When I moved to Galveston about five years ago, I remember unloading my trailer with my roommate Ricky. As we were unloading, the neighbor from across the street - Wayne - came over and started helping us. Halfway through the load, he asked, "Why are ya'll moving here? There's nothin' but niggers and spics over here." It happened to be in an area where a lot of government subsidized housing was located.
I tried to keep my composure the best I could. Trying not to respond in a way belittled him, I stuck to what I believed. I told him, "Well, Ricky and I don't think that we are any better than the folks you're talking about. We're here to open our home to whoever needs one and to help out in any way we can."
As I was taking a bed stand into the house, I overheard Wayne tell Ricky, "Your buddy is weird. What's wrong with him?"
Ricky expounded on what I had said, and from that day on we shared life with Wayne, saw his heart change toward the exact people he was degrading. He even joined us in our worship services on Friday nights, crammed in our little duplex. From hanging out with Wayne, I learned to be more tolerant of people who don't look at the world differently than I do. We became really close friends, and spent a lot of time sitting on the porch and talking about life. He taught me how to hunt for oysters in Galveston Bay, and how to grill them. He showed me how to make some extra income collecting cans and taking them to the local recycling facility. Most importantly, he showed me that I had just as many - if not more - prejudices as he did.
In today's passage out of John chapter five, Jesus is explaining to the Jews that he has come with the authority from God. He tells us that he's been given tasks by the Father to carry out. The Jews have a problem though. Although Jesus is standing right in front of them, they do not accept what he is saying or doing. Although they have their heads in their Bibles constantly, they are missing out on the obvious - that the scriptures all point to him. Jesus says that they follow Moses, but miss who Moses is writing about in the first place.
Jesus tells them that he is being confirmed through the tasks that he's been given to carry out, and that God is the witness to those things. Just like in my experience of moving to Galveston and carrying out something that I believed was confirmed by God, Jesus is carrying out the things he has been given by God. When these things actually get carried out, Jesus is saying that the "greatest Witness of all" is confirming him.
Unlike the Jews in the time of Jesus, we don't have the luxury of seeing and hearing Jesus or God. Many of us use language that portrays a seeming audible communication or visible reality, but it is imagery. It is how we try to connect with God and other people. In my opinion, language doesn't confirm God. We can talk all day long about how we believe in Jesus, and how God is working in our lives, but language just doesn't confirm anything more than knowledge and beliefs.
Jesus is essentially saying that the only confirmation we have of God is the work that we do on this earth. I have to say that in my move to Galveston, it was a mess. I was at the low point of my life inwardly, but outwardly I was acting differently. Alcohol was ruining me and my motives were all jacked up. However, there was still action going on that made people like Wayne ask questions. In spite of my own messy life, I was still somehow able to act upon my beliefs in a way that made people curious. I was on a mission that I believed God had assigned to me.
I haven't had anybody ask me any questions of why I do the things I do recently. It makes me wonder if my life really looks any different, or if it truly is a light to the world. If I have to ask these questions, it probably means that I am not living that brightly. What happened to the childlike faith? Whatever happened to throwing care to the wind, following what I thought was the voice of God? Sure, I'm following my passions, but it just doesn't seem like my passions are doing any good for anybody else. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm so far deep into the American Dream that I'm deluded into thinking that I'm "doing it right?" Is it possible that I've gone so far deep that I no longer find the need to pay attention to the needs around me?
If I really care about sharing the love of God with my neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family, then I'm going to have to stop thinking that language is my greatest tool. I've got to pick up a shovel. If people aren't inquiring as to why I'm doing what I'm doing, am I really putting the love of God on display in my life?
As we go out today, may we do one thing that we don't normally do. No matter how jacked up our motives are, may we carry out an assignment that we think God has commissioned us to do.
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