Characteristics of a Witness (Urbana 81)

by Samuel Escobar

[Jesus] was not an unoffensive and unobtrusive "guru" teaching transcendental meditation surrounded by flowers and incense and soft cushions. Because he served the people, especially the poor, who needed him more, he entered in constant conflict with the governing elite.

Urhana 81 is a clear example of how the mission of God in today's world has become a truly international, interracial and multicultural enterprise. It is far from being anymore the fulfilment of "the burden of the white man", or the ideological side of the imperial advance of the developed nations. I come with thankfulness to God for this new reality, as a brother in Christ from the church universal, to reflect with you about a basic question: What is a witness?; what are the characteristics of a missionary, here or anywhere?

Such basic questions have to be asked from time to time. We cannot take for granted that we know the answers. Some time ago as I was arriving in Argentina after one of my missionary trips the Revenue Department of that country was conducting a survey of travellers to find out their sources of income. A girl came to me with a questionnaire and a pen. "Where do you come from, sir?"

I answered "From the United States".

"What is your occupation?"

I answered in spanish of course, "I am a missionary", "Soy un misionero."

Now that word "misionero" in Argentina means a person born in the province of Misiones. So, she looked at me a little baffled and said, "I am not asking where you were born, but what is your occupation." It was not easy for me to explain to her an occupation that was not on her list. And I have not found it easy to write the paper I am reading to you just now, to ask these basic questions, because in a way it has been an exercise of self examination, painful at times, but spiritually rewarding.

Several times in the New Testament, the apostolic writers define what a witness is. We will go to these passages as a source to answer our questions. We will not ask the social scientists or the experts in international relations what a missionary should be. They have their own presuppositions and their own expectations, and they like to tell us what we should be. But the Christian way, the Evangelical way of asking basic questions is to ask them of God's word. God is the source and the master of the missionary enterprise. He knows better and He has revealed His standards and set up His models.

One important feature of the New Testament way of answering these questions is that the writers always base their theory of missions on their experience of missions. Their way of stating what a witness or a missionary should be comes out of their daily practice and experience. They are not so much teaching a course for people to get a Ph.D. in Missiology, but rather explaining, defending or establishing the revealed basis of their practice, sometimes passionately and polemically. We find in Scripture the joy, the sense of adventure and the surprises of the missionary experience of Peter, Paul, Barnabas or Philip. We also find passages in which these men explain what they do and why they do it. In their words we find constant references to the example and the inspiration of Jesus, the missionary par excellence. We find both facts and interpretation in scripture, and both are the word of God that should rule our lives.

Let me then outline five characteristics of a witness that I have found in scripture.

A Living Testimony of God's Initiative. The idea of a witness in the Bible presuposses that there is a God who is active in the world as a creating, saving Lord, and that the very existence of some people is a testimony to the fact that God is in action. In Isaiah 43 we have a beautiful passage about the missionary existence of the people of God. The chapter begins with words attributed to "The Lord, your creator ... He who formed you Oh Israel". He goes on to say "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you" and then we read:

"You are my witnesses" declares the Lord,
"And my servant whom I have chosen,
In order that you may know and believe me
A nd understand that I am He.
Before me there was no God formed,
And there will be none after me.
I, even I, am the Lord;
And there is no saviour besides Me.
It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed,
A nd there was no strange God among you;
So you are my witnesses" declares the Lord
"And I am God."
"Even from eternity I am He;
And there is none who can deliver out of my hand;
I act and who can reverse it?"
(Isaiah 43:10-13 NASB)

This passage was key in the self-understanding of Jesus and of the apostolic preachers of the Gospel. What it teaches should be key in our own self-understanding today. Who is the source of our identity and reward? God. And here we are facing the heart of the matter. There is a God, and every missionary is a witness to that fact. That means that the person and action of the missionary cannot be explained by any other thing but by the mystery of God.

