Are you a talker or a listener? Are you active or are you contemplative? Are you a Mary or a Martha?
These are over-simplified distinctions. Talking without listening is often the worst kind of talking. It is better to talk after informing ourselves as fully as possible about the needs and expectations of the people we are talking to, as Paul did when he went to Athens and "looked carefully at the objects of your worship" (Acts 17:23), or as Jesus did in his parables when he referred to such familiar themes as sheep-farming and crop-growing, or in his dialogues with Nicodemus, with his disciples, or with women from Samaria or Syrophœnicia. And without Martha bustling around doing the cooking, there would be no welcoming house in which Mary could "sit at the Lord's feet and listen" (Luke 10:39).
Jesus called his apostles to be witnesses. But they were not to be just witnesses in the sense of people who have seen something. They were to go out and bear witness to the world.
This did not mean that they had to go and stand on street corners and preach the Good News. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that some of them did this - or its equivalent. More often, though, they went to the local synagogue and used what opportunities arose to tell people about Jesus.
The Greek word for giving witness is martyria, and this reminds us that witnessing does not always mean talking or arguing. We can witness by our actions, and many early Christians witnessed by their deaths, by showing their own commitment to the One who had himself died for them.
We do not all need to be talkers, though we all need to be listeners. We do not all need to argue with non-Christians, to preach hell-fire at them (or even to preach the love of God to them, which is more likely to succeed than threatening them with a punishment they do not believe in!). But we need to live as Christians, so that others who see our actions will also see our faith.
What does this mean in practice? A letter from the beginning of the second century tells us. We do not know who wrote it: merely that it was addressed to someone called Diognetus.
"Christians neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life marked out by any peculiarity. Inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life.
"They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all others; they beget children. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all people and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death and restored to life. They are poor yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of and yet are justified; they are reviled and bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honour; they do good yet are punished as evildoers; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred. To sum it all up in one word - what the soul is to the body, so are Christians in the world."
As Jesus said, we are the light of the world (Mt 5:14). May we shine with that light, reflecting God's own light, in a dark and weary world!
HD