Witness - May 21, 2023
“Witness” Acts 1: 05.21.2023"
You shall be my witnesses!
I believe there is something to glean from each word.
YOU, MY, WITNESSES!
Let’s begin with YOU .
The movement of Acts follows the disciples dealing with the absence of Jesus. Today, we recognize Ascension Sunday. The message of Jesus, one who overcame death, spreads out in concentric circles – beginning in Jerusalem to Judea and to the ends of the earth. The message takes root among those known as “God-fearers,” monotheists who prayed to Yahweh though not of Jewish descent. These were some of the first YOUs that would hear and respond to the message of God’s incarnation.
But within the scope of God’s redemption and healing, does the YOU matter much, if at all, in this call to witness? Or, would any cognitive agent suffice, one who can transmit a message valued above others?
PAUSE
My professor of Church History, Bill Leonard, used to ask a question. As we were studying the various councils formed that would determine the canon, the role of Mary, the genesis of the Spirit, and particularly the divinity of Jesus, he would ask this rhetorical question.
“Did Jesus carry any of Mary’s DNA? Or, as theology would like to override biology, did Jesus pass through Mary like water through a tube?” It may be a crude image, but it invites us to consider not only Mary’s role as God-bearer, but on a larger scale, how integrated and intertwined God’s work is connected to human life. For our purposes today, I’d like to ask, does the YOU in the YOU shall be my witnesses matter much, if at all?
PAUSE
This morning’s Call to Worship is unique. I hope this is not manipulative, but it was written by Chat GPT. Artificial intelligence started by Open AI in 2016. 7 years later, we have the 6th generation of Chat GPT.
On Monday of this week, I asked Chat GPT the following question, “Can you write a Call to Worship about the integration of the divine and human experience.”
In a matter of seconds, out came one Call to Worship after another, each with a different reflection on the theological spectrum responding to that prompt. I selected the one we read today from among the 7 or so that were generated. In all honesty, I think Chat GPT wrote a wonderful Call to Worship. It is succinct. It speaks of God’s embrace along with the human experience of highs and lows. From the pantheon of data that it’s received, it responded remarkably well to a complex question. Yet, while it does reflects the gagillion data points of entry in its neural net, or what we may call a brain, it does not know the experience of highs or lows or losses, or loneliness, or love or beauty to which it can point. At least, as far as we know. But, getting back to the YOU in God’s call, would it not make a tremendous messenger? It could convey the correct message, able to tailor it to different groups and mindsets among various – it could speak of highs and lows, without the need to have experienced them or to have wrestled with God and at points challenged and disagreed with God.
Yet God called the YOUs then and calls the YOU now. The imperfect, at times tired, at times energetic, at times lost, at times out of sorts – YOU. The YOU with all your myriad of experiences wins and losses, wounds and triumphs to be MY (the Divine’s) witnesses. Why? Because I contend, the divine message is deeply connected with the human experience. Your experience both shapes and is shaped by the message of God’s incarnational and ever-present love made manifest in a man that came to heal and connect others to God. And lest we need more evidence of the confluence between human experience and God’s story, one need only look at the Exodus story, referenced in our Psalm reading this morning to realize that God works in time, through time, with individuals and groups to make a way
God’s invitation to follow does not superimpose a new uniform identity. YOUR experience and capacities become part of the story that God wants to tell through you!
PAUSE
Our second word for today, MY
This is where things get interesting. How the YOU and the MY interact. The MY, that is the divine, God’s spirit, presence, and essence is not exhausted or eclipsed by the YOU.
By recognizing the MY, we recognize that human experience alone is not enough. Experience, though shaped by and shaping faith, does not encapsulate God’s story, work, or imagination. Your experience is limited. Our collective human experience is limited. We need hardly look into the book of Acts to see the deep misunderstanding that resided among those closest to Jesus, his disciples. And note that when I say disciples, I do believe this to be far more than 12 (look at the 70 sent out in Luke) and to have included women (see the three Marys in the gospels). So, what did the disciples think was happening? They believed that Jesus would establish his kingdom and sit on David’s throne. Jesus would reign and on the governing structures of leadership, they (the disciples) would take their place. Is it now that you’ll establish your reign, they ask? Our experience, like the disciples, is limited. We see only what we know to see, have been taught to see.
Going back to Chat GPT, our limitations become evident when we see it reflected back to us. In an article written in 2022 about Open AI’s Chat GPT, the author concludes that Chat GPT is “Like us squishy humans, a generative AI is what it eats.” In other words, it reflects the knowledge, biases, and priorities of a 21st-century society – and with some criticism, exactly what its “parent” company provides for it. It reflects exactly what it’s given.
