Almighty God, guide us to seek your Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.
There’s a podcast that I listen to, and I’ve been told that’s the most Millennial way possible to introduce a topic, but this podcast asks it’s guest each week “What one trend in society worries you the most?” People respond with all sorts of answers, but as I’ve thought about that question, I’d have to say that the trend that worries me most in our society is the erosion of truth. As we heard in today’s reading from John, Pilate asks “What is truth?” For much of Western civilization, the quest for truth has been a driving force. We have built libraries, philosophies, laboratories, cathedrals, and universities as we have sought truth. Some have argued that what separates humans from other animals is that we are “meaning-making” creatures; that is, our desire for meaning and truth is what makes us unique. But as you all know, there is an overt crisis of truth in our society.
And I want to be very clear on this point – I am not primarily speaking about President Trump, or accusations of “fake news,” or Stephen Colbert’s coined word of “truthiness” which is when you feel like something is true, even when it is not. Those cultural markers are but mere symptoms of a larger erosion of truth. The assault on truth began long before the 2016 election, so please hear me when I say that this isn’t a sermon about what’s in the news, it’s a sermon about Jesus, who said that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
What worries me about the erosion of truth in our society is that truth is at the very center of our faith. The martyrs of our Church have not died for opinions, we do not baptize babies into a hunch, we do not proclaim the saving power of Jesus’ Death and Resurrection as a theory. When someone says “God is love,” it’s not a hypothesis, it is the truest thing that has ever been spoken. When we talk about God’s grace, we’re talking about something that is truer than gravity or the atoms that make up our bodies. When you hear a priest say “your sins are forgiven,” it is completely true. But what has happened over the past several centuries, but has accelerated and become toxic in our modern culture, is the erosion of truth into opinions or facts to be manipulated. But we have gathered to worship the true God from true God, to partake of a holy meal which is bigger than our ability to comprehend. This is the entire basis of our faith – the Incarnation of Christ. Jesus became flesh that we might know God. But if truth, if knowledge, is up for debate, then the entire Christian faith crumbles.
To be clear, God and faith do not depend on our ability to fully comprehend them. We will never grasp the fullness of the Truth of God. And while I think that the erosion of truth and factual accuracy in our educational system, in our public discourse, and in our political systems is incredibly dangerous, that’s not my concern this morning. This is a sermon on the Gospel, not a lecture on culture. My concern is that the erosion of truth in our culture is seeping into the Church, and so Christians are now treating the faith as an all-you-can-eat buffet. You can take a little of this, a lot of that, and you can skip right over the stuff you don’t like.
And this is clear all over the place: when the judgment of God is preached apart from the mercy of God, when God’s acceptance is preached without obedience to God, when the private nature of our faith is preached without the public proclamation of it. Even within many liberal churches, it has become unfashionable to talk about sin when it’s all over the New Testament. And on the other side of the coin, it seems that many churches have forgotten about the Biblical mandate to care for the strangers in our land. But none of this is surprising, because the walls of truth claims have collapsed.
But for as much as I’ve said about my concerns around the erosion of truth, maybe this is all actually a good thing. Maybe having facts always being in flux is actually a helpful thing. When I began to plan out this sermon, that wasn’t what I was thinking. But as I spent time with this conversation between Jesus and Pilate, as I prayed with this Biblical passage, I started to wonder if the erosion truth which was worrying me is actually the movement of the Holy Spirit.
Here’s what I mean – in this dialogue with Pilate, Jesus upends every sort of boundary and assumption that was operative at the time. It starts with the very beginning, “Pilate entered the headquarters again.” Now, why would John write “again”? This incident occurs on what we call Good Friday, during the trial of Jesus. This was also Passover, and so the faithful could not enter into the Roman headquarters, lest they become unclean and unable to celebrate the Passover. But there’s a growing mob in the streets. Pilate cannot let this turn into an uprising, and so he has to get up off of his judgement seat and go out to them. Hence, he then has to go back into his headquarters to speak with Jesus. It’s a subtle point, but it shows that Jesus makes us change our positions, whether they be physical or intellectual.
And then notice how Pilate questions Jesus, he says “Are you the King of the Judeans?” And Jesus immediately seizes on this line of questioning, rebutting “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Jesus knows that if Pilate were really asking the question, it would sound something like “Are you trying to overthrow Rome?” That is Pilates’ concern – is this a case of insurrection or not? But if Pilate were questioning Jesus from the crowd’s perspective, the question would also be different – it would be “Are you the Messiah?” But Pilate really doesn’t care about Israel’s Messiah, as he believes that Caesar is the ruler of all creation. And so he asks this odd hybrid question – “Are you the King of the Judeans?” We see that when we encounter Jesus, we realize that the either-or dynamics of the world don’t fit Jesus.
