Can You Handle The Truth?
Children's sermon
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Preaching
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Object:
Dear Fellow Preacher:
The news this week is filled with angry and concerned people wanting to know "what really happened." This question is being posed on matters as grave as an apparent security breach regarding an American CIA operative, to the not so funny political comedy taking place in California. What really happened; how did we get here?
We at The Immediate Word believe the lectionary gospel reading for this week offers an excellent opportunity to discuss the matter of finding the truth. Team member George Murphy reflects on how and why we seek truth and perhaps even why we don't. Team responses, illustrations, worship resources by Chuck Cammarata, and a children's sermon by Wesley Runk are included.
Can You Handle The Truth
Team Comments
Related Illustrations
Worship Resources
Children's Sermon
Can You Handle The Truth?
By George L. Murphy
Mark 10:17-31; Job 23:1-9, 16-17
President Bush has said that he wants to know the truth about charges that someone in the White House leaked classified information to the press. Many Americans want to know that -- and other things too. What's the truth about Arnold Schwarzenegger's treatment of women and his views about Hitler? Why do our state governments have budget crises, and why isn't education being funded adequately? Why did we really go to war in Iraq? And more personally, we'd like to know the truth about ourselves. What do our colleagues and putative friends really think of us?
And maybe -- in times of quiet or crisis -- we wonder what the truth is about God (if there is a God). Not just abstract theological questions, but how do I stand with God -- truly?
We say that we want the truth, but do we really? Sometimes a glimmer of the truth makes us long for a comfortable ignorance. There comes to mind a well-known movie line of recent years, that of Jack Nicholson as Colonel Jessep in the film A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the truth!" Do we really want the truth, or a pleasant lie? "Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions" (Isaiah 30:10).
In this week's gospel (Mark 10:17-31), a rich man comes to Jesus to find the way to eternal life. He isn't satisfied with the conventional answer that he's to obey the commandments because he thinks he's done that. "No," he says, "I want the real thing. I want the truth." But then Jesus told him the truth: "Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." And "he was shocked and went away grieving."
In one sense the rich man "couldn't handle the truth." But give him credit. He was honest enough to believe that Jesus meant what he said. He didn't try to water down Jesus' instruction. It would have been easy for him to say, "All right. I'll adopt a detached attitude toward my wealth and be sure to give generously to the poor. I'm sure that that's what Jesus means rather than any radical notion of actually -- well, selling all that I have."
Is that a parody? Perhaps, but it's what Christians have all too often done with this story. That tradition goes back at least to around A.D. 200 with Clement of Alexandria's "Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved?" -- perhaps when Christianity was just beginning to appeal to a significant number of well-to-do people. "[Jesus] does not, as some conceived off-hand, bid him to throw away the substance he possessed, and abandon his property; but bids him banish from his soul his notions about wealth, his excitement and morbid feeling about it ..." said Clement. 1
And there are "explanations" of Jesus' following words to his disciples about the camel passing through the eye of a needle that I'm sure many of you have heard. One of the gates of Jerusalem was called "the needle's eye" because it was so narrow that a camel could barely squeeze through it. There is, unfortunately, no evidence for such a gate. Or perhaps kamelon, "camel," should be "corrected" to kamilon, "rope" or "cable," as a few scribes in fact did -- but the textual evidence for "camel" is overwhelming.
Both of those proposals are attempts to evade the plain meaning of Jesus' vivid imagery: A rich person entering the Kingdom of God is impossible by human standards, though it is possible with God. That's the truth, whether we can handle it or not. And it may be more difficult to handle if we realize that by the standards of Jesus' time it's not only Bill Gates but many ordinary people in our congregations who are "rich."
What is the truth that needs to be communicated in a sermon based on this text? On the one hand, it is somewhat milder and easier to handle than a straightforward demand that everyone get rid of all his or her wealth. Jesus does not give that command to everyone he encounters in the Gospels. What is common to all is the call, "Come, follow me."
On the other hand, the call to follow Christ is more radical than a demand merely to give up money. It is a call to take up the cross and follow Christ. It is ultimately the call to be willing to give up life itself, to be willing to be a seed that falls into the ground and dies. In the case of the man in this week's gospel, that was literally a call to give up his wealth (and, it should be noted, give it to the poor, not simply throw it away) in order to be a disciple. That same call may come to others -- as it did, for example, to St. Antony when he heard the story of the rich man being read in church. 2
It may come. Or the call may be to give up something else dear to a person, something that receives the trust and love due to God alone, something that keeps the person from following Christ with her or his whole heart. In most cases an outside observer won't be able to tell what that is for another person, and our difficulty in handling the truth makes it hard for us to recognize our own idols. But one way of putting the matter in a sermon is to pose the question: Is there something in your life which, if Christ told you to give it up, would cause you to be shocked and go away grieving?
There is, of course, some truth to the kind of statement we heard from Clement of Alexandria. Money itself is not evil, and problems only arise from undue attachment to wealth. But sometimes you can't get rid of the attachment without getting rid of the wealth. Similar things can be said about other objects of our veneration.
As this story in the gospel, and the history of attempts to dilute it, show, the truth about our relationship with God may be difficult for us to accept. That fact emerges in a different way from the Book of Job, from which we have four selections as the First Lesson during October. In the reading this week (Job 23:1-9, 16-17), that suffering man longs to be able just to speak with God and lay out his case. Surely, Job thinks, then God would be reasonable and I would be able to learn the truth about my situation. But finally, when the LORD answers out of the whirlwind, Job is left to say, "I have uttered what I did not understand" (42:3). (This latter verse will be part of the reading for October 26.)
The truth that Job hears from the LORD is not a nice reasonable explanation of why bad things happen to good people. It is not really an explanation at all. (G. K. Chesterton summarized the Book of Job somewhere by saying that Job complains, "I don't understand," and God's answer is, "You don't understand.") God's response to Job is, "I'm the creator and you're not."
(There is a similar note, though muted, in the alternate First Lesson, Amos 5:6-15, from which verses 8 and 9 should not be omitted. It is "the one who made the Pleiades and Orion," the creator of the universe, who demands justice for the poor of Samaria.)
The problems of suffering and evil pose a serious obstacle to Christianity for many people. If we want to respond to these concerns, Job ought to warn us against simplistic solutions. It does not really give us a "solution," nor does the Bible as a whole offer a rational theodicy. The most we can say is that God does not stand aloof from suffering and evil but in the event of the cross takes the evil and suffering of the world upon himself. If we're going to preach on Job, it should not be to offer cheap answers to the questions that people have.
At the same time, some of the objections that people have that are posed as "I can't believe that God would allow ___," with the blank to be filled in with whatever bad thing they are concerned about, may be another example of not being able to handle the truth. (And the statement may in fact just be a theoretical one made to avoid serious discussion. It's one thing for a child of someone who died at Auschwitz to say, "I can't believe in a God who would allow the Holocaust," and something else for that to be said by a comfortable American Gentile.) The truth is, as Job learned, that God is God and we're not God. The truth is that while God's "property is always to have mercy" (as the Book of Common Prayer says), God does things, and allows things, that we don't like and find hard to justify. "Does disaster befall a city unless the LORD has done it?" asks another text from Amos (3:6).
Traditional theology has made a distinction between God's "proper work" and God's "strange" or "alien" work. The former is the work that displays the true character of God, showing love, mercy, and blessing. The latter is work that is foreign to God's character but which is done for the sake of God's proper work. God condemns in order to bring to repentance, and injures in order to heal. Metaphors like surgery or -- for a more modern image -- chemotherapy may be helpful here. The rich man is invited to the radical surgery of a wealthechtomy in order to be able to follow Jesus.
Again, some of us can't handle this truth. In one Seinfeld episode, George was sure he was going to die just at the time when the TV show that he and Jerry had written was about to be picked up. He tells his therapist that he knew God would never allow him to succeed. When she says that she thought he didn't believe in God, he says, "I do for the bad stuff!" The idea of some people is just the opposite: They believe in God for the good stuff but not for anything bad. Some versions of process theology provide a more sophisticated version of this idea.
I don't recommend a sermon whose major theme is "God does a lot of bad stuff." But a reminder of the truth that God is at work in the bad stuff with the ultimate purpose of good is something that people can stand to be reminded of in uncertain times. In doing that it isn't necessary to tell people not to complain and to accept evil in a docile way: Job didn't, and God said that he had "spoken of me what is right" (Job 42:7).
