Thursday, 21 October, 2004

This week's devotions are written by Vicar Steve Bond.



More from Marva Dawn's Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God. Here, Dawn quotes French Archbishop Cardinal Suhard:



"To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda or even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery; it means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."



I think I'm within the bounds of sound Lutheran theology to say that the point of evangelism, of witnessing to the faith, is not to win or convert souls by getting people to make a decision for Jesus. Awakening hearts to the grace of God in Jesus Christ-who is the way, the truth, and the life-is the work of the Holy Spirit, for whom I can only be at best a cracked and leaky vessel. At the same time, evangelism is always more than mere hospitality to the strangers who wander into church. My witness is more than being generically nice to people and knowing that if they twist my arm, I'll reveal that I'm-secretly-a Christian.



Beyond both of those options, being a witnessing community means, as one writer puts it, being "God's counter-cultural option for the world." It means living with such a joyful and sure trust in being embraced by God that people are led to question why they are still trying to earn each other's approval and God's mercy. It means radiating such a reckless compassion for others that people cannot help but to stop and to stare and to look for the God who has loved us first. Being a witness means taking the rest of letting people see the ways God has embraced us in our weakness and loved us freely.



Connection: What are the ways that we still act as though we had to earn God's love? How do we declare by our lives that we are still bound prisoner by sin? What would it look like instead if we let grace take complete hold of us? After all, we can't help but be a witness-the question is to what or to whom we will witness.



Lord, let your love seep into us. Make your mercy so real, your grace so strong, that we cannot help but live it out.