Truth
John 18:28-38
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This is not the first time that Jesus talked about the truth. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world,” he tells Pilate, “to testify to the truth.” The gospel writer, John, opens his version of the Jesus story with a beautiful and poetic prologue about the Word in the beginning that was with God and that was God; the Word through which all things came into being, the Word that was the light of all people that shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome. It’s fantastic stuff. And the conclusion of all this grand metaphysical poetry is the image of that same cosmic, divine, life-giving Word becoming flesh- that is translated into a human person- full of grace and truth. From his entry into the world as one of us, we have understood that Jesus is full of grace and truth. Grace and truth. What is that? It’s been suggested that the coupling of those two words, those two ideas -like two sides of the same coin- is not unlike the pairing of two other words in the world of the Hebrew scriptures: steadfast love and faithfulness. And if that’s the case then steadfast love is to grace as faithfulness is to truth. Only that isn’t normally how we tend to think about truth.
For us truth is something that can be measured, quantified, and verified. The latest round of the Winter Olympic games just concluded. For some of the sports represented, the difference between being on the medal stand and going home empty-handed came down to a panel of judges and their subjective score. But for others the truth of the result was incontrovertible. One hockey team scored more goals than another, one skater crossed the line before another, one skier made it down the mountain faster than another. That’s the kind of truth that we’re used to, the kind that comes with evidence, the kind that can be proven. The kind that is singular.
But that isn’t how Jesus tends to talk about truth. When the Pharisee Nicodemus came to see him in the dark of night and the two of them talked about being born anew, Jesus said that those who do what is true come to the light. How is that measured? Can you quantify a deed that is true? You might be able to verify that something was done, or not done, but does that make it true? Probably not. So then what are we talking about?
When Jesus takes a pit stop at Jacob’s Well in the middle of the day as he’s crossing Samaria, he gets into a discussion with a woman who challenges the fact that Jesus’ people insist that one place is better than another for worshipping God. “Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain,” she tells him, “but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” To this he suggests that, “the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” Somehow I don’t think there is a metric for measuring the truthfulness of worship. What does that include? Is there a limit or quota on prayers said, bible passages read, minutes preached? If the preacher goes over time is it no longer true?
And then in one of the more famous sayings quoted out of context- engraved even over the entrance to the main tower building on the University of Texas campus in Austin- Jesus tells the people who are following him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” This brings us a little closer to it. This isn’t a truth that can be known by a set of metrics so much as it is a truth that we come to know in continuity with the words that Jesus is saying, as his disciples, as students of his way.
Maybe the reason Pilate has so much trouble with Jesus is that the questions he asks are not the questions of a student. They are not the questions of someone who knows what he doesn’t know and is willing to bring a curiosity and openness to what Jesus is saying. Rather Pilate is asking the questions of someone in authority, someone who has a job to do and who intends to do it. The truth that Jesus testifies to can be hard to know, hard to discover, hard to experience when we think we already know all the answers, when we’re sure we’ve got it all figured out.
Earlier that night he told his friends that he was going to prepare a place for them, that he would come again and take them there and that they knew the way to where he was going. Thomas was confused and pointed out that they couldn’t possibly know the way because they didn’t know where he was going, or what he was even talking about. And that’s when Jesus gave another often-quoted and frequently misused answer. “I am the way,” he said, “and the truth,” he added, “and the life.” If the way to where Jesus is going on this last day of his life is not a set of directions generated by your GPS, or Google Maps, then neither is the truth he keeps talking about some proposition or philosophy. As Frederick Buechner writes, “Jesus did not say that religion was the truth or that his own teachings were the truth or that what people taught about him was the truth or that the Bible was the truth or the Church or any system of ethics or theological doctrine. There are individual truths in all of them, we hope and believe, but individual truths were not what Pilate was after or what you and I are after either unless I miss my guess. Truths about this or that are a dime a dozen, including religious truths. THE truth is what Pilate is after: the truth about who we are and who God is if there is a God, the truth about life, the truth about death, the truth about truth itself. That is the truth we are all of us after.”[1]
It turns out that that truth, the truth that Pilate is after and that you and I are after, that truth is standing right in front of Pilate the whole time, just like it is before us. That truth stands before us full of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. And we come to know it as we worship in the spirit of what he shows us, in continuity with the words he has to say. We come to know it as we come to know him. The only evidence we have is what he will show us, what he has already and will continue to show us as he encounters all the injustice generated by the kinds of kingdoms this world tries to create to rival God’s own. In an era in which our leaders daily dissemble trust, in which facts are called fake and lies get repeated until we’re expected to believe that they are true, Jesus shows us the truth that ultimately matters. Jesus is the truth that ultimately matters, about the light of God’s glory that sets us free from paying our allegiance to anything less than the love with which God so loves this world; even in its brokenness, even in its pain, even when it will literally kill him to love us. Like the realm of God’s power and presence that it reveals, it is a truth that cannot and does not belong to us- it isn’t my truth, or your truth- so much as we belong to it, to him. Because, as it happens, the truth that we are all of us after, has been after us all along
[1] Buechner, Frederick The Clown in the Belfry: Writings on Faith and Fiction Harper One, 1992.