Bearing witness – 24 May 2013

When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.  You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.  [John 15: 26-27]

So in one sense it is a simple process.  Jesus “sends” the Spirit of Truth, who “testifies” to us, says Jesus.  The Spirit’s testimony is about God.  We then “testify” to the world, which means to our culture and environment, where we are, in our lives as we live them.  As people like to say so misleadingly these days, it’s as simple as that.

Testify is to bear witness.  Jewish survivors of the Holocaust believed they were under an obligation to bear witness.  Bearing witness is a fundamental human activity in any decent community.  The Mosaic Code itself, the Ten Commandments, actually devotes one commandment to prohibiting the bearing of false witness.  And indeed, in what Jesus is talking about, the Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, not falsity.  If it is of God it is true, and we are to receive that truth and to bear witness to that truth.  It may not be so much by anything we say, teach, preach, write – it is much more likely to be in the ways we are able to relate to others, the ways we react to adversity, the ways we pursue mercy and understanding.  It may well sometimes be more in the things we avoid saying than in anything we do say – in our silences as much as our noise. 

It all begins however in our deep awareness of the Spirit of Truth – God, in Christ, deeply and lovingly inspiring those of us able to be still, receptive, paying attention.   The Spirit of Truth assumes occupation of our lives.  It displaces self, more and more, as the days and years go by.  The Greek word used here meaning “testify”, “bear witness”, is martyreo  (μαρτυρεω) from which comes directly the English word martyr.  You bear witness only with your life – dead or alive, as we say, hopefully alive -- a life that is being indwelt and changed and unified by God. 

I hasten to add that, if this seems far too heavenly and impossible for us, we have only to think of people we have met along the way whose lives bear witness from their inner commitment.  It is not out of this world or in any way unreal.  The Spirit exists to do just this work.  Christian Meditation is a process of seeing the barriers and impediments brought down, the blockages cleared – in a discipline of stillness, silence, trust, consent to God.