Suffering and privation are not always a consequence of a person's sin: Job (as well as John 9:3) clearly refutes this idea. But people do need to recognize the truth that some of the bad things that happen to them are a result of their own actions. There is no cosmic mystery or serious problem of theodicy about why a person who has smoked for forty years gets lung cancer. The truth about our harmful addictions and over-indulgences merges into an even more fundamental truth that we need to acknowledge -- that we are sinners, that we put other things (like the rich man's wealth) ahead of God. That is a truth that is of fundamental importance.
As revelations about activities of Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger (not to mention a host of other public figures) have shown, people who have positions of leadership in society are not always totally virtuous figures. (At the time that I'm writing this, it isn't known whether or not Schwarzenegger will be the next Governor of California.) That is a truth that we don't like to face -- and to a certain extent shouldn't have to face. There are standards of conduct that we ought to be able to expect of such people.
But sometimes we benefit from unpleasant activities that we'd just as soon not know about so that we can preserve our sense of moral purity. Colonel Jessep who utters the line, "You can't handle the truth," in A Few Good Men turns out to be the bad guy in that film. He is the officer who is responsible for secretly ordering two men under his command to carry out a "Code Red" (physical abuse) of a "substandard" Marine who unexpectedly dies from the attack. Jessep is caught when a clever young Navy lawyer (Tom Cruise) goads him to into blurting out the truth during a court martial. So right and wrong are clearly distinguished.
Except that Colonel Jessep's courtroom statement has a disturbing aspect. He thinks that he's justified in carrying out actions that are against orders, and in lying and falsifying evidence to cover up his actions. Why? In order to maintain discipline so that his troops will be prepared to defend the freedom of Americans who are blissfully ignorant of the distasteful actions that are needed to preserve their way of life. Unethical? Yes. Self-serving? Perhaps. But is there some validity to his statement? Yes. There are truths we would prefer not to handle. We would like to get our omelets without having to be told that eggs were broken.
There may not seem to be much of religious value in that insight. But if Christians are to be people of the truth, they should try to live in the world without illusions -- to "be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16). It wouldn't hurt, especially as we approach a presidential election year, to call people to a reality check. The writer of Isaiah 45:1-7 didn't have to imagine that the pagan Cyrus was perfect in order to view him as the LORD's anointed.
It's not, as Colonel Jessep suggested, just "you" -- the Navy lawyer, or even all those of us who've never had to serve in combat or in a front-line position, who have difficulty in handling the truth. It's more general: "Human-kind cannot bear very much reality," wrote T.S. Eliot. 3 This is a problem that the human race has faced from the beginning, since (in the story) Adam and Eve hid from God and tried to shift the blame for their actions. It is not a problem that we will ever overcome by ourselves.
It is through the mercy of God who is willing to stoop to the strange work of separating us from our inordinate affections and illusions that illumination comes. "If you continue in my word," Jesus says, "You are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32).
Notes
1. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume II (Eerdmans, 1979), p. 594.
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2. Athansius, "Life of Antony" in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 4 (Eerdmans, 1978), p.196.
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3. T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," in Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963).
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Team Comments
Stan Purdum responds: Your piece is well done, and I think the "God in the bad stuff" is a theme people don't hear often, but should. What follows is not a criticism, but maybe another avenue of thought regarding truth. There is a move afoot for atheists, agnostics, and other "free-thinkers" to co-opt the word "bright" as a term to label themselves, much the way homosexuals have taken over the word "gay" as a label. The problem with using bright that way, however, is the implication it carries that those who rely on rationality as the only source of knowledge about the truth are somehow smarter than everybody else. I think Christians who are not afraid of the truth are among the brightest people around.
Today's Wall Street Journal had an editorial challenging the idea that rational nonbelievers are brighter. I sent the following letter to the editor:
To the editor:
Thanks for Dinesh D'Souza's article "No So 'Bright' " (October 6, 2003, A16). Mr. D'Souza rightly notes that many atheists consider themselves more rational than religious believers. What those who now wish to be called "bright" often assume is that believers abandon reason and choose faith instead -- or believe in opposition to reason. Actually, many of us have discovered faith in the direction reason points. Reason by itself cannot take us all the way to God, but it can take us a long way on the journey.
The so-called leap of faith means that faith goes beyond reason, but not in a different direction. The leap is from the springboard of reason. It would be a shame to limit such a useful word as "bright" to those who think reason is the limit of knowledge.
Rev. Stan Purdum
North Canton, Ohio
George Murphy responds to Stan Purdum: Of course, but it's precisely the intention of atheists and others who want to co-opt the "bright" label to say that they are smarter than religious people and Christians in particular. Frankly, trying to label oneself as "bright" seems rather childish to me. I find it hard to believe that anybody who isn't ideologically blinded would take it seriously.
Maybe you'll want to include some TIW comment along the lines that you've sketched here. My own approach would be to say that it's wrong to think that the question of who is more "rational" has to do with one's fundamental beliefs. It has rather to do with how one reasons from those beliefs. I don't think, for example, that the militantly atheistic evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is "irrational." I think that his fundamental beliefs are wrong. Impeccable reason applied to incorrect postulates will produce incorrect results. GIGO (garbage in garbage out), as the computer programmers say. But I think that developing that argument would take my material somewhat off course.
Carter Shelley responds: George, you offer a lot of helpful insights this week. One of the best examples of an individual (or group's) inability to deal with "truth" is presented to us by the book of Job. It's prologue and epilogue, which are written in prose and not poetry like the remainder of the book, clearly demonstrate how uncomfortable a later author was with God's ultimate answer to Job. It's important for church members to have this distinction made. A God who gambles with human life better fits the realm of mythology than Christianity, and in itself isn't a more comforting explanation than the one Job receives: God's presence.
The rest of my remarks this week follow the thread provided by the word "truth." Thus, I am following in the tradition of 17th and 18th century preachers who often took a word or theme from a biblical text rather than preaching upon the entire pericope, psalm, or prophesy.
One of the most fundamental, and ongoing, debates in the field of Rhetoric concerns "truth." It goes back to the writings of Plato and Aristotle and continues to be an issue today. The Socratic method as recorded by Plato shows Socrates using the questions to teach his students. This method dependent upon careful questioning allows the student to discover truth for himself (sic) rather than being taught it as a fact or as knowledge of the wise imparted to the novice pupil. Most of us hardheaded human beings learn truth from experience not from the advice of others. We also tend to learn it the hard way, by making mistakes and worshiping false gods: money, politics, family, success, fame, security, etc.
As we know, truth and fact are not always the same thing. The two creation stories in Genesis offer truth about God's creation of the world, but they are not necessarily scientific facts. At the end of the play Inherit the Wind about the debate over evolution being taught in public schools, the character Attorney Clarence Darrow holds the Bible in one hand and Origins of the Species in the other and weighs them against each other.
In Aristotle's On Rhetoric he identifies three ways to communicate with people through speech: ethos, logos, and pathos. Appeals to the ethical rightness of a cause, logical arguments to promote a cause, and appeals to the emotions of the listener are all valid ways to win people to one's own way of viewing the world. Ethos offers the best example as pertains to truth. If a man or woman lives the ethical life he or she proclaims, then its argument is reinforced and validated. The reason rhetoric has a negative connotation for most Americans today stems from the use of rhetoric to convey messages that do not authenticate or validate the sincerity of the speaker. John McCain's waffling about his support of opposition to the war in Iraq offers one example. Almost any politician quoted on the air gets heard with a jaundiced ear by us, because we are used to politicians saying what they think they should say in order to be elected or re-elected rather than giving us a candid and consistent message and platform. Jesus was not only "the way, the truth and the life," Jesus embodied what he proclaimed.
Here follow some examples and quotes pertinent to "truth."
In Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner provides an extended discussion of the meaning of truth, especially as it pertains to preaching. The opening illustration which helps direct Buechner's discussion is his portrayal of Pontius Pilate who poses the question to Jesus.
