Give witness, repentant and don't worry

Today's gospel passage (Luke 12: 8-12) appears to be a random set of counsels, but seen from another perspective there is a logic about them.

Jesus' first command is both an order and a warning. The order is that we must give witness. There are many ways of giving witness in this world, and no doubt discipleship allows us to call on these different modes at different moments. Nevertheless, the essence of things is this: we must be who we are, and if we are the sons and daughters of God, then we should appear to be the sons and daughters of God. We must be true to God and to ourselves. There is a psychological idea called the looking glass theory according to which we consider ourselves to be who we think others think we are. If we project ourselves in this way, as many do on social media, then we are lost. We are not who others think we are; we are in fact whom God knows us to be.

For some people, this call to witness might manifest itself as a kind of self display or showiness. But this would be to ignore Jesus’ second counsel today. In this counsel, Jesus offers this mysterious guidance: that those who sin against the Son will be forgiven, while those who sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. What happened, we might wonder, to the need to forgive seventy times seven if to be unforgiven it suffices to commit this sin against the Holy Spirit? But that would be to misunderstand how the Church sees this text. It is not that those who sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, as if God were powerless to do so; it is that by sinning against the Holy Spirit, they have withdrawn themselves from His almighty power. For the limits of His almighty power stop at the threshold of the individual heart whom He will not force to love him. What, then, is Jesus’ second counsel today but that we must remain in an attitude of repentance even while we are giving witness to the God who has saved us? Let us give witness to being the sons and daughters of God, but let us do so knowing that we are unprofitable servants.

And then comes Jesus’ third counsel: we are not to worry about what to say if indeed Providence brings us to stand before human accusers who find fault with our profession of the faith. There is something very contemporary about this scenario because we seem to be living in a moment where even quite fundamental Christian convictions - one might think, for example, of the belief that marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman - are increasingly seen as toxic. There is even the suggestion by some people that this commitment to retaining a biblical understanding of spousal relations is unchristian - the fruit of rigid minds that are stuck in the past.

But, as Jesus says, let us not worry about what the accusers might throw at us. Let us bear witness humbly and repentantly, and we will have obeyed His word. The rest is in His hands.