This is important in an age of explanations, in a technological culture that wants to put mystery aside. It is important in an age of quantification where every conceivable aspect of reality to be reduced to figures and numbers, to scales and graphs. You as a person are a witness to the reality of a God who is there.

Now there are some consequences to this. The witness has to be the reality of God to others in places where God is denied. I have thought of two instances that illustrate this recently. One student from my church, after the difficult entrance examination, entered the university. The first day she went to class, she came in the evening to the Bible study at the church, and I asked, "How was it?" She said, "It was interesting." "What was the class about?" "It was about dialectical materialism. The teacher said to us, "We are going to teach you here how to think, and once you learn how to think you won't believe in God and in all that religious stuff." So there are some people that have to say there is a God in that kind of environment. There are many professors who believe the way that one did.

I also was reading, just before coming, an article written by a Spanish journalist in El Salvador. He was telling the story of a group of soldiers who came to the little hut of a poor family. The men entered violently, shoving aside the old grandmother. They put the men against the wall, then grabbed the three teenage girls to rape them. The old woman in despair cried out, "Don't you have fear of God?" The men replied, "God doesn't exist. He is dead. Don't you know that? We are gods now." That is also a situation in which some people have to be witnesses to the existence of God.

This reminds me of all the places in the Bible in which we find people like Job. His wife said, "Forget about it. Forget God."
But he replied, "No. I cannot understand myself nor the world around me apart from God." A witness is first a living testimony that there is a God.

This gives to the witness a tremendous sense of freedom. I think this is necessary in the missionary enterprise. As in any enterprise, the missionary enterprise has its own structures, and sometimes people can become prisoners of structures. So everyone who is working inside a structure needs this conviction: "I exist because there is a God. I am a witness because there is a God. It is God to whom I have to respond first." Paul talked about this in the midst of a discussion about his apostolic call. Writing to the Corinthians he says: "To me it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord" (1 Cor 4:3-4 NASB).

This kind of awareness is necessary today. Let us remember that it is not arrogance but humility that was characteristic of Paul. But he was very clear about a deep relationship with God that had a liberating effect in his relationship with people. Can we say honestly, "The one who examines me is the Lord"?

There is a second consequence to the fact that God is the source of our identity. In a practical way witnesses are experts in communication with the God of whom they give testimony. They have attentive ears to the Word of God. They have active lives of communication with God. The missionary enterprise has become so complex and sometimes demands such a degree of specialization that it is easy to forget these basics. I was recently talking with national leaders of a denomination in Peru who could not understand some of the newly arrived missionaries. They were so highly specialized that they were unable to lead a small Bible study in a home or a prayer group. In a country that is so open to the gospel that we have to mobilize every lay person to cope with the task, how can we afford to have missionaries who do not have the basic qualifications of a witness?

Holiness is another aspect of lifestyle. If my existence is explained only by the action of a holy and just God, my existence must be marked by a continuous movement toward holiness and justice in the large and small aspects of life. Every time in the Old Testament that Israel is reminded of her God, two consequences result: worship and obedience, love of God and love of neighbor. Latin America is a religious continent. There are signs of religious life everywhere. In architecture, archaeology or art you find expressions of this love and worship of God. But we have not had love for our neighbors expressed in social and political institutions. We have had centuries of injustice, greed and cruelty instead. And now we are faced with a tremendous revolutionary movement that says, "No more talk about God; let us change our societies so that a minimum of love for the neighbor is possible. " But revolution without God is as bad as religion without love for neighbor and equally destructive. So we need witnesses of Christ that in their very existence show how the two demands of God go together.

A Steward of the Mysteries of God

"Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy" (1 Cor 4:1-2 NASB). We are stewards because, as Paul argues a bit later, everything we have is something we have been given, so there is nothing to boast about.

A witness is not the originator of truth. Witnesses are not the makers of truth. We are not the clever, superior people that patronizingly pass on our knowledge to the poor pagans. Humility is the first mark of a witness because he or she is only a steward. Grace is a key to the witness's attitude. He or she does not feel superior nor does act as such. We live in a moment of history in which this attitude is needed again. Paul gave this advice to a church that was so proud, so full of gifts, so rich that they needed to be constantly reminded to practice humility. And Paul pointed to his own style which was marked by a sense of grace, of humility, of sharing what he received with the attitude of a debtor paying a debt.