A particular truth can be stated in words -- that life is better than death and love than hate, that there is a God or is not, that light travels faster than sound and cancer can sometimes be cured if you discover it in time. But truth itself is another matter, the truth that Pilate asked for, tired and bored and depressed by his long day. Truth itself cannot be stated. Truth simply is, and is what is, the good with the bad, the joy with the despair, the presence and absence of God.... (18)
Quotes from The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations:
"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think its hell." Harry Truman
"If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." Oscar Wilde
Quotes from Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations:
"Tis strange, but true, truth is always strange, stranger than fiction." Lord Byron
"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple." Oscar Wilde
"It reminds me of the small boy who jumbled his biblical verses and said: 'A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble.' " Anonymous
Chuck Cammarata responds: Marvelous work. There is too much compromised Christianity in our world and too little of the real thing. I know that we all fall short, but when we start aiming short of the mark, especially when we who preach start moving the target closer, the lives of the faithful, and the witness of the church become less salt and light, and more like all that surrounds us. Thanks for a solid, unvarnished gospel challenge this week.
Carlos Wilton responds: Thank you, George, for not ducking the challenging story of Jesus' encounter with the rich young man. As you rightly point out, few teachings of Jesus create more discomfort than this one. The passage through the needle's eye pinches us. It forces us to confront who we are, and how wealthy we truly are.
Most of us would rather not think of ourselves as wealthy. But we are. There's a website that starkly illustrates the economic disparity between how we in the "first world" live our lives, and how most other people in the world struggle through their lives. It's part of the website of a British charity, and it's called the "Global Rich List": http://www.globalrichlist.com/index.php
Visitors to the website are asked -- anonymously -- to key in their approximate annual income. One click of the mouse later, and a bar graph appears, with an arrow indicating where they appear on the global economic spectrum.
I'm a pastor. I generally think of my income as modest. Yet when I entered our annual household income into the "Global Rich List" website and clicked the mouse button, the little arrow indicating my place on the spectrum was just about as far over toward wealthy as it could go. A rude awakening!
Few readers of today's gospel lesson identify with the rich young man. We'd much prefer to focus on the well-heeled celebrities who grace the pages of People magazine -- they of the multimillion-dollar beach houses and the expensive sports cars. Yet the truth is, to most of the world, we're the rich people. The typical middle-class lifestyle so many of us consider ordinary is the stuff of dreams for most of God's people.
In a Sojourners magazine article last year ("Jesus Visits the Hamptons," Sojourners Online, March-April 2002), William Willimon quotes G. K. Chesterton: "It may be possible to have a good debate over whether or not Jesus believed in fairies. It is a tantalizing question. Alas, it is impossible to have any sort of debate over whether or not Jesus believed that rich people were in big trouble -- there is too much evidence on the subject and it is overwhelming."
One of the primary pieces of evidence for this viewpoint of Jesus' is this week's gospel reading. Much as we'd like to escape it, we can't. It's the truth.
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Related Illustrations
ON WEALTH
"There is a scene in Tennessee Williams' play, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, in which Big Daddy and his son, Brick, are talking in the basement, surrounded by all the junk that Big Daddy has worked so hard to purchase over the years. Brick is exploring questions of meaning far too sensitive for his father, who is pretty miserable, to understand. In the course of the conversation, he looks at all the stuff in the basement and asks a deeply theological question: 'Big Daddy, why'd you buy all this junk?' Big Daddy answers, 'Because I wanted to live. Because I wanted my life to amount to something.' "
-- Michael Lindvall, in a sermon, "The Indirect Route," on the Brick Presbyterian Church, NY, website, downloaded 10/5/03
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"Imagine that you come from a large family in which one brother ended up with a whole lot more than the rest of you. Sometimes it happens that way, the luck falling to one guy who didn't do that much to deserve it. Imagine his gorgeous house on a huge tract of forests, rolling hills, and fertile fields. Your other relatives have decent places with smaller yards, but yours is mostly dust. Your lucky brother eats well, he has meat every day -- in fact, let's face it, he's corpulent, and so are his kids. At your house, meanwhile, things are bad: Your kids cry themselves to sleep on empty stomachs. Your brother must not be able to hear them from the veranda where he dines, because he throws away all the food he can't finish. He will do you this favor: He's made a TV program of himself eating. If you want, you can watch it from your house. But you can't have his food, his house, or the car he drives around in to view his unspoiled forests and majestic purple mountains. The rest of the family has noticed that all his driving is kicking up dust, wrecking not only the edges of his property but also their less pristine backyards and even yours, which was dust to begin with. He's dammed the river to irrigate his fields, so that only a trickle reaches your place, and it's nasty. You're beginning to see that these problems are deep and deadly, that you'll be the first to starve, and the others will follow. The family takes a vote and agrees to do a handful of obvious things that will keep down the dust and clear the water -- all except Fat Brother. He walks away from the table. He says God gave him good land and the right to be greedy."
-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Saying Grace," in Small Wonder: Essays (HarperCollins 2002), pp. 24-25.
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ON TRUTH
When former New York mayor David Dinkins found himself in trouble with the IRS, he found a way to be, shall we say, creative with the truth. "I haven't committed a crime," Dinkins told reporters. "What I did was fail to comply with the law."
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"I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version ..." [In other words, "I lied."]
-- Colonel Oliver North, from his Iran-Contra testimony
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Truth, as they say, is very often stranger than fiction. If you'd like an example of this little adage, there are few better stories than one that's come to be known in the true-life annals of crime as "the FBI Pizza Caper."
The story comes from an impeccable source: James Woolsey, director of the CIA in the early 1990s. Woolsey never did reveal how the FBI transcript of a certain wiretapped conversation fell into his hands. All he would say is that he obtained it from a friend "who used to be with counterintelligence in Washington."
Anyway, it seems the FBI was investigating a psychiatric hospital in San Diego. A horde of FBI agents had descended upon the hospital business office one morning, armed not with guns but with calculators. They were searching for evidence of insurance fraud. Quickly the crack team of investigators set to work, reviewing files and auditing financial records.
Many hours -- and thousands of files -- later, the FBI agents were starting to work up an appetite. The agent in charge phoned a nearby pizza parlor to order dinner.
Now it so happened that someone at the Bureau was taping every telephone call in and out of the hospital that day. If it hadn't been so, why, this conversation might have been lost to posterity. The transcript goes like this:
Agent: "Hello. I'd like to order 19 large pizzas and 67 cans of soda."
Pizza Man: "And where would you like them delivered?"
Agent: "We're over at the psychiatric hospital."
Pizza Man: "To the psychiatric hospital?"
Agent: "That's right. I'm an FBI agent."
Pizza Man: "You're an FBI agent?"
Agent: "That's correct. Just about everybody here is."
Pizza Man: "I see. And you're at the psychiatric hospital?"
Agent: "That's correct. And make sure you don't go through the front doors. We have them locked. You'll have to go around the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas."
Pizza Man: "And you say you're all FBI agents?"
Agent: "That's right. How soon can you have them here?"
Pizza Man: "And everyone at the psychiatric hospital is an FBI agent?"
Agent: "That's right. We've been here all day, and we're starving."
Pizza Man: "How are you going to pay for all of this?"
Agent: "I have my checkbook right here."
Pizza Man: "And you're all FBI agents?"
Agent: "That's right. Everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked."
Pizza Man: "I don't think so." Click.
Sometimes, in life, the truth can be hard to recognize.
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"What is worst of all is to advocate Christianity, not because it is true but because it might prove useful.... To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.... It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society."
-- T. S. Eliot
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One-Third of Teens Would Act Unethically to Get Ahead, According to Junior Achievement/Harris Interactive Poll
Colorado Springs, Colo. -- Thirty-three percent of teens would act unethically to get ahead or to make more money if there was no chance of getting caught, according to a new Junior Achievement/Harris Interactive Poll of 624 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. Twenty-five percent said they were "not sure" and 42 percent said they would not.
For the full story, visit:
http://www.ja.org/about/about_newsitem.asp?StoryID=149
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A September 3, 2003, New York Times article, "A Campus Fad That's Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism," by Sara Rimer, contained the following disturbing statistics:
A study conducted on 23 college campuses has found that Internet plagiarism is rising among students.
Thirty-eight percent of the undergraduate students surveyed said that in the last year they had engaged in one or more instances of "cut-and-paste" plagiarism involving the Internet, paraphrasing or copying anywhere from a few sentences to a full paragraph from the Web without citing the source. Almost half the students said they considered such behavior trivial or not cheating at all.
