What Is True?

John 18:33-38a

What IS truth?

We live in a context of “fake news,” Russian internet bots, Facebook trolls, and partisan journalism. The truth has become more and more fluid. We no longer trust long-trusted institutions to tell the truth. Some of us, though are old enough to remember newscasters like Walter Cronkite. Remember him? We could watch him and feel like we knew what was REALLY going on. Not now. Cable news competes for eyeballs and so becomes as sensational as they can be, regardless of what really happened. Schools wrestle with how to teach history, having to recast old, old stories in light of new perspectives that leaves many in doubt that education teaches the true story. And on it goes―truth becomes more and more relative.

All of which resonates with Jesus’ interview before Pilate. 

Pilate has been told many things―all purported to be true―about this disheveled man before him. He is a king. He is a seditionist. He is a heretic to his own people’s faith. He is a nobody. He is a huge threat. The man himself will say little. He answers all of Pilate’s questions with riddles. Frankly, the man seems to be a bit thick and oblivious to the obvious predicament he is in. Finally, exasperated, Pilate asks, “What is truth?”

Jesus is true. 

Jesus is true, but Jesus is a mystery, one that baffles our basic imagination and thwarts our ability to comprehend. 

No wonder Pilate is lost.

He sees the world pragmatically. He lives his life according to the norms and mores of his time. His utter practicality sees only a bedraggled peasant, lost, beaten, and humiliated on the floor before his literal seat of power. He has through Rome the actual power of life and death for this man. So Pilate sees it.

But he is wrong. He is mistaken. He really cannot see the truth before him.

His own assumptions blind him. His own trust in his own truth subverts any way of actually seeing what is before him.

And that brings Pilate right here before us.

We miss the truth of Jesus breaking through our world. We miss the truth of God right before us because we are not tuned to see it.

But think for a moment.

I have so appreciated the care and concern that has come to me as the fires ravaged California. It has been a hellish month for them. But I want to call your attention to an article in The New York Times this past week―“Devastated by California Fire, Paradise Finds a Way to Give Thanks,” Tejal Rao, 11/22/18―you would expect to hear resentment and pain, but instead, folks who have lost everything still find reasons to be thankful for those who help, put out fires, shelter them, and on and on. This is God’s truth breaking through the world.

At our house, we had a different sort of Thanksgiving as we welcomed home our daughter, Chelsea, her significant other, and HIS PARENTS! It could have been “Meet the Fockers,” but it wasn’t―it was a great time of telling stories, embarrassing our grown children, and getting to know one another. No one slammed the turkey against the back wall in anger over someone’s political commentary. No one got mad. We just enjoyed one another. This is God’s truth breaking through. 

But you have to be able to see it. Pilate is blind. Jesus again and again invites him to dig deeper, to ask more questions. 

I join in and offer you this invitation.

I notice that congregations just accept what a preacher tells them is the truth of Jesus. The preacher said it, so it must be true. The preacher said it, so it must be in the Bible. So, the preacher delivers a beautiful sermon on the Prophet Hezekiah, extolling all the finer points of the prophet’s theology. There is only one problem. THERE IS NO PROPHET HEZEKIAH IN THE BIBLE! No one stops to ask any questions. No one follows their curiosity to re-examine the texts. There is just an assumption of truth because of the one speaking.

I issue an invitation―never, ever simply accept my interpretation as THE interpretation. If you hear something you never heard before, or something you aren’t quite sure of, go, read the text for yourself. Read it. Ponder. Ask. Write some notes. Puzzle over it. What is it saying to you?

You see, without that study―without that questioning―we are all just like Pilate. We assume we know what is true. We blind our ability to grasp the truth. We assume what is known is already known, examined, and presented. 

Don’t be like that―ask, examine, test, and decide for yourself. 

That is really what Jesus is trying to get Pilate to do. 

He answers Pilate’s questions in riddles because he wants to fire Pilate’s imagination. He wants to push Pilate beyond what he has been told about Jesus. He wants Pilate to decide for himself who Jesus is.

That is the essence of faith.

Faith is a journey of discovery.

Each day, we grow in faith as we experience our lives, ask what we have experienced, delve deeply into the Word to find correlations, and then add that to what we’ve learned before. Each day, we have the opportunity to ask one another what our experiences have been, what we have each learned, then add together all of our stories and see what bubbles forth as the truth. 

Then, we apply what we learn to living. 

Such a process of question, discovery, and application moves us further along the road of faith. It is true, even if what we learn contradicts what we thought we already knew. I know I can read a text over and over, and each time something new arises in my comprehension of it.

That might make it scary, but it also brings us closer and closer to actually grasping the truth of God and God with us.

What is truth?

Whatever is of God. 

It is present. It is here. It is now. You just have to look for it. You have to ask questions.