What are the mysteries of which we are stewards? What are the facts to which we are witnesses? In one of the first uses of the word witness, to describe himself, Peter mentions the death and the resurrection of Christ: "This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses" (Acts 2:32 NASB). Jesus' death and resurrection is the basic core of the gospel, the kerygma, the fact to which the apostles were witnesses. This gospel had to be passed on faithfully, without additions or deletions, without heretical twistings. That is what Paul meant by faithful stewardship. But if we leave it at this point witnessing would be an intellectual exercise - the communication of some information according to basic rules of respect for the integrity of the sources. But there is far more to it.

When Peter speaks the words we have just quoted, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have already taken place and are historical facts. And the power of God is a living reality in his life and in the things that are happening around him and his hearers. The church is being empowered and shaken; the sick are being healed; sinners are being convicted. So what Peter is saying is that the power they are seeing in action is the power which can only be understood by reference to Jesus Christ, his death, his resurrection and the fulfillment of his promise of the Holy Spirit. Unless we know that power and learn to acknowledge it, we do not have a basis for our task of witnessing. We must be able to say that we have seen that power in action in our own lives. We may need to learn how to see it and recognize its presence. Let us remember that we are not asked to produce this power nor to produce a system of ideas about this power. First and foremost, we are called on to tell the world that this power is in action because we have seen it in action.

Paul refers many times to the power of God active in his own life: correcting, changing, sanctifying, empowering, guiding. Before you start to witness through words you have to become aware of this power of God in your own life, in your church, in your student chapter, in big and small things, in the ordinary and in the extraordinary. You mortify your flesh and fight for purity because you are crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20; 5:24). You overcome temptation and advance because the power of the resurrection is active in you (Rom 8:11-18).

John Stott in Basic Christianity offers a clear understanding of the kerygma, its content and consequences. John White's The Fight will help you experience God's power in daily life. Rich Christians, in an Age of Hunger by Ronald Sider will give you a grasp of the wider consequences of being taken over by God's power in the complex world in which we live. But unless you bend your knees and say yes to the Spirit that wants to take you over, all that theory will not help.

A Servant and a Prophet

Another instance in which Peter used the word witness to describe himself is when he spoke at the home of Cornelius. A new shade of meaning is brought up by this context. You know that Cornelius was a centurion and a devout man who feared God. In other words, Peter is witnessing to a military chief, a pragmatic man used to giving and receiving orders and making things happen, a representative of the established empire of those days.

Two things call my attention to what Peter says on this occasion. He mentions the kerygma of Christ but he adds new elements. First, he refers to the life of Jesus - "You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good, and healing all who were oppressed by the devil; for God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all the things He did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem" (Acts 10:38-39 NASB). Then Peter goes on to mention the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, adding: "And He ordered us to preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead" (Acts 10:42 NASB).

Is it significant that in talking to a military chief Peter stresses these two facts? I can witness, says Peter, that Jesus spent hours and days and weeks and years doing good to people in need, that he was the anointed servant who preached the manifesto of Luke 4. In other words, he was not an unoffensive and unobtrusive "guru" teaching transcendental meditation surrounded by flowers and incense and soft cushions. Because he served the people, especially the poor, who needed him more, he entered in constant conflict with the governing elite. "We are witnesses of all these things," says Peter. And if we think of the pattern that we described in the previous section, we might imagine Peter adding, "and because we are witnesses of Jesus, who did all this, we are also servants. We organize our communities so as to fight poverty. By attacking idolatry we go to the root of some structural economic evils. We teach masters and slaves how to find a totally new ground for fellowship and coexistence. This is what the power of God does in our midst, making us servants as Jesus was in his day."