Only 10 percent of students had acknowledged such cheating in a similar, but much smaller survey three years ago ...
"When I work with high school students, what I hear is, `Everyone cheats, it's not all that important,' " Professor [Donald L.] McCabe [of Rutgers University] said. "They say: `It's just to get into college. When I get into college, I won't do it.' But then you survey college students, and you hear the same thing."
The undergraduates say they need to cheat because of the intense competition to get into graduate school, and land the top jobs, Professor McCabe said. "It never stops," he said.
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In a sermon, "On Freedom," preached in 1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that the word set forth in John 8:32 -- "The truth shall set you free" -- is the most revolutionary word in all the New Testament. This is so, he said, because the truth of God "destroys our untruth and creates truth. It destroys hatred and creates love. God's truth is God's love, and God's love frees us from ourselves to be free for others."
-- William Stacy Johnson in the Presbyterian Outlook, 2/26/01, p. 10.
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Worship Resources
By Chuck Cammarata
CALL TO WORSHIP
LEADER: Jesus said
PEOPLE: I AM THE WAY,
LEADER: And the truth,
PEOPLE: AND THE LIFE.
LEADER: None enters the Kingdom of heaven
PEOPLE: UNLESS GOD DRAWS THEM.
LEADER: Praise him, for he is the way
PEOPLE: INTO PARADISE.
LEADER: Praise him, for he is the truth;
PEOPLE: A REVELATION OF ULTIMATE REALITY.
LEADER: Praise him, for he is the life
PEOPLE: THAT IS ABUNDANT AND ETERNAL.
LEADER: Come, let us praise God,
PEOPLE: AND CELEBRATE OUR GOOD FORTUNE
LEADER: At knowing the One who is the Way,
PEOPLE: AND THE TRUTH,
LEADER: And the life!
PEOPLE: AMEN!
INVITATION TO CONFESSION
Pilate asked, "What is truth?" But the reality is that truth is not a "what," but a "who." Truth is not an equation or a proposition, but a person -- Jesus Christ. Only in and through him can life be rightly understood. Only in him can we develop the humility needed to appreciate life. Only in him can we see clearly that love is ultimate reality. Only in him can we understand how to extend love even to enemies. Only in him can we have hope for the victory of life over death. He is the truth! He is the key to life lived abundantly. Will you pray with me?
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
ALL: Holy God -- we confess to you that sometimes we can't stand the truth.
We are so comfortable in our safe little worlds that we don't want the apple cart upset, and truth is often upsetting. The truth is that we are all sinful -- more so than we like to admit. The truth is that our devotion is often lukewarm. The truth is that the world is filled with suffering that we ignore. The truth is painful. The truth is a cross. Help us this day to hear the truth that it is only when we go to the cross that we can experience the glory of the resurrection life. We ask it in the name of the one who endured the cross for the sake of the glory that lay beyond it. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
The man said to me with tears in his eyes, "She has loved me through years of putting my job first. She loved me when I wanted to be a big shot and spent a lot of time at the club rubbing elbows with important people. She loved me when I was moody and distant. She loved me when I was unfaithful. She loves me still, though I don't come close to deserving her love."
And I said to him, "She loves you with the love of God. For his love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. His love never ends."
But that is not all that I said to my friend. After I encouraged him to celebrate his wife's godly love for him, I told him, "Now go and do everything you can to live a life worthy of that love!"
This is the whole gospel -- God forgives and continues to love us always. So receive and celebrate that love, and then go and live a life worthy of it.
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
In as much as God is revealed to as the words of The Book are illuminated by the Spirit -- we receive truth. Let us open our hearts and minds to allow God to be present in us -- that we might know -- in the depths of our being -- more truth than when we came into this place. Amen.
CALL TO THE OFFERING
Let us give because it is a testimony to the love of God.
Let us give as a witness to our gratitude for God's gifts to us.
Let us give because it reveals to the world that we trust God.
Come -- let us give!
PASTORAL PRAYER
Something we have been doing lately in our church is asking people to stand and share what God has done in their lives recently.
It is important for the people of God to be reminded that God is not just out there somewhere, but rather is at work in and around us all the time. You may want to open it up and encourage people to share. If this is not something your church is used to -- it would be helpful to have a couple of people set up ahead of time to get things started. Make sure they keep their sharing very brief as a model for others to follow.
Close this time with a simple prayer of celebration for the work of God in our lives.
Another option for pastoral prayer this week is read Psalm 22 with a short explanation as to how to pray it. The Psalm alternates between pain, remembering the grace that God has shown, and calling on God to show such grace again. This messianic Psalm certainly reflects the realities of many of the lives in our churches. Here is one way of praying it.
My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?
Why are you so far from saving me from my difficulties?
Why do you seem deaf to my groans?
I cry out day and night, but you do not answer.
And yet I know that you are enthroned as the Holy One.
I know you are worthy of praise.
Our ancestors put their trust in you and you delivered them.
They cried out to you and you saved them.
But I feel like a worm and not a human being.
Others scorn and despise me.
They mock me, and insult me.
They say, "This one trusts in God. Let God provide rescue and deliverance."
And yet you brought me into this world and led me to trust in you from birth.
From the beginning you have been my God.
So be close to me, for trouble is near and you are the only one who can help.
Wild animals surround me.
I am weak.
My bones ache.
My heart has melted.
My strength dried up.
Lord, come quickly to help me.
Deliver me. Rescue me.
Oh, I will declare your name to all your people. I will praise you.
For you have not despised the suffering.
You do not ignore those who cry to you for help.
I know that the poor will one day eat and be satisfied.
I know that one day all the nations will bow before you, and joy and
righteousness and peace will reign for all your people forever more.
O Lord -- even in our suffering let us know that you are God indeed.
Amen.
MUSIC
All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name
I'd Rather Have Jesus
The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, WORD Music -- 1986 edition
Be Thou My Vision
I Want to Be Like Jesus
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
Once to Every Man and Nation
(The language in this hymn is archaic but the message -- the idea that we must choose to do the right is very appropriate for this week's theme.)
Holy, Holy, Holy
I Will Call Upon the Lord
Immortal, Invisible
If My People's Hearts Are Humbled
The popular Vineyard tune, "Holiness," is appropriate for this theme
Humble Thyself In the Sight of the Lord
Did You Hear the Mountains Tremble?
Let Justice Roll Down -- is a marvelous song based on Amos 5.
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Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Hebrews 4:12-16
Text: And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. (v. 13)
Object: a big piece of clear plastic used to cover many or all of the children
Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to find something out about God and something about ourselves. Have you ever done something that you were really ashamed of? (let them answer) You don't have to tell me what it was, but I want you to think about it. When you have thought about his awful thing that you did or the stupid thing that you did that makes you ashamed, then just raise your hand. (wait for a few hands to be put up before moving to the next part) When you feel ashamed or embarrassed for something you have done, you feel like hiding, don't you? (let them answer) Of course you do. You wish that no one could see you. If there was any place to hide, you would like to hide.
I guess that is the way we should feel when we commit any sin. Some people stay away from coming to worship services when they have done some sin that they think is really awful. They try to hide from God.
Let's pretend that all of us have done some pretty awful things, and we want to hide from our parents. I am going to help you hide so that no one here today will see you. I brought along a big covering that I will put over the top of all of you. You stay under it and be pretty quiet and no one will know that you are here. (take out the plastic covering) Now think about the stupid thing that you did or that pretty awful thing that you don't want anyone to know about while I am covering you. (put the plastic covering over them)
Is everyone covered? (let them answer) Do you feel better now that you are hidden? Are you glad that no one can see how embarrassed or sorry you feel? (let them answer) I don't think anyone here can see you, do you? (let them answer) That's right. Of course, they can see you. Everyone here can see right through the plastic covering that I put over you.
That's the same way it is with God. People try to hide their sins from God, and they think that they are doing a pretty good job of it. But they are only kidding themselves. You can't hide from God in his world no matter where you are. God sees and knows everything about us.
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The Immediate Word, October 12, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
The news this week is filled with angry and concerned people wanting to know "what really happened." This question is being posed on matters as grave as an apparent security breach regarding an American CIA operative, to the not so funny political comedy taking place in California. What really happened; how did we get here?
