14th April 2013
'You must give us your testimony'. Those words were enough to strike fear into a rather retiring High Church Anglican like myself. The circumstances in which they were spoken intensified the anxiety.
It was 1992 and I was in the second year of part time theological training at Queens College, Birmingham. The topic for the residential study week end was Christianity in multi-ethnic Britain. We students were spending the week end staying with families who had come to Birmingham from overseas; and the programme for Sunday was to attend worship with our host family. My hosts were originally from Jamaica, had been in Birmingham for about 20 years, and were Methodists.
But this was the Sunday in the month when they accompanied their Minister to his other. pastorate - as one of the Chaplains of Winson Green Prison. And this Sunday the service was to be led by the Church of God of Prophesy. Before the service their pastor came over to welcome the seven or eight students, their host families and one of our tutors. 'Who are you, where do you come from, and what are you doing here?' He asked. 'We're theology students' we replied. 'Then one of you must give us your testimony.'
Why did all eyes turn to me? Possibly because I had already accepted the post of Assistant Chaplain at Woodhill Prison, although the prison had not yet opened. To confirm the expectation, the Tutor said - 'I need to hear a sermon from you Wendy, and it's a long way to Milton Keynes.' So for the first time in my life I stood up to give my testimony, with virtually no preparation, and for the first time spoke in the Chapel of a secure male prison.
I spoke about three verses from Exodus, concerning God's call to Moses:
But Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak.’I linked Moses dramatic story with my own less dramatic one of events that had brought me to that Sunday morning in Winson Green Prison.
This morning we heard as our readings two dramatic stories of conversion, forgiveness and sending in mission. In order for them to reach the pages of the New Testament, each private individual's story, of Peter and Paul, those two great shapers of Christian faith and practice, they must have originally been given as testimony. In some of Paul's letters he tells some snippets of that testimony, and the way in which his experience of God had shaped his life since his conversion. Both men's stories continue in the pages of Acts.
Two stories, quite different in their geographical setting, their details and in the events which led up to them. And a third and different story, one which had already influenced the shape and culture of Peter's and Paul's lives - the story of Moses. Yet all these stories, different in their content and details, have essential elements in common. In each we find God, God encountered as Jehovah, or God encountered in Jesus Christ, meeting a person in the course of their daily life. And in that encounter, all that they have been, have said or have done up to that point is part of the meaning of the meeting. Each one, Moses, Peter, Paul had asked of God at some stage of their life 'Who are you?' Then, in those dramatic encounters, experienced, in the wilderness at mount Horeb, by the sea of Tiberias, or on the road to Damascus, God had in effect said to Moses, to Peter and to Paul, 'but who are you?'
Each encounter involved some kind of forgiveness or restoration. Because the question 'Who are you?' involves an examination of all the events that has brought the person to this moment. And for each of those men there was a stain on their past life; Moses had killed an Egyptian and hidden his body, Peter had denied three times that he knew Jesus while he was being tried - just as Jesus had predicted he would, Saul, who was to become Paul, had persecuted Christians - those who followed the Way. Underlying the encounters was the question 'Where have you come from?' What are the events and attitudes which have shaped your life up to this moment?
And then the encounter becomes both dramatic and amazing, for there is not just acceptance, forgiveness, conversion from God, but there is commissioning, sending, giving a task. 'What are you doing here?' And even more importantly, what will you do? Who will you become? How will the rest of your life which follows this significant encounter with God be different from the past which has brought you to this day, to this moment?
And the stories which must initially have been given as testimony - 'see what The Lord has done for me!' told to individuals or to small groups of people, were spread through the Jewish and Christian communities, and shaped our lives as Christians. The First Epistle of Peter tells us:
'Always be ready to make your defence when anyone challenges you to justify the hope which is in you. But do so with courtesy and respect. 'You must give us your testimony. Each one of us has a story to tell. It is unlikely that many of us will have stories to tell as dramatic as as those of Moses, Peter or Paul, but there may be some among us who do have dramatic and significant things to tell. And how we tell them may vary greatly. We may want to be thoughtful about who, we tell our Christian story, and how we tell it. Most of us try to tell our story through our lives, words and actions, and we often, like those very human and flawed men, Moses, Peter and Paul, fail to tell it, or tell a different story than the one we are hoping to set out as Christians.
But God does not let go of us, with him there is mercy, says the Psalmist. God knows who we are, and where we have come from, and God knows also what we are capable of achieving, and supports and trusts us to achieve it.
Who are you? Without self knowledge, a genuinely objective assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses, we can neither properly make our confession, nor achieve our full potential, as human beings or as Christians.
Where do you come from? Moses, Peter and Paul became the people they were, not despite their chequered history, but because of it. We too are made the people we are because of the whole of our personal histories - even the difficult bits. We need to learn the lessons of history, not only the lessons of our personal history, but of our time, our culture and of our faith story. As we recount the stories and sayings week by week in our Bible readings, we understand how we come to be here, in this time, in this place, and in this situation.
What are you doing here? In other words, what is your mission? What purpose has God for you? The stories of Moses, Peter and Paul have their meaning in the fulfilment of the individual tasks given to each of them by God. For some of us, the answer to the question 'What is God asking of me?' may seem very clear, to others the answer may be uncertain or difficult to define or act upon. But each of us is asked 'What are you doing here?'
In the Newsletter there is advance warning of this church's Annual Meeting next Sunday. It is not just individual Christians, but Christian communities that must answer those questions; Who are you, where have you come from, what are you doing here? It is for churches, and for the universal church to tell the world their answers to those questions. There is a lot of routine business to get through at an Annual Meeting, but it is also an opportunity to ask and to give some answers to those questions.
Who are you, where have you come from, what are you doing here?
You must give us your testimony.
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