Another fact that Peter adds about Jesus is that he has been appointed judge; that over and above any human or superhuman principality and power there is a judge that will have the final word in history. Powerful, military men need to hear this. And so we come to the point at which the witness becomes a prophet, witnessing to people in power that there is a power over and above them-that they will be judged.

What I have found in both the history of missions and the modern missionary situation is that many witnesses start by being servants and are pushed by the logic of their call into being prophets, even if they do it reluctantly. Missionaries who take God's Word to the ends of the earth can tell you the kind of world we live in. If you as a witness cross the boundaries of social class, race and status in order to take God's Word, even to an American city, you will be, as the Lausanne Covenant says, "shocked by the poverty of millions and disturbed by the injustices which cause it." The experience and conviction of thousands of witnesses in the evangelical ranks has been very aptly summarized in these words of that Covenant:

We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men from every kind of oppression. Because mankind is made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, color, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity because of which he should be respected and served, not exploited. Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and for our having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive.

Although reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and sociopolitical involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbor and our obedience to Jesus Christ.

The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist. When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.

A witness is a servant and a prophet.

A Ready Sufferer

How many times have we been surprised by suffering? "If we are doing God's will in the world, how can this happen to us?" we have been tempted to think more than once. But suffering is closely linked in the Bible to witnessing. A turning point in the usage of words according to some Bible scholars comes in Acts 22 when Paul describes himself and Stephen as witnesses. He is speaking to a hostile Jewish mob. He refers to the call spoken to him by Ananias at the time of the restoration of his eyesight and his baptism: "You will be a witness to all men of what you have seen and heard" (Acts 22:15 RSV). And then Paul goes on to give us a bit of an autobiographical sketch, opening the veil of his intimate life and experience. He tells us of an ecstatic trance in which he confessed in prayer to God: "When the blood of Thy witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving, and watching out for the cloaks of those who were slaying him (Acts 22:20 NASB).

Stephen was a witness and a martyr, and we can say that at the point of his death he was recruiting another witness, because it was at that point that God's Spirit started to melt the cold fanaticism of the Pharisee from Tarsus. The fire of Stephen's commitment was used by God to start a chain of events that would turn Saul into Paul. This courageous witness could write to the Corinthians, "God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men" (1 Cor 4:9 NASB).

Readiness to suffer is part of the commitment to Jesus Christ that makes a witness. We cannot produce this in ourselves. It is a gift from God that operates in us through God's Holy Spirit.

The task of witnessing around the world is surrounded by risks of all kinds. Modern missionary enterprises have developed many ways of helping missionaries to avoid unnecessary suffering. Public relations expertise, insurance of various kinds, selective choice of areas for action, even technological gadgets can help. Maybe that accounts for how costly missions have become in some places, and maybe we seem to know better than Paul in these things.

But in spite of all this, witnessing in our daily lives on our campuses, within our churches or abroad in professional or nonprofessional missionary service will involve some degree of suffering for the Lord. And we should not be surprised, because that may be the only way our witness will get across to some people.

I find it very significant that when our modern world wants to give a prize to people who have served humanity, to call attention to actions that deserve imitation, for instance in the Nobel Peace Prize, it is often Christian witnesses who are nominated as candidates. These are people who have not only tried to serve their neighbors in the name of Christ but who have been ready to suffer for it like their Master. Three such people come to my mind as outstanding for the actions they performed: Martin Luther King, Jr., for his nonviolent fight for justice; Mother Teresa for sacrificial service among the poorest of the poor; and Alfredo Perez Esquivel for prophetic and courageous endurance in the face of terror and torture.

On March 7, 1981, Chester Bitterman, a young linguist working in Columbia, was assassinated by terrorists. In this age of suspicion in which we live, his supporting activity in the translation of Scripture was interpreted by extremists as politically dangerous. Witnesses today in some parts of the world where the gospel is desperately needed cannot avoid becoming first suspects and then maybe scapegoats in the clash of empires that is tearing the world apart. But they know well who they serve, and they know that the hands of their Master have scars from nails. May his Spirit help us to be witnesses under trial.