We at The Immediate Word believe the lectionary gospel reading for this week offers an excellent opportunity to discuss the matter of finding the truth. Team member George Murphy reflects on how and why we seek truth and perhaps even why we don't. Team responses, illustrations, worship resources by Chuck Cammarata, and a children's sermon by Wesley Runk are included.
Can You Handle The Truth
Team Comments
Related Illustrations
Worship Resources
Children's Sermon
Can You Handle The Truth?
By George L. Murphy
Mark 10:17-31; Job 23:1-9, 16-17
President Bush has said that he wants to know the truth about charges that someone in the White House leaked classified information to the press. Many Americans want to know that -- and other things too. What's the truth about Arnold Schwarzenegger's treatment of women and his views about Hitler? Why do our state governments have budget crises, and why isn't education being funded adequately? Why did we really go to war in Iraq? And more personally, we'd like to know the truth about ourselves. What do our colleagues and putative friends really think of us?
And maybe -- in times of quiet or crisis -- we wonder what the truth is about God (if there is a God). Not just abstract theological questions, but how do I stand with God -- truly?
We say that we want the truth, but do we really? Sometimes a glimmer of the truth makes us long for a comfortable ignorance. There comes to mind a well-known movie line of recent years, that of Jack Nicholson as Colonel Jessep in the film A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the truth!" Do we really want the truth, or a pleasant lie? "Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions" (Isaiah 30:10).
In this week's gospel (Mark 10:17-31), a rich man comes to Jesus to find the way to eternal life. He isn't satisfied with the conventional answer that he's to obey the commandments because he thinks he's done that. "No," he says, "I want the real thing. I want the truth." But then Jesus told him the truth: "Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." And "he was shocked and went away grieving."
In one sense the rich man "couldn't handle the truth." But give him credit. He was honest enough to believe that Jesus meant what he said. He didn't try to water down Jesus' instruction. It would have been easy for him to say, "All right. I'll adopt a detached attitude toward my wealth and be sure to give generously to the poor. I'm sure that that's what Jesus means rather than any radical notion of actually -- well, selling all that I have."
Is that a parody? Perhaps, but it's what Christians have all too often done with this story. That tradition goes back at least to around A.D. 200 with Clement of Alexandria's "Who is the Rich Man that Shall be Saved?" -- perhaps when Christianity was just beginning to appeal to a significant number of well-to-do people. "[Jesus] does not, as some conceived off-hand, bid him to throw away the substance he possessed, and abandon his property; but bids him banish from his soul his notions about wealth, his excitement and morbid feeling about it ..." said Clement. 1
And there are "explanations" of Jesus' following words to his disciples about the camel passing through the eye of a needle that I'm sure many of you have heard. One of the gates of Jerusalem was called "the needle's eye" because it was so narrow that a camel could barely squeeze through it. There is, unfortunately, no evidence for such a gate. Or perhaps kamelon, "camel," should be "corrected" to kamilon, "rope" or "cable," as a few scribes in fact did -- but the textual evidence for "camel" is overwhelming.
Both of those proposals are attempts to evade the plain meaning of Jesus' vivid imagery: A rich person entering the Kingdom of God is impossible by human standards, though it is possible with God. That's the truth, whether we can handle it or not. And it may be more difficult to handle if we realize that by the standards of Jesus' time it's not only Bill Gates but many ordinary people in our congregations who are "rich."
What is the truth that needs to be communicated in a sermon based on this text? On the one hand, it is somewhat milder and easier to handle than a straightforward demand that everyone get rid of all his or her wealth. Jesus does not give that command to everyone he encounters in the Gospels. What is common to all is the call, "Come, follow me."
On the other hand, the call to follow Christ is more radical than a demand merely to give up money. It is a call to take up the cross and follow Christ. It is ultimately the call to be willing to give up life itself, to be willing to be a seed that falls into the ground and dies. In the case of the man in this week's gospel, that was literally a call to give up his wealth (and, it should be noted, give it to the poor, not simply throw it away) in order to be a disciple. That same call may come to others -- as it did, for example, to St. Antony when he heard the story of the rich man being read in church. 2
It may come. Or the call may be to give up something else dear to a person, something that receives the trust and love due to God alone, something that keeps the person from following Christ with her or his whole heart. In most cases an outside observer won't be able to tell what that is for another person, and our difficulty in handling the truth makes it hard for us to recognize our own idols. But one way of putting the matter in a sermon is to pose the question: Is there something in your life which, if Christ told you to give it up, would cause you to be shocked and go away grieving?
There is, of course, some truth to the kind of statement we heard from Clement of Alexandria. Money itself is not evil, and problems only arise from undue attachment to wealth. But sometimes you can't get rid of the attachment without getting rid of the wealth. Similar things can be said about other objects of our veneration.
As this story in the gospel, and the history of attempts to dilute it, show, the truth about our relationship with God may be difficult for us to accept. That fact emerges in a different way from the Book of Job, from which we have four selections as the First Lesson during October. In the reading this week (Job 23:1-9, 16-17), that suffering man longs to be able just to speak with God and lay out his case. Surely, Job thinks, then God would be reasonable and I would be able to learn the truth about my situation. But finally, when the LORD answers out of the whirlwind, Job is left to say, "I have uttered what I did not understand" (42:3). (This latter verse will be part of the reading for October 26.)
The truth that Job hears from the LORD is not a nice reasonable explanation of why bad things happen to good people. It is not really an explanation at all. (G. K. Chesterton summarized the Book of Job somewhere by saying that Job complains, "I don't understand," and God's answer is, "You don't understand.") God's response to Job is, "I'm the creator and you're not."
(There is a similar note, though muted, in the alternate First Lesson, Amos 5:6-15, from which verses 8 and 9 should not be omitted. It is "the one who made the Pleiades and Orion," the creator of the universe, who demands justice for the poor of Samaria.)
The problems of suffering and evil pose a serious obstacle to Christianity for many people. If we want to respond to these concerns, Job ought to warn us against simplistic solutions. It does not really give us a "solution," nor does the Bible as a whole offer a rational theodicy. The most we can say is that God does not stand aloof from suffering and evil but in the event of the cross takes the evil and suffering of the world upon himself. If we're going to preach on Job, it should not be to offer cheap answers to the questions that people have.
At the same time, some of the objections that people have that are posed as "I can't believe that God would allow ___," with the blank to be filled in with whatever bad thing they are concerned about, may be another example of not being able to handle the truth. (And the statement may in fact just be a theoretical one made to avoid serious discussion. It's one thing for a child of someone who died at Auschwitz to say, "I can't believe in a God who would allow the Holocaust," and something else for that to be said by a comfortable American Gentile.) The truth is, as Job learned, that God is God and we're not God. The truth is that while God's "property is always to have mercy" (as the Book of Common Prayer says), God does things, and allows things, that we don't like and find hard to justify. "Does disaster befall a city unless the LORD has done it?" asks another text from Amos (3:6).
Traditional theology has made a distinction between God's "proper work" and God's "strange" or "alien" work. The former is the work that displays the true character of God, showing love, mercy, and blessing. The latter is work that is foreign to God's character but which is done for the sake of God's proper work. God condemns in order to bring to repentance, and injures in order to heal. Metaphors like surgery or -- for a more modern image -- chemotherapy may be helpful here. The rich man is invited to the radical surgery of a wealthechtomy in order to be able to follow Jesus.
Again, some of us can't handle this truth. In one Seinfeld episode, George was sure he was going to die just at the time when the TV show that he and Jerry had written was about to be picked up. He tells his therapist that he knew God would never allow him to succeed. When she says that she thought he didn't believe in God, he says, "I do for the bad stuff!" The idea of some people is just the opposite: They believe in God for the good stuff but not for anything bad. Some versions of process theology provide a more sophisticated version of this idea.
I don't recommend a sermon whose major theme is "God does a lot of bad stuff." But a reminder of the truth that God is at work in the bad stuff with the ultimate purpose of good is something that people can stand to be reminded of in uncertain times. In doing that it isn't necessary to tell people not to complain and to accept evil in a docile way: Job didn't, and God said that he had "spoken of me what is right" (Job 42:7).