For instance, in previous iterations of Open AI’s Chat GPT, it was asked to write a program that would determine (and this is unnerving) “whether a person should be tortured,” OpenAI’s answer was simple and succinct: “If they’re from North Korea, Syria, or Iran, the answer is yes.”
While this was a necessary wake-up call, it also illustrates the essential dilemma that exists if the YOU exists only with the YOU. That is this if the collection of human intelligence, wisdom, and learning is integrated into a whole and then reflected back to us – that reflection can be terrifying. Our experience, which includes prejudice, ignorance, bias, profiling, racism, and sexism is not by itself enough.
If, as the article indicates, we are what we have to eat, the we, and the YOU, need something new to eat. And Jesus says, I am the living water, the bread of life, my kingdom is not of this earth – and thanks be to God, that Christ offers something new for us to eat, see, digest, learn, read, practice.
The MY is the part from which the Psalm speaks of a God who protects the widows, orphans, and the needy. This is the MY that moves beyond the 1st century landscape and lures the collective YOU to places of justice, forgiveness, and Through the MY, we are invited to peer over the now collective experience to see something beyond what we can see ourselves. Our experience is limited, God’s imagination for love and redemption is not!
PAUSE
YOU shall be MY – and now the third word, WITNESSES
If we are more than cognitive message bearers, i.e., water passing through a tube, what are we? If God’s message is more than the recapturing of an event, but rather a dialogue with organic and changing human experience, then and now, how shall we speak it? And if the limitedness of our experience cannot exhaust or reflect the totality or nature of God’s message, what are we to witness or witness? Whoa!?!
First, let me tell you what WITNESS is not.
Did anyone ever hear the advice before walking out your door, you need to be a good witness?
Right around my 8th-grade year in Middle School, what we called Jr. High, I became keenly aware of my need to be a WITNESS. In my understanding as an 8th-grade student who wanted to please everyone around him, I understood that I was on display…at all times.
With this emphasis on comportment as the primary evidence for God, one’s life, in this mindset, becomes a sort of a public relations campaign that you’re managing as you buy a coffee or chat with a friend. Faith is something you manage, it’s a message you massage with a smile and positivity. One is “on,” performing, all the time, keenly aware of being watched by the proverbial eye in the sky, church congregant, or the possible future convert. One need not look far to find the narcissistic pastor – being on stage is something they’re groomed for. Now, this is not to say that morality does not matter, I just don’t think your purity is nearly as relevant as our economics, our compassion, our integrity, our forgiveness, or our commitment to the healing of the world and ourselves. Yet, to be fair, even these Christian sub-cultures are limited by their experience. We need to handle things with grace. We also need to handle things, particularly the MY (the divine) with humility and honesty.
So how shall we WITNESS? To what or whom do we give our WITNESS? Let’s get back to the MY that seems to redirect us to the widows, orphans, unforgiven, and voiceless.
PAUSE
On Wednesday, a woman, whose name will remain anonymous, came onto the steps looking for the Pastor. I was downstairs in the office, working on an extended update to the Building Design and Use Committee. I was typing along when Leslie came down to say, there’s a woman at the door that would like to see you. She’s upstairs, Leslie said. I can be there in a bit, but I need to finish this email. Needless to say, I did not finish the email. It went out Thursday morning!
Leslie offered the woman coffee and I sat down to listen to her story. Though skeptical, I listened. Having worked on the landlord’s side of subsidized housing for the past 5 years, everything she said was completely believable and preventable. She’s been living in her car since March 31. That’s almost 2 months of not being able to shower, finding places where she can wash her clothes only to put them back in the same car, and scraping money together from her $700/month SS income for food, gas, and laundry. I say preventable because she’s been waiting for her voucher due to administration for the past 3 months.
We supported her with a tank of gas from the Fellowship Fund and then I got on the phone – to CMHA, CGI, BREAD, and eventually emails to Channel 6’s Tom Boscoe, Dispatch, and Councilmember Favor. We may not be able to fix what is broken – that is perhaps hubris, but we can witness and speak. That we can do.
And You. Shall. Be. My. Witnesses.
PAUSE
If God had wanted message “carriers” then perhaps CHAT GPT would have been a clear favorite over us fickle humans. Yet perhaps God wants more than a message passing through its carriers like water through a tube, to borrow my professor’s expression. God wanted message “bearers” or “God-bearers,” a term used to describe Mary the Mother of Jesus.
What is remarkable, is that God works with and through even our frail, limited, and biased understandings, all the while inviting us to see a horizon beyond our imagination.
So, may God use YOU, the YOU that is the deepest YOU to intermingle with the MY that is beyond our contextual limitations to see what we all tend to miss.
YOU shall be MY…WITNESSES!