Teaching, Proclaiming, Witnessing

Gregg’s Reflection

Years ago, we were driving down to Nederland to take our grandkids back home. We saw some teenagers on the side of the road. It was late afternoon on an early winter day, snow on the ground, and the kids had no heavy coats. There was no cell service. I told Genie, if they are there when we return, I’m going to stop.

We came back and stopped to see what was the problem. They had gotten their car stuck in the snow some distance from the road. I could not get to them, but told them I would go home and call my plow guy to come pull them out. We drove home and I called Dan. “You want me to do what?” He asked me incredulously. “OK, I will drive back down there, come meet me. I will pay the tab.” Reluctantly he did.

When he pulled the car free of the snow, the kids were so grateful in thanking him. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Thank that man over there.” When they turned to me, I said this, “Just be glad there are still a few Christians in these mountains.” You see, Boulder is 90% unchurched, and a Christian here is an outlier.

I realized that when I do a kindness for someone, and do not name Jesus as the author of my kindness, then I am just bringing glory to myself. So, preach the Gospel with your life, but do offer Jesus as the source of goodness on display.

Teaching Proclaiming Witnessing

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Journaling Prompts

How do you witness to Christ with your life? How do you witness with your words? Even if we are only called to teach to our children and grandchildren, since God has no grandchildren, only children, teaching and witnessing to our family is an important calling. How are you reaching your family with your stories of faith?

Scripture

May my teaching drop like the rain, my speech condense like the dew; like gentle rain on grass, like showers on new growth. For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God!

Deuteronomy 32:23

I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with utmost patience in teaching. In this world of sorrow and suffering there is a hidden and inexhaustible mine of great joy of which the world knows nothing.

RENOVARE Bible notes on Ruth

Our speech is critical to the spiritual formation of others, because the words of the wise have the capacity to both cheer and heal.

Proverbs 12:18,25

The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning, he wakens-wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

Isaiah 50:4

For that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.

Isaiah 53:15

Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of the Father speaking through you.

Matthew 10:19-20

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

Matthew 28:19-20

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1:8

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And, how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!”

Romans 10:14-15

I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. As for you, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully. 

2 Timothy 4:1-2, 5

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

James 3:1

Ancient Writings

When every nation shall have heard the preaching of the Gospel, then shall come the end of the world.

Origen

Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.

St. Francis, Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 263

If then we know not when it shall be that the whole world shall be filled with the Gospel, undoubtedly we know not when the end shall be; but it shall not be before such time.

Thomas Aquinas

Modern Writings

How many have smothered the first sparks of contemplation by piling wood on the fire before it is well lit. The stimulation of interior prayer so excites them that they launch out into ambitious projects for teaching and converting the whole world, when all God asks of them is to be quiet, and keep themselves at peace, attentive to the secret work He is beginning in our souls.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 207

What we are asked to do at present is not so much to speak of Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us.

Thomas Merton, Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution, p. 145

By supportive presence we can offer the space with safe boundaries within which our students can give up their defensive stance and bend over their own life experience, with all its strong and weak sides, to find the beginnings of a plan worth following. As teachers we encourage our students to reflection which leads to vision, theirs not ours.

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out, p. 90

God has no grandchildren, only children. Every generation has to be converted anew and the Gospel has to always be preached in new contexts and cultures in ways that are good news to that time and people.

Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 81

We could not see what we had not been told to see or what our teachers themselves had never experienced.

Richard Rohr, Naked Now P. 113

As the church took shape as an institution, it could not exceed the wingspan of its first of apostolic teachers; what they themselves did not fully understand, they could not hope accurately to transmit.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Jesus, p. 76-77

Proclaiming the gospel to a lost world cannot be just another activity to add to the church’s crowded agenda. It must be central to who we are. It forms our identity.

Francis Chan

What makes the master the master? What is it that the master does so masterfully, and how do they do it? What happens when we get too close to these people? What is that graced event where the top blows and the bottom falls out. Merton puts himself in the position of the seeker. He is us. What is it that makes us to be seekers?

The master is the master because he gives living witness that what’s the seeker seeks is real. Their quest is not an illusion. Your heart has not deceived you. The master bears the witness simply by being who they are and the transparency of their being. The master is known by the way he sits, the way he stands. The master’s very presence is the teaching. When in the presence of this person, I’m in the presence of the longing I have that I do not understand for a union I don’t understand, but I know I’m in the presence of it. 

They become like this because they have died the great death to everything but God. God finds no obstacle in the master. The master is not perfect, has faults. The point is, the master knows that the fact that they limp is not the point. The reality of God is unexplainably manifesting itself, foibles and all in the master.

The master lives according to the infinite freedom that pervades the obstacles and foibles. That entails an honest ongoing struggle with the obstacles. We hope someday we will run into somebody who is not confused. The master may be as confused as you, but the master is not confused by confusion. We believe our confusion has the power to name who we are, and is seen as an obstacle to the realization of how close the awakening is.

The master does not see it as so. We contribute to our weakness a power, the power to name who we are. The master knows the weakness never has the power to name who we are. The master has not moved above human frailty. He has discovered that frailty is bound through and through with the boundless love of God. The master knows that all of this is true of you as well. The master knows that God sees no obstacles in our frailty. How could that interfere with God being hopelessly in love with you. In your presence, the master knows he is in the presence of God. 

The idea that there is a hindrance to be overcome is very strongly embedded in us. The master knows how hard it is to see past this. Yet you can’t bear to know yet that it is you. Therefore as an act of charity, the master accepts that you see him as master. The only reason you can recognize the teacher at all, is the extent that you are already awakening to what you already are. In the presence of the master, you might find that opening. The master realizes there is no lack of guidance, only a lack of realizing that that guidance is there. God’s covenant love overflows in all directions all the time. The master understands the nature of the task to be done. Being the teacher is a riddle for all of us who are teachers. 

The teacher is a tattered weather-beaten seeker. Imagine you are standing at the end of a long hallway, carrying an armful of books. The teacher is at the other end, behind a door. On your very first step, you trip, lose your balance and stumble down whole hallway like that. Just before you slam into the door, the teacher opens it. 

For the one who has never jumped out of a plane with a parachute, their anxiety goes up from the time the plane takes off, and builds until the jump. The old timer feels no anxiety until just before he hits the ground. For he knows no one is hurt jumping out of a plane. It is the ground that is dangerous. What if life is an endless jump into the abyss like depths of the ground of being. What if you have to hit the ground over and over to reach that state? That is the cross. The teacher is the person who lives in this groundless jump, is habituated into it. 

Then what does the master do that begins to initiate this awakening in us as the seeker? We bring our sincerity to the teacher. People are drawn to monasteries and ashrams. The master is masterful in the realization that they cannot teach it. The only thing the master can do is be vulnerable and transparent in the encounter. The master never flinches, never gets seduced to try to create something out of ego.

Look on the Gospel stories this way. Jesus is the teacher. Every story of the Gospel is this transmission of the awakening, the mystical depths of the Pentecost. 

The teacher has a refined compassionate empathy. They know it so well because they lived there day by day. The teacher is masterful at looking at the breaking open the posture we think will enlighten us. The breaking open will allow the light to flood in. The master knows the secret, and the secret is there is no secret. 

James Finley, Living School Teaching