Suffering and privation are not always a consequence of a person's sin: Job (as well as John 9:3) clearly refutes this idea. But people do need to recognize the truth that some of the bad things that happen to them are a result of their own actions. There is no cosmic mystery or serious problem of theodicy about why a person who has smoked for forty years gets lung cancer. The truth about our harmful addictions and over-indulgences merges into an even more fundamental truth that we need to acknowledge -- that we are sinners, that we put other things (like the rich man's wealth) ahead of God. That is a truth that is of fundamental importance.
As revelations about activities of Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger (not to mention a host of other public figures) have shown, people who have positions of leadership in society are not always totally virtuous figures. (At the time that I'm writing this, it isn't known whether or not Schwarzenegger will be the next Governor of California.) That is a truth that we don't like to face -- and to a certain extent shouldn't have to face. There are standards of conduct that we ought to be able to expect of such people.
But sometimes we benefit from unpleasant activities that we'd just as soon not know about so that we can preserve our sense of moral purity. Colonel Jessep who utters the line, "You can't handle the truth," in A Few Good Men turns out to be the bad guy in that film. He is the officer who is responsible for secretly ordering two men under his command to carry out a "Code Red" (physical abuse) of a "substandard" Marine who unexpectedly dies from the attack. Jessep is caught when a clever young Navy lawyer (Tom Cruise) goads him to into blurting out the truth during a court martial. So right and wrong are clearly distinguished.
Except that Colonel Jessep's courtroom statement has a disturbing aspect. He thinks that he's justified in carrying out actions that are against orders, and in lying and falsifying evidence to cover up his actions. Why? In order to maintain discipline so that his troops will be prepared to defend the freedom of Americans who are blissfully ignorant of the distasteful actions that are needed to preserve their way of life. Unethical? Yes. Self-serving? Perhaps. But is there some validity to his statement? Yes. There are truths we would prefer not to handle. We would like to get our omelets without having to be told that eggs were broken.
There may not seem to be much of religious value in that insight. But if Christians are to be people of the truth, they should try to live in the world without illusions -- to "be wise as serpents and innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16). It wouldn't hurt, especially as we approach a presidential election year, to call people to a reality check. The writer of Isaiah 45:1-7 didn't have to imagine that the pagan Cyrus was perfect in order to view him as the LORD's anointed.
It's not, as Colonel Jessep suggested, just "you" -- the Navy lawyer, or even all those of us who've never had to serve in combat or in a front-line position, who have difficulty in handling the truth. It's more general: "Human-kind cannot bear very much reality," wrote T.S. Eliot. 3 This is a problem that the human race has faced from the beginning, since (in the story) Adam and Eve hid from God and tried to shift the blame for their actions. It is not a problem that we will ever overcome by ourselves.
It is through the mercy of God who is willing to stoop to the strange work of separating us from our inordinate affections and illusions that illumination comes. "If you continue in my word," Jesus says, "You are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32).
Notes
1. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume II (Eerdmans, 1979), p. 594.
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2. Athansius, "Life of Antony" in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Volume 4 (Eerdmans, 1978), p.196.
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3. T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," in Collected Poems, 1909-1962 (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963).
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Team Comments
Stan Purdum responds: Your piece is well done, and I think the "God in the bad stuff" is a theme people don't hear often, but should. What follows is not a criticism, but maybe another avenue of thought regarding truth. There is a move afoot for atheists, agnostics, and other "free-thinkers" to co-opt the word "bright" as a term to label themselves, much the way homosexuals have taken over the word "gay" as a label. The problem with using bright that way, however, is the implication it carries that those who rely on rationality as the only source of knowledge about the truth are somehow smarter than everybody else. I think Christians who are not afraid of the truth are among the brightest people around.
Today's Wall Street Journal had an editorial challenging the idea that rational nonbelievers are brighter. I sent the following letter to the editor:
To the editor:
Thanks for Dinesh D'Souza's article "No So 'Bright' " (October 6, 2003, A16). Mr. D'Souza rightly notes that many atheists consider themselves more rational than religious believers. What those who now wish to be called "bright" often assume is that believers abandon reason and choose faith instead -- or believe in opposition to reason. Actually, many of us have discovered faith in the direction reason points. Reason by itself cannot take us all the way to God, but it can take us a long way on the journey.
The so-called leap of faith means that faith goes beyond reason, but not in a different direction. The leap is from the springboard of reason. It would be a shame to limit such a useful word as "bright" to those who think reason is the limit of knowledge.
Rev. Stan Purdum
North Canton, Ohio
George Murphy responds to Stan Purdum: Of course, but it's precisely the intention of atheists and others who want to co-opt the "bright" label to say that they are smarter than religious people and Christians in particular. Frankly, trying to label oneself as "bright" seems rather childish to me. I find it hard to believe that anybody who isn't ideologically blinded would take it seriously.
Maybe you'll want to include some TIW comment along the lines that you've sketched here. My own approach would be to say that it's wrong to think that the question of who is more "rational" has to do with one's fundamental beliefs. It has rather to do with how one reasons from those beliefs. I don't think, for example, that the militantly atheistic evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is "irrational." I think that his fundamental beliefs are wrong. Impeccable reason applied to incorrect postulates will produce incorrect results. GIGO (garbage in garbage out), as the computer programmers say. But I think that developing that argument would take my material somewhat off course.
Carter Shelley responds: George, you offer a lot of helpful insights this week. One of the best examples of an individual (or group's) inability to deal with "truth" is presented to us by the book of Job. It's prologue and epilogue, which are written in prose and not poetry like the remainder of the book, clearly demonstrate how uncomfortable a later author was with God's ultimate answer to Job. It's important for church members to have this distinction made. A God who gambles with human life better fits the realm of mythology than Christianity, and in itself isn't a more comforting explanation than the one Job receives: God's presence.
The rest of my remarks this week follow the thread provided by the word "truth." Thus, I am following in the tradition of 17th and 18th century preachers who often took a word or theme from a biblical text rather than preaching upon the entire pericope, psalm, or prophesy.
One of the most fundamental, and ongoing, debates in the field of Rhetoric concerns "truth." It goes back to the writings of Plato and Aristotle and continues to be an issue today. The Socratic method as recorded by Plato shows Socrates using the questions to teach his students. This method dependent upon careful questioning allows the student to discover truth for himself (sic) rather than being taught it as a fact or as knowledge of the wise imparted to the novice pupil. Most of us hardheaded human beings learn truth from experience not from the advice of others. We also tend to learn it the hard way, by making mistakes and worshiping false gods: money, politics, family, success, fame, security, etc.
As we know, truth and fact are not always the same thing. The two creation stories in Genesis offer truth about God's creation of the world, but they are not necessarily scientific facts. At the end of the play Inherit the Wind about the debate over evolution being taught in public schools, the character Attorney Clarence Darrow holds the Bible in one hand and Origins of the Species in the other and weighs them against each other.
In Aristotle's On Rhetoric he identifies three ways to communicate with people through speech: ethos, logos, and pathos. Appeals to the ethical rightness of a cause, logical arguments to promote a cause, and appeals to the emotions of the listener are all valid ways to win people to one's own way of viewing the world. Ethos offers the best example as pertains to truth. If a man or woman lives the ethical life he or she proclaims, then its argument is reinforced and validated. The reason rhetoric has a negative connotation for most Americans today stems from the use of rhetoric to convey messages that do not authenticate or validate the sincerity of the speaker. John McCain's waffling about his support of opposition to the war in Iraq offers one example. Almost any politician quoted on the air gets heard with a jaundiced ear by us, because we are used to politicians saying what they think they should say in order to be elected or re-elected rather than giving us a candid and consistent message and platform. Jesus was not only "the way, the truth and the life," Jesus embodied what he proclaimed.
Here follow some examples and quotes pertinent to "truth."
In Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, Frederick Buechner provides an extended discussion of the meaning of truth, especially as it pertains to preaching. The opening illustration which helps direct Buechner's discussion is his portrayal of Pontius Pilate who poses the question to Jesus.
