sun rise this morning,” without going into an explanation of the relationship of the sun and earth and orbits and the earth’s axis.  We have the freedom to speak from varying perspectives.

 

Andrew “brought him [Peter] to Jesus.” Philip brought Nathanael to see Jesus. In John 4:29 the woman at the well told the men of her village, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” (Consider that this woman, with an unstable and questionable social background, was saying to the men of her village, “Come, see a man.” She was telling them what to do!)

 

O dear friends, our level of knowledge and understanding is not the point in all of this, for Andrew and Philip and the woman of the well had all just met Jesus, but they were finding their friends, family, and neighbors and were saying, “Come and see.” They were bringing others to meet Jesus. Philip appealed to Moses and the Prophets when he spoke with Nathanael, while the woman at the well appealed to her experience with Jesus – what matters is that we tell others, bring others, and follow Jesus ourselves. We are called to be faithful, Jesus is responsible for the results (John 15:1ff).

 

John Chapter One is a chapter of witnessing, God has witnessed to the world through His Creation in and through the Word, the Son; God has also witnessed particularly through the Incarnation, an Incarnation that is ongoing – that began in a Grain of Wheat and now continues through a Harvest – a Harvest on a trajectory of culmination. Since this chapter is a chapter of Incarnational Witness, as indeed the Gospel of John is the Gospel of Incarnation Witness (what we see in John 1:14 is expanded in chapters 13 – 17 and beyond), when it comes to our witness, who we are is critical – when we realize who Christ is in us and who we are in Christ, our witness flows from our organic koinonia in the Trinity…hence witnessing is less a matter of what we do, than living in the reality of who we are.

 

Are our lives perpetually saying, “Come and see”? Are we saying, “Behold the Lamb!”

 

Are we sacramentally living as broken Bread and poured out Wine?