A Hopeful Sense of History

Witnesses need a hope-filled sense of history. A sense of history means that we understand our life today in relation to events of yesterday and in the light of our hopes for tomorrow. Christians believe that history is important because we see God in action in history. In the same way in which the simple thirty-three years of a life in Palestine divided history so that we date events from that life, we cannot understand our world or our own life apart from Jesus Christ.

We have quoted God's call through Isaiah to the Israelites to be his witnesses in the world. That task was taken up by Jesus as the perfect Servant of the Lord and passed on by him to his disciples. At a crucial moment in his missionary life, Paul became aware that he had been commanded by God through Isaiah to become a witness, and thus he said when he left the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch: "Thus the Lord has commanded us, 'I have placed You as a light for the Gentiles, that You should bring salvation to the end of the earth" (Acts 13:47 NASB). The words keep resounding through the nations and generations: Isaiah, Israel, Jesus, Paul, you and me. That is the way we enter into history, because the Lord who spoke through Isaiah keeps speaking to us.

A very practical consequence of this is that you and I are part of a large company of people that spreads through history in time and space. We are not individualist free-lancers or snipers. To begin with, your local church is the visible expression of that 'Cloud of witnesses surrounding us" to which the author of Hebrews refers. Maybe it is there that you first heard the gospel, and certainly there you are called to live out your experience of conversion and growth. I was a bit shocked at Urbana 79 by the large number of students who came to talk with me about missions and who could not give me a clear answer about their church situation. If you have not experienced fellowship in a local church here, what do you expect to be the outcome of your missionary work abroad?

It is very important for us to grasp that the new life brought by the gospel is experienced in a community, a fellowship. This is clearly presented by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 where he speaks of the new creation of our lives by Christ and deals with the consequences - a different way of looking at others and relating to them. Commenting on this, John Howard Yoder says:

Because Christ has taken the place of all, now all persons can be seen in the image of Christ. Instead of seeing people as what they were, what their past had made them, I see them (Paul says) as what they became in the reconciliation worked by Christ ... So what Paul says is not centered in the changes that take place within the congtitution of the individual person, but on the changed way in which the believer is to look at the world, and especially on overcoming the "carnal standards" in which he used to perceive men in pigeonholes and categories and classes.

Some of you may feel a bit unhappy by the people that are not "like us" in the local church. You may prefer the homogenous unit of your InterVarsity chapter. But that is a passing, temporary situation. Jews and Gentiles had to learn how to cope with the problems of their heterogenous churches, and in the process they discovered the great new thing that the gospel had brought into history as Paul explained in Ephesians. Classes and races met and experienced the melting power of God's Spirit. What a tremendous testimony that same power is to a world torn apart by hate and terror!

Hope is the other element of your sense of history. Witnesses must be possessed by a sense of hope. They are moving with Jesus in the direction of that glorious freedom of the children of God toward which creation and the church move. Jesus the Lord and judge will come. And the final defeat of all evil will be manifested. In Paul's life and teaching we see at least two consequences of this hope.

First, in his speech before Felix, Paul describes himself as a witness and says, "having a hope in God ... that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked. In view of this, I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men" (Acts 24:15-16 NASB). The hope of the witness reflects itself in the moral quality of his life, in the tested quality of his behavior. In view of our hope you and I are also called to be witnesses that do our best to maintain blameless consciences.

Another consequence is spelled out by Paul in the passage of 1 Corinthians that we quoted before: "Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God" (1 Cor 4:5 NASB).

Your task as a witness, your missionary effort is to be evaluated by none other than God himself. What a challenge! What a liberation! Missiologists are devising scientific and technical ways of evaluation. Some of them may help you to see your witness in perspective. But there are many hidden things and undisclosed motives that only God knows. Learn to trust him for the true evaluation of your life and your mission.

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Characteristics of a Witness (Urbana 81)

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December 27-31, 2009