A particular truth can be stated in words -- that life is better than death and love than hate, that there is a God or is not, that light travels faster than sound and cancer can sometimes be cured if you discover it in time. But truth itself is another matter, the truth that Pilate asked for, tired and bored and depressed by his long day. Truth itself cannot be stated. Truth simply is, and is what is, the good with the bad, the joy with the despair, the presence and absence of God.... (18)
Quotes from The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations:
"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think its hell." Harry Truman
"If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." Oscar Wilde
Quotes from Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations:
"Tis strange, but true, truth is always strange, stranger than fiction." Lord Byron
"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple." Oscar Wilde
"It reminds me of the small boy who jumbled his biblical verses and said: 'A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble.' " Anonymous
Chuck Cammarata responds: Marvelous work. There is too much compromised Christianity in our world and too little of the real thing. I know that we all fall short, but when we start aiming short of the mark, especially when we who preach start moving the target closer, the lives of the faithful, and the witness of the church become less salt and light, and more like all that surrounds us. Thanks for a solid, unvarnished gospel challenge this week.
Carlos Wilton responds: Thank you, George, for not ducking the challenging story of Jesus' encounter with the rich young man. As you rightly point out, few teachings of Jesus create more discomfort than this one. The passage through the needle's eye pinches us. It forces us to confront who we are, and how wealthy we truly are.
Most of us would rather not think of ourselves as wealthy. But we are. There's a website that starkly illustrates the economic disparity between how we in the "first world" live our lives, and how most other people in the world struggle through their lives. It's part of the website of a British charity, and it's called the "Global Rich List": http://www.globalrichlist.com/index.php
Visitors to the website are asked -- anonymously -- to key in their approximate annual income. One click of the mouse later, and a bar graph appears, with an arrow indicating where they appear on the global economic spectrum.
I'm a pastor. I generally think of my income as modest. Yet when I entered our annual household income into the "Global Rich List" website and clicked the mouse button, the little arrow indicating my place on the spectrum was just about as far over toward wealthy as it could go. A rude awakening!
Few readers of today's gospel lesson identify with the rich young man. We'd much prefer to focus on the well-heeled celebrities who grace the pages of People magazine -- they of the multimillion-dollar beach houses and the expensive sports cars. Yet the truth is, to most of the world, we're the rich people. The typical middle-class lifestyle so many of us consider ordinary is the stuff of dreams for most of God's people.
In a Sojourners magazine article last year ("Jesus Visits the Hamptons," Sojourners Online, March-April 2002), William Willimon quotes G. K. Chesterton: "It may be possible to have a good debate over whether or not Jesus believed in fairies. It is a tantalizing question. Alas, it is impossible to have any sort of debate over whether or not Jesus believed that rich people were in big trouble -- there is too much evidence on the subject and it is overwhelming."
One of the primary pieces of evidence for this viewpoint of Jesus' is this week's gospel reading. Much as we'd like to escape it, we can't. It's the truth.
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Related Illustrations
ON WEALTH
"There is a scene in Tennessee Williams' play, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, in which Big Daddy and his son, Brick, are talking in the basement, surrounded by all the junk that Big Daddy has worked so hard to purchase over the years. Brick is exploring questions of meaning far too sensitive for his father, who is pretty miserable, to understand. In the course of the conversation, he looks at all the stuff in the basement and asks a deeply theological question: 'Big Daddy, why'd you buy all this junk?' Big Daddy answers, 'Because I wanted to live. Because I wanted my life to amount to something.' "
-- Michael Lindvall, in a sermon, "The Indirect Route," on the Brick Presbyterian Church, NY, website, downloaded 10/5/03
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"Imagine that you come from a large family in which one brother ended up with a whole lot more than the rest of you. Sometimes it happens that way, the luck falling to one guy who didn't do that much to deserve it. Imagine his gorgeous house on a huge tract of forests, rolling hills, and fertile fields. Your other relatives have decent places with smaller yards, but yours is mostly dust. Your lucky brother eats well, he has meat every day -- in fact, let's face it, he's corpulent, and so are his kids. At your house, meanwhile, things are bad: Your kids cry themselves to sleep on empty stomachs. Your brother must not be able to hear them from the veranda where he dines, because he throws away all the food he can't finish. He will do you this favor: He's made a TV program of himself eating. If you want, you can watch it from your house. But you can't have his food, his house, or the car he drives around in to view his unspoiled forests and majestic purple mountains. The rest of the family has noticed that all his driving is kicking up dust, wrecking not only the edges of his property but also their less pristine backyards and even yours, which was dust to begin with. He's dammed the river to irrigate his fields, so that only a trickle reaches your place, and it's nasty. You're beginning to see that these problems are deep and deadly, that you'll be the first to starve, and the others will follow. The family takes a vote and agrees to do a handful of obvious things that will keep down the dust and clear the water -- all except Fat Brother. He walks away from the table. He says God gave him good land and the right to be greedy."
-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Saying Grace," in Small Wonder: Essays (HarperCollins 2002), pp. 24-25.
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ON TRUTH
When former New York mayor David Dinkins found himself in trouble with the IRS, he found a way to be, shall we say, creative with the truth. "I haven't committed a crime," Dinkins told reporters. "What I did was fail to comply with the law."
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"I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version ..." [In other words, "I lied."]
-- Colonel Oliver North, from his Iran-Contra testimony
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Truth, as they say, is very often stranger than fiction. If you'd like an example of this little adage, there are few better stories than one that's come to be known in the true-life annals of crime as "the FBI Pizza Caper."
The story comes from an impeccable source: James Woolsey, director of the CIA in the early 1990s. Woolsey never did reveal how the FBI transcript of a certain wiretapped conversation fell into his hands. All he would say is that he obtained it from a friend "who used to be with counterintelligence in Washington."
Anyway, it seems the FBI was investigating a psychiatric hospital in San Diego. A horde of FBI agents had descended upon the hospital business office one morning, armed not with guns but with calculators. They were searching for evidence of insurance fraud. Quickly the crack team of investigators set to work, reviewing files and auditing financial records.
Many hours -- and thousands of files -- later, the FBI agents were starting to work up an appetite. The agent in charge phoned a nearby pizza parlor to order dinner.
Now it so happened that someone at the Bureau was taping every telephone call in and out of the hospital that day. If it hadn't been so, why, this conversation might have been lost to posterity. The transcript goes like this:
Agent: "Hello. I'd like to order 19 large pizzas and 67 cans of soda."
Pizza Man: "And where would you like them delivered?"
Agent: "We're over at the psychiatric hospital."
Pizza Man: "To the psychiatric hospital?"
Agent: "That's right. I'm an FBI agent."
Pizza Man: "You're an FBI agent?"
Agent: "That's correct. Just about everybody here is."
Pizza Man: "I see. And you're at the psychiatric hospital?"
Agent: "That's correct. And make sure you don't go through the front doors. We have them locked. You'll have to go around the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas."
Pizza Man: "And you say you're all FBI agents?"
Agent: "That's right. How soon can you have them here?"
Pizza Man: "And everyone at the psychiatric hospital is an FBI agent?"
Agent: "That's right. We've been here all day, and we're starving."
Pizza Man: "How are you going to pay for all of this?"
Agent: "I have my checkbook right here."
Pizza Man: "And you're all FBI agents?"
Agent: "That's right. Everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked."
Pizza Man: "I don't think so." Click.
Sometimes, in life, the truth can be hard to recognize.
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"What is worst of all is to advocate Christianity, not because it is true but because it might prove useful.... To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.... It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society."
-- T. S. Eliot
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One-Third of Teens Would Act Unethically to Get Ahead, According to Junior Achievement/Harris Interactive Poll
Colorado Springs, Colo. -- Thirty-three percent of teens would act unethically to get ahead or to make more money if there was no chance of getting caught, according to a new Junior Achievement/Harris Interactive Poll of 624 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. Twenty-five percent said they were "not sure" and 42 percent said they would not.
For the full story, visit:
http://www.ja.org/about/about_newsitem.asp?StoryID=149
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A September 3, 2003, New York Times article, "A Campus Fad That's Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism," by Sara Rimer, contained the following disturbing statistics:
A study conducted on 23 college campuses has found that Internet plagiarism is rising among students.
Thirty-eight percent of the undergraduate students surveyed said that in the last year they had engaged in one or more instances of "cut-and-paste" plagiarism involving the Internet, paraphrasing or copying anywhere from a few sentences to a full paragraph from the Web without citing the source. Almost half the students said they considered such behavior trivial or not cheating at all.
