Calvin Miller | Wayfarer

Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.
1 Thessalonians 2:8 (NIV)

Before Jesus ascended into heaven He told His followers: “You will be my witnesses.” (Acts 1:8) Growing up in the church, I heard a lot about being a “witness” and what being a “witness” means. Along this life journey my understanding of being a witness has evolved greatly.

Looking back, the concept of witnessing taught by my church when I was younger was largely a modified sales strategy. I would learn a standard sales pitch from a workshop or class in church. There were a handful of standard ones that usually involved a series of Bible verses marked in a small Bible or a little booklet you could use as a visual aid when telling people about being a follower of Jesus. I was then encouraged to go out in public, knock on doors, and speak to anyone and everyone in an effort to pitch them on receiving Jesus as Lord.

I’m not knocking the process completely. I admit that learning how to simply explain the message of Jesus was a good thing for me. I knew people who were incredibly successful at engaging complete strangers and pitching them on Jesus. I know many people who became followers of Jesus because some stranger took the time to share the message in this way. I, however, confess to being a complete failure as it relates to “witnessing” by the sales pitch strangers technique, and I carried this sense of failure with me for many years.

As I’ve progressed in my journey I’ve come to understand that being a “witness” carries as many different facets as there are personality types and spiritual gifts. I’m reminded this morning of the description Calvin Miller wrote of a faith healer in his tongue-in-cheek parody epistle, The Philippian Fragment:

Sister Helen opened a great crusade in Philippi on Thursday, and is the sensation of the leper colony. She rarely does anything one could call a miracle. Last week she laid hands on a little crippled boy and was not able to heal him, but she gave him a new pair of crutches and promised to take him for a walk in the park here in Philippi.

Yesterday with my own eyes I saw her pass an amputee selling styluses. She touched his legs and cried, “Grow back! Grow back! . . . In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, grow back!” Well, Clement, I so wanted to see the legs grow back, but they did not. Poor Helen. What’s a faith healer to do with an amputee that refuses to grow legs on command?

She sat down with the little man, crossed her legs on the cold pavement, and began selling styluses herself. Soon she was talking to him, and before very long they were both laughing together. For an hour they laughed together, and by nightfall they were having an uproariously good time. When it was time to go, Helen’s legs were so stiff from disuse, they refused to move. Her legless, stylus-selling friend cried in jest, “Grow strong!. . . Grow strong! . . . Grow strong!”

Helen only smiled and staggered upward on her unsteady legs. She looked down at her lowly friend and said, “I offer you healing, you will see. It is only one world away. Someday . . . ,” she stopped and smiled, “you will enter a new life and you will hear our Savior say to your legless stumps, ‘Grow long! . . . Grow long!‘ Then you will know that glory which Sister Helen only dreamed for you.”

Miller, Calvin. The Philippian Fragment (Kindle Locations 147-159). NOVO Ink. Kindle Edition.

I am to witnessing as Sister Helen is to healing.

I love what Paul said to the believers in Thessalonica in today’s chapter. Paul and his buddy Silas didn’t enter the Greek seaport to be strangers with a sales pitch. They “shared their lives as well.” They built relationship and they worked and lived among the people. They became like family. Paul even uses family as a metaphor for their relationships with the Thessalonians.

I’ve come to understand that “sharing life,” as Paul described it, is the style of “witness” I’m better suited for. Let’s walk together, live together, laugh together, and work together. God is love, so let me try and bear witness of that love in my imperfect human efforts to love you through laughter and tragedies, harmony and discord, successes and failures, daily tasks and long conversations over dinner.

When I was a teenager working in a bookstore at the mall, I came across a quirky little book called The Philippian Fragment by Calvin Miller. The premise of the book is wonderfully simple. A pastor mysteriously uncovers and translates an early Christian manuscript of letters between Eusibus, an early pastor of Philippi, and his friend Clement of Coos. The letters are a rib-tickling reminder of one of my favorite themes: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

As I read today’s chapter and the experiences of Paul and Silas in the Philippian dungeon, I was reminded of Pastor Eusibus’ experiences in the same cell with Coriolanus, a member of his flock (who was constantly a “thorn in his side”).

Here is 3 Clement Chapter 7:

1. Coriolanus has been arrested and has now become my cell mate. At first I protested to God that there was no justice in the universe. Coriolanus now and my own possible martyrdom in the future! Gradually I am adjusting.

2. We have lived together without resentment. 3. Tuesday night Coriolanus made a magnificent discovery. Near the base of the wall he found the Latin names Paul and Silas etched in the stone at the end of a prayer. 4. We noticed that the cell wall was crossed by fissures that could have been caused by a great earthquake. 5. Suddenly it dawned on us that perhaps this was the very cell where the Apostle Paul was a prisoner.

6. Remembering how Paul and Silas sang at midnight as God sent an earthquake to open the doors of the jail, we took courage. 7. “Do it again, God!” cried Coriolanus near midnight. He began to sing a hymn in monotone, and I joined in. We praised God at full volume with some of the great songs of the faith. 8. Ever and anon we stopped to see if we could hear even the faintest rumblings of a quake. By three in the morning we still had not raised a tremor and decided to give it up. There seemed so little to rejoice about. 9. Suddenly a jailor who had heard us singing sprang into the cell.

10. “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” he asked.

11. We told him in great joy.

12. “I can’t do that,” he said. “It’s too risky.”

13. As he left, he yelled over his shoulder, “Would you cut out the noise. It’s three in the morning.”

14. Still, I felt better for simply having praised Him. Praise clears the heart and dusts the mind of selfishness. It lifts the spirit and transforms the prison to an altar where we may behold the buoyant love of Christ. 15. It is not jailors who make convicts. It is the self-pitying mind that makes a man a captive.Praise frees us. The jail cannot contain the heart that turns itself to attend the excellency of Christ. 16. “Gloria in excelsis!” deals with stone walls and iron bars in its own way.

17. When morning finally came, I was elated. I found a flint rock in the cell and scratched our own names above the etching of Paul and Silas: 18. “Eusebius and Coriolanus—We sang at midnight and felt much better the next morning.”

19. Was it foolish, Clement? 20. It is always right to praise God, and maybe my inscription will help the next who occupy this cell to remember the principle, earthquake or not.

Miller, Calvin (2011-04-11). The Philippian Fragment (Kindle Locations 875-889). NOVO Ink. Kindle Edition.

I am reminded today that God doesn’t always work in formulas. Just because Paul and Silas’ songs of praise raised an earthquake doesn’t mean it will happen the same way again for me. It’s still a good idea to sing praises, however, if only to raise our spirits.