Today is the Last Sunday before Advent, also known as the Kingship of Christ. The readings are (to read them, click on each of the readings for the link):
The very next words in the Gospel reading we just heard are from Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Jesus has been brought to him to be on trial. And Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?”
What is truth indeed? It’s a big question in today’s world, for fake news and conspiracy theories and questions as to what is truth abound everywhere. Is Covid-19 really a terrible disease, or is it just like a bad cold or the flu? Do the vaccines really work, or are they just a way for the pharmaceutical companies to make money? Which politician is correct? Which news source actually tells the truth about the news?
What is truth?
And then there are religious questions that people ask all the time. Is God real? Does prayer work? Was Jesus of Nazareth really God in human flesh? [Is it worth my time and bother to be part of a church?] What is the truth? What is truth?
This might be a rather heavy question for a 10-minute sermon. There’s only so much a preacher can cover, after all. But knowing the truth from someone does not depend on how long that person speaks. If that were so, then the politician who can speak the longest (and maybe the loudest) would be the one we should all believe. And we know that’s not true.
And the truth does not depend on the flashiest presentation. If that were so, then the person with the slickest presentation would be the one telling the truth. And we know that’s not true either (though sometimes it might be tempting to believe it).
And the truth does not depend on big words or the ability to fashion a complicated argument to support the view that one is holding forth. If that were so, we could all just believe the person who knows how to use words well.
The truth is, the truth is actually very simple. It does not depend on long explanations, or big words, or flashy presentations, or complicated arguments. We might use all these things to try to explain the truth, but truth does not depend on them. The truth just is.
What sparks Pilate to ask his famous question, “What is truth?” is the line that Jesus says just before this, the line that was at the end of our reading: “You say that I am a king. 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.”
Note the order of that last line: “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” If you already belong to the truth, you will listen to Jesus’ voice. We might expect it to be the other way ’round: “Everyone who listens to my voice belongs to the truth.” If the line were this way ’round, that would suggest that a person sits and listens to Jesus and weighs his statements, like pros and cons, and decides from that whether Jesus is speaking the truth. It would be as though one is thinking, “Well, I like that story about the loving father welcoming back the wayward son, and I can see how that could be like God, and that’s really nice, but I don’t like what he said about loving my enemies and I don’t like that God would let Jesus die on the cross.” That’s how many people approach religion: they listen to this story and that story from the Bible, and they hear one prayer or another, and they decide whether they like them or not — in other words, they decide whether Jesus is speaking truth. But that’s approaching Jesus as though we already know what the truth is, and we’re going to use that knowledge to decide about Jesus and God and religion in general. We do this, for example, about prayer if we say we don’t understand how it works, that it doesn’t fit with science (we think), and therefore we assume that it does not work.
But Jesus says, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” One translation puts it this way: “Everyone who cares for the truth, who has any feeling for the truth, recognizes my voice” [The Message].
What this suggests is that someone is already rooted, grounded, in the truth, and once they are, they can tell that Jesus is the real thing. He is the truth. He does not have to convince us; we just know it, we’re sure of it.
Well, that’s a bit annoying, isn’t it? People would say that the church, the preacher, Jesus himself, is supposed to convince us as to why we should believe. As a preacher, I’m supposed to convince you that religion is worthwhile, and that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. And you sit back and weigh my words and decide whether I’m speaking the truth.
The clue to this difficulty, the way out of it, is in another line from Jesus. He says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” In other words, the truth that Jesus represents, the truth that he is the embodiment of, is not of our world of news reports and flashy video presentations and arguments for one thing or another. He is of another realm entirely, a realm so immense and majestic and awe-inspiring that it is beyond the capacity of our language and our videos and our arguments to communicate. It just is. But that’s just it: it just is. This realm that Jesus represents is what is really real, it is truth, it is the foundation of all existence. And when we belong to this truth, when we accept it, then we know life and vitality and joy and thanksgiving. And we know that Jesus is of this truth.
I will give you an example from my own experience. This is the most profound religious experience I have ever had. It happened when I was at university. I was watching a movie, and as I left the theater, out into the night air, I had this tremendous feeling — more than a feeling, it was knowledge — that I had seen the truth. I could not put it into words, but I knew I had seen the truth, and I felt absolutely elated, overjoyed, set free. On my university campus was a chapel with a tall spire, and when I saw it, I felt an overwhelming love for Jesus. And even in my joyous state, I had the thought, “I’m not a Christian. Why should I feel love for Jesus?” But I did. In the words of today’s Gospel, in those moments I belonged to the truth, and therefore I could listen to Jesus’ voice, even see something that represented him, a church spire and a cross, and know that he spoke truth.
I did immediately become a Christian. It took more years and more different kinds of experience. But that experience at university stuck with me, to suggest to me that perhaps I should trust Jesus and trust the Bible and trust the Christian faith.
That’s what it comes down to: trust. When we’re looking for the truth, and asking, “What is truth?”, what we’re really asking is, “Whom can I trust?” Which news report, which politician, which preacher, can I trust? And the answer is that they all have to be weighed against the truth that Jesus represents. We have to take the bold step of first trusting Jesus. We have to recognize that the news reports and the politicians and even many of the preachers, unless they’re really really good, belong to this world. Someone has to belong to the truth, has to belong to the kingdom of which Jesus is the King, in order to be trustworthy.
So trust Jesus first. He is the truth.
— The Rev. Canon Liz Beasley