Jesus makes it clear that his Kingdom is not from this world. A better translation would be that Jesus’ kingdom is not “of” this world. In no way should we read this as Jesus saying that his kingdom is about another spiritual realm and that the government is about this world. This isn’t a commentary on the realm of Jesus’ Kingdom. That should be clear from the prayer “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Rather, this a remark about the quality of Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus is subverting all the ways that the world works. For Pilate, power is found in being able to crucify people; for Jesus, power is found in being the one who is crucified. Jesus shifts our fundamental understanding of what authority and power look like.
We then get the discussion of truth, and here we will see that Jesus also upends what we mean by “truth”. Jesus says that he came into the world to testify to the truth and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice. In John’s telling of the Gospel, truth is a central theme. In John, the word “true” or “truth” is used 46 times, while in Matthew, Mark, and Luke combined, it is used only 6 times. In John, we read that Jesus is the true vine; the way, the truth, the life; the true light of the world; and true food and drink. Jesus says that the truth will set us free, that his word his truth, that we worship God in spirit and truth.
But it’s a different sort of truth. When we think of truth, we normally think of things like 2+2=4 as being true, while 2+3=4 as being untrue. That’s how Pilate was thinking of truth. And so when Jesus’ best defense to the charges against him is to say that he has come to testify to the truth, Pilate is confused and asks “What is truth?” The thing is, there is nothing truthful about Jesus, rather he is Truth itself. Jesus transforms truth from being an idea, an opinion, something to debate or argue about into a person, an experience, a relationship. Jesus is Truth. And this changes everything.
Because of Jesus, truth is no longer something that we have to read about or fight about. Instead, truth becomes something to be in a relationship with. The great 20th-century theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “We reach truth by doing it – not obeying rules, accepting facts, or fulfilling duties – but living in a reality where Jesus is true.” That is at the very heart of the Gospel, that Jesus is the embodiment of Truth. Jesus is the Truth of God made flesh. And because Jesus is Truth, it means that other things become automatic. Since Jesus is Truth, then forgiveness simply is. We don’t have to worry about whether or not our sins are forgiven, because Jesus is the truest thing that we can ever know. And the same goes for peace, and mercy, and grace, and love.
Tillich goes on to write that truth is never something that can be written down. At best, sentences and words can point us to truth, but nothing that we can ever say or do is true because Jesus is Truth. This reality flips the equation of truth. So often, we think that truth is something that we pursue. But just as Jesus flips the script on Pilate, he’s flipped it on us. We do not pursue the Truth, rather the Truth pursues us.
And so maybe it’s a blessed thing that the idea of truth as facts is being eroded in our society. How much time and energy do we waste fighting over truth instead of living it? How much trouble do we get into when our hubris leads us to thinking that we are right and they are wrong? Jesus utterly destroys these categories of right and wrong, of true and false. What we can say is that Jesus is true, and that’s all that matters.
There are two conclusions that follow. The first is the invitation to quit fighting over facts or splitting into factions over them. Someone else voted for a different candidate? So what? Someone says something you disagree with? Ok, but is that worth destroying the relationship with them? You have a different opinion on something than me, or your spouse, or your neighbor? Great, that’s an opportunity to have a discussion, not a reason to look down on them. If Jesus is the only truth we proclaim, then a lot of our striving to always be right melts away.
And the second conclusion is that if Jesus is truth then truth is Jesus. And so worship, and reading Scripture, and prayer becomes so much more important. When truth is not an idea, but rather a person, then having a relationship with that truth is vital. As we get ready to enter into what is often the most hectic, depressing, and stressful time of the year, don’t lose sight of truth, don’t get too busy to have a relationship with Truth Incarnate, with Jesus Christ.
The promise of Jesus is that the Holy Spirit will sanctify us in truth. In other words, the deeper we grow into our relationship with Jesus, the more we come to know his Truth, the more we will be transformed. His mercy, his peace, his grace, his love, these things will begin to flourish in you, not because your prayer life earns them for you, not because you will be thinking the right things, but because when you are caught up in the truth of Jesus, he will set you free.
Yes, there is an attack on truth in our society. But if that helps us to recognize that salvation is not found in facts and figures, that mercy does not come from being right, that peace does not come through our intellects, then thanks be to God. Once we have shed our need to be right and know everything, what we are left with is the truth of Jesus, a relationship to that which is ultimately true. Glory to God whose word made flesh sanctifies us in truth. Amen.