Only 10 percent of students had acknowledged such cheating in a similar, but much smaller survey three years ago ...
"When I work with high school students, what I hear is, `Everyone cheats, it's not all that important,' " Professor [Donald L.] McCabe [of Rutgers University] said. "They say: `It's just to get into college. When I get into college, I won't do it.' But then you survey college students, and you hear the same thing."
The undergraduates say they need to cheat because of the intense competition to get into graduate school, and land the top jobs, Professor McCabe said. "It never stops," he said.
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In a sermon, "On Freedom," preached in 1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that the word set forth in John 8:32 -- "The truth shall set you free" -- is the most revolutionary word in all the New Testament. This is so, he said, because the truth of God "destroys our untruth and creates truth. It destroys hatred and creates love. God's truth is God's love, and God's love frees us from ourselves to be free for others."
-- William Stacy Johnson in the Presbyterian Outlook, 2/26/01, p. 10.
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Worship Resources
By Chuck Cammarata
CALL TO WORSHIP
LEADER: Jesus said
PEOPLE: I AM THE WAY,
LEADER: And the truth,
PEOPLE: AND THE LIFE.
LEADER: None enters the Kingdom of heaven
PEOPLE: UNLESS GOD DRAWS THEM.
LEADER: Praise him, for he is the way
PEOPLE: INTO PARADISE.
LEADER: Praise him, for he is the truth;
PEOPLE: A REVELATION OF ULTIMATE REALITY.
LEADER: Praise him, for he is the life
PEOPLE: THAT IS ABUNDANT AND ETERNAL.
LEADER: Come, let us praise God,
PEOPLE: AND CELEBRATE OUR GOOD FORTUNE
LEADER: At knowing the One who is the Way,
PEOPLE: AND THE TRUTH,
LEADER: And the life!
PEOPLE: AMEN!
INVITATION TO CONFESSION
Pilate asked, "What is truth?" But the reality is that truth is not a "what," but a "who." Truth is not an equation or a proposition, but a person -- Jesus Christ. Only in and through him can life be rightly understood. Only in him can we develop the humility needed to appreciate life. Only in him can we see clearly that love is ultimate reality. Only in him can we understand how to extend love even to enemies. Only in him can we have hope for the victory of life over death. He is the truth! He is the key to life lived abundantly. Will you pray with me?
PRAYER OF CONFESSION
ALL: Holy God -- we confess to you that sometimes we can't stand the truth.
We are so comfortable in our safe little worlds that we don't want the apple cart upset, and truth is often upsetting. The truth is that we are all sinful -- more so than we like to admit. The truth is that our devotion is often lukewarm. The truth is that the world is filled with suffering that we ignore. The truth is painful. The truth is a cross. Help us this day to hear the truth that it is only when we go to the cross that we can experience the glory of the resurrection life. We ask it in the name of the one who endured the cross for the sake of the glory that lay beyond it. Amen.
ASSURANCE OF PARDON
The man said to me with tears in his eyes, "She has loved me through years of putting my job first. She loved me when I wanted to be a big shot and spent a lot of time at the club rubbing elbows with important people. She loved me when I was moody and distant. She loved me when I was unfaithful. She loves me still, though I don't come close to deserving her love."
And I said to him, "She loves you with the love of God. For his love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. His love never ends."
But that is not all that I said to my friend. After I encouraged him to celebrate his wife's godly love for him, I told him, "Now go and do everything you can to live a life worthy of that love!"
This is the whole gospel -- God forgives and continues to love us always. So receive and celebrate that love, and then go and live a life worthy of it.
PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION
In as much as God is revealed to as the words of The Book are illuminated by the Spirit -- we receive truth. Let us open our hearts and minds to allow God to be present in us -- that we might know -- in the depths of our being -- more truth than when we came into this place. Amen.
CALL TO THE OFFERING
Let us give because it is a testimony to the love of God.
Let us give as a witness to our gratitude for God's gifts to us.
Let us give because it reveals to the world that we trust God.
Come -- let us give!
PASTORAL PRAYER
Something we have been doing lately in our church is asking people to stand and share what God has done in their lives recently.
It is important for the people of God to be reminded that God is not just out there somewhere, but rather is at work in and around us all the time. You may want to open it up and encourage people to share. If this is not something your church is used to -- it would be helpful to have a couple of people set up ahead of time to get things started. Make sure they keep their sharing very brief as a model for others to follow.
Close this time with a simple prayer of celebration for the work of God in our lives.
Another option for pastoral prayer this week is read Psalm 22 with a short explanation as to how to pray it. The Psalm alternates between pain, remembering the grace that God has shown, and calling on God to show such grace again. This messianic Psalm certainly reflects the realities of many of the lives in our churches. Here is one way of praying it.
My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?
Why are you so far from saving me from my difficulties?
Why do you seem deaf to my groans?
I cry out day and night, but you do not answer.
And yet I know that you are enthroned as the Holy One.
I know you are worthy of praise.
Our ancestors put their trust in you and you delivered them.
They cried out to you and you saved them.
But I feel like a worm and not a human being.
Others scorn and despise me.
They mock me, and insult me.
They say, "This one trusts in God. Let God provide rescue and deliverance."
And yet you brought me into this world and led me to trust in you from birth.
From the beginning you have been my God.
So be close to me, for trouble is near and you are the only one who can help.
Wild animals surround me.
I am weak.
My bones ache.
My heart has melted.
My strength dried up.
Lord, come quickly to help me.
Deliver me. Rescue me.
Oh, I will declare your name to all your people. I will praise you.
For you have not despised the suffering.
You do not ignore those who cry to you for help.
I know that the poor will one day eat and be satisfied.
I know that one day all the nations will bow before you, and joy and
righteousness and peace will reign for all your people forever more.
O Lord -- even in our suffering let us know that you are God indeed.
Amen.
MUSIC
All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name
I'd Rather Have Jesus
The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, WORD Music -- 1986 edition
Be Thou My Vision
I Want to Be Like Jesus
O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee
Once to Every Man and Nation
(The language in this hymn is archaic but the message -- the idea that we must choose to do the right is very appropriate for this week's theme.)
Holy, Holy, Holy
I Will Call Upon the Lord
Immortal, Invisible
If My People's Hearts Are Humbled
The popular Vineyard tune, "Holiness," is appropriate for this theme
Humble Thyself In the Sight of the Lord
Did You Hear the Mountains Tremble?
Let Justice Roll Down -- is a marvelous song based on Amos 5.
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Children's Sermon
By Wesley Runk
Hebrews 4:12-16
Text: And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. (v. 13)
Object: a big piece of clear plastic used to cover many or all of the children
Good morning, boys and girls. Today we are going to find something out about God and something about ourselves. Have you ever done something that you were really ashamed of? (let them answer) You don't have to tell me what it was, but I want you to think about it. When you have thought about his awful thing that you did or the stupid thing that you did that makes you ashamed, then just raise your hand. (wait for a few hands to be put up before moving to the next part) When you feel ashamed or embarrassed for something you have done, you feel like hiding, don't you? (let them answer) Of course you do. You wish that no one could see you. If there was any place to hide, you would like to hide.
I guess that is the way we should feel when we commit any sin. Some people stay away from coming to worship services when they have done some sin that they think is really awful. They try to hide from God.
Let's pretend that all of us have done some pretty awful things, and we want to hide from our parents. I am going to help you hide so that no one here today will see you. I brought along a big covering that I will put over the top of all of you. You stay under it and be pretty quiet and no one will know that you are here. (take out the plastic covering) Now think about the stupid thing that you did or that pretty awful thing that you don't want anyone to know about while I am covering you. (put the plastic covering over them)
Is everyone covered? (let them answer) Do you feel better now that you are hidden? Are you glad that no one can see how embarrassed or sorry you feel? (let them answer) I don't think anyone here can see you, do you? (let them answer) That's right. Of course, they can see you. Everyone here can see right through the plastic covering that I put over you.
That's the same way it is with God. People try to hide their sins from God, and they think that they are doing a pretty good job of it. But they are only kidding themselves. You can't hide from God in his world no matter where you are. God sees and knows everything about us.
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The Immediate Word, October 12, 2003, issue.
Copyright 2003 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to The Immediate Word service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons and in worship and classroom settings only. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 4503, Lima, Ohio 45802-4503.
