Texts: Sirach 1: 1-20; John 1:1-18

We see their names listed on all kinds of lists: saints who died in ancient Rome rather than renouncing their faith, Jews who died during the Holocaust, protestors beaten by the police at the Selma Bridge, Philip and Dan Berrigan burning draft cards at Catonsville, demonstrators who “crossed the line” at the School of the Americas in federal prison, journalists killed in Iraq since the American invasion. They were and continue to be witnesses to the events that shaped our times. Sometimes, we ask ourselves, is bearing witness enough?

The origin of the word “witness” is the Greek word martys, which in ancient Greece was merely someone who bore witness to an event. This word took on new meaning during the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire and continues in that meaning as we look at the people who have borne witness to specific and often horrific events. The John that the writer of the Gospel we read this morning, John the Baptizer, bore witness; in fact he bore witness so well that he took on the second meaning of the word as Herodias made sure that her critic would not survive to destroy her marriage.

There are many ways we bear witness, of course, that do not call for martyrdom in the complete and final sense of the word. But our daily lives contain little acts of bearing witness that bring us closer to some of the ultimate issues we face in our faith, in our faithfulness to the Gospel we claim to believe.

For example, what seems like a simple choice of coffee or tea is connected to how we make our purchasing decisions. Do we buy the least expensive coffee or tea out there or do we make a conscious choice about paying a little more for fair trade coffee that is also environmentally sustainable? Do we use compact florescent bulbs to save energy? Sounds good, but then what about the mercury content in the bulb? We’re forced by what seems like an environmental decision to address another problem. But I digress.

Back to bearing witness: how can we bear witness to the light? And, what is the light to which we are to bear witness? Complicated questions, to be sure, because what seems like a simple question becomes complicated. Really, really complicated. Bearing witness to our faith is more than spouting words or even more than giving to the church. Bearing witness to our faith means living faithfully in all aspects of our lives, and that’s where it really gets complicated, not to mention difficult.

Fortunately, here in the United States, we’re not thrown into the coliseum to be devoured by lions, but we are often put in a situation where we are forced to make difficult choices involving loyalty. People are sometimes forced to choose one loyalty over another. These decisions very often involve how we bear witness to the light.

Here I would like to suggest that there is another way of bearing witness and that is our openness to new ideas. The light offered us through our exploration of new ways of seeing old problems is also a way of bearing witness. It’s more closely related to the Greek origin of the word. This is not to belittle or denigrate the martyrdom suffered by our ancestors in faith, by social activists who stood for peace and justice, or those who have died as a result of their ethnicity or profession.

Martyrs give up something they’ve cherished in the past in their search for the light. In giving up what may have been sacred to us in the past, we explore the possibility of new paradigms of understanding. Discovering new paradigms can often be dangerous, as it was for Galileo. There really was a time when the earth was seen as the center of the universe and when Galileo took Copernicus and challenged that view, he was hauled up before an ecclesiastical court and was forced to recant under pain of death. Makes you think of U.S. Representative John Shimkus, likely new chair of the House Energy Subcommittee, who said there is no global warming because Genesis 9.11 promises that God will no more flood the earth. Oh, boy, we are in for it with this one, to be sure.

Bearing witness to the light means being wiling to examine one’s own beliefs and not shirk from the difficult questions that confront us in our faith. If we really believe that the light is from God, then we will not be afraid to ask the hard questions of faith. In our adult religious education program we have been exploring some of those questions and we will continue to do so because as Christians, people called to follow Jesus and his willingness to ask the hard questions, we should not be afraid of the answers -- or even the possibility that we may not find any answers. God has given us the ability to think and search for the light. There may not be definitive answers. As we read this morning, Wisdom in all her subtleties comes from God. Bearing witness, opening our minds to the beauty of the light of the search, is the first step in obtaining her joys.

Let us pray: Giver of all questions, designer of all doubts, grant that we may be witnesses to the light that you have given us and that we may search for Wisdom and all her subtleties and joy. Amen.