Description
The first two resources this week – a Creative Bible Engagement and a Creative Reflection – both focus on 1 John 5:9-13. The third resource, a reprise from Easter 2, is based on the song We Were Strangers.
If you were a follower of Jesus in the first half of the 1st Century, you might have seen and heard Jesus as a human bodily person living in Israel. But if you lived later in the 1st Century, somewhere out and about in the vast Roman Empire, you wouldn’t have had a chance to meet Jesus. You might have heard about Jesus from his first followers or other followers who had heard about Jesus from his first followers.
We know about Jesus today from stories in the bible, in which his first followers told the things they’d seen and heard and experienced of Jesus to other followers, who told other followers. We also know about Jesus from the thinking, writing and speaking of people through the subsequent centuries and to the present day. All of this telling about the things people have seen and heard and experienced of Jesus is called testifying.
Whether the language of “testifying” (or “testimony”) is a significant part of your particular Christian tradition or not, the concept is certainly important. Without others having “testified” – telling (or writing) of what they had seen and heard and encountered – it would be harder for us to know and recognise God, and God’s action in the world.
Similarly, without us “testifying” – sharing humbly and graciously what we have seen and heard and encountered – it is harder for those around us to know and recognise God at work in their lives and in the wider world.
This “testifying” is not just an individual activity. When we gather together for worship, for example, we do so as followers of Jesus – no longer strangers to one another, part of One Body, young and old of equal worth – ”testifying” collectively to God’s Good News for all of God’s creation.
