Psalm 25:1-7 John 18:28-38
This sermon begins with a Zoom Call with my mom in which she reads the scriptures and then we talk about some common phrases using the word “Truth”. As an example, I’ll ask for her reaction to the phrase, “truthfully speaking...” and she’ll say, “were you not speaking truthfully already?”It’s always a joy to talk with my mom, and if you go to our Youtube Channel there’s a bit more of our conversation about life and faith and public witness at any age.
Hopefully, you got the idea from our conversation that we (meaning everyone, not just my
mom and me) don’t always realize what our relationship with the truth is like until something calls it to our attention. Not everything needs to be said all the time to everyone, yet often we find ourselves more comfortable in half-truths and convenient justifications. That’s just the way the human psyche works sometimes. The question before us today is, “What does that have to do with us as followers of God?”
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about what it means to be God’s people: the
Church, the Body of Christ, not just a building but a people, not just a person who follows God all alone in the universe but a person in relation with God and God’s good creation by the tender mercies of God.
I want to start by saying that this is about God’s love for you. Realizing that we are beloved by God is always the place where we enter into the story, but it is never the end of the story. God’s love is for you, and if you are in a time of trial right now I want you to know that it will not last. God’s love will outlast it – always.
We see that clearly in the trial of Jesus before Pilate. We see it clearly in God’s willingness to suffer so that we know that God knows what suffering means to us. We see it clearly in the truth that sets us free from sin and assures us of God’s eternal embrace, yet there is a big space – for most of us – between forgiveness and eternity, or at least that’s the way we tend to think of things. Life is, however, so much more than some transit station where we wait for the train to Gloryland. Life is complex and cruel and beautiful and wondrous and filled with experiences of eternity. Life is messy.
There are a lot of unknown variables in the messy, beautiful, tragedy of living life together as creatures in God’s good creation. That is, of course, why God has called us together to be God’s people and to witness to “the Truth.”
How’s that for a loaded statement? The idea that there is a “truth” claim that is “The Truth” seems more slippery now than it has ever been, maybe even since the time of Pilate. In fact, nothing makes me sympathize more with him as a person than this question, “what is truth?”
In some ways, it seems like we live in a time with the greatest media bias and the least ethical concern over how we communicate than ever, and yet a broad look at history reminds us that propaganda is as old as the crucifixion of Jesus.
Fortunately for us, so is the truth – and the truth that sets us free is this: the proof of God’s amazing love is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Not only that, but through his resurrection, we may know that there is nothing that can stand in the way of God’s love for us, and because of Jesus’s announcement of the Kingdom we may know that we do not have to wait for death to claim us to live as God’s people. OK, but what does that look like in the midst of those who claim to know stuff about the world
and those that reject any information that conflicts with what they think they know about the world? Where is the truth in all of that?
Let’s take something that seems simple – the flat earth theory. It blows my mind that this is a real thing, but it very much is a real thing. There are people who believe it to be true, without a doubt, that the earth is flat even though science, human history, and circumnavigation all say otherwise. Why is this?
Most psychologists and social scientists believe that it comes down to a person’s worldview (pun intended, but this is also an accurate statement). Most people do not reject science outright, but when information is given that disproves what someone believes about the way the world operates it calls the person’s values and relationships into question. Most of us would rather not let go of the things that have made the world make sense for us, and so we are more likely to dig in than to adapt.
Again, this is nothing new. Even St Augustine wrote about it around 400 CE. I’m paraphrasing here, but he essentially said that faith is not required for observing God’s handiwork. When followers of Jesus ignore the observations of the created order by others (and even use scripture to refute it) then not only do we all look bad for it but we also make a laughing stock of scripture and lose any chance to proclaim salvation for the unbeliever.
Funny how it all goes back to the fact that we aren’t in this alone, even when we are apart. Our faith is what clues us in to the fact that even though we are responsible selves, we are not independent operators. We are interdependent expressions of the grace and mercy of God.
I think that is why the stories about the life of Jesus are so important. John’s gospel probably takes the most license with the order and the events of his life, at least in comparison with the other three, but that’s what makes it so good at telling the story of the life of Jesus. It’s less concerned with the facts of the case and more concerned with the truth his life proclaimed.
In fact the word “truth” is only used four times in the other three combined but in John’s
gospel, it appears twenty-one times!
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his
glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and
truth .
John 3:21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen
plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
John 14:6 I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.
John 18:37 For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth .
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
The thing about this truth is that it exposes us before God and one another. When we allow our lives to be centered around God’s amazing love for us as “The Truth,” it calls us to re-examine what we think, feel, believe, and know to be true – not just once, but over and over again.
The truth of God’s amazing love calls us to see the ways in which we seek equilibrium without an awareness of the cost to others. It calls us to recognize that we aren’t at the train station; we’re already on the train.
The truth of God’s amazing love calls us to see the ways in which we have rejected Jesus and turned him over to earthly powers because we can’t handle the change he brings to our worldview. You see, our world is constantly changing, and so must our understanding of it. The science of the day of Augustine has become trivial today because science is always based on our best attempt to gather and replicate data. That doesn’t mean that what we know – or our ability to understand – is trivial.
It means that everything we know is only a reflection of the complete truth, and the most
complete truth is this: God’s love is for you, and you are not alone.
As God’s people, we have been given the truth, but it is not ours to monetize and trademark. It is ours to share. In fact, if we don’t share it, then we don’t have it. If we try to use it for our own agenda, then we betray the truth and keep people from it. If instead, we invite people into the Kin-dom – the family and household of God – then we will find that our lives will be changed by the Truth that sets us free – again, and again, and again. Forever. Amen.
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