Belonging To The Truth
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle B
(Note: Although the lectionary reading stops at verse 37, I recommend reading through verse 38a, which is an integral part of the pericope.)
I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Thus, you'll not be surprised when I say that Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who authorized Jesus' crucifixion, is not on my Christmas card list. But I also have to say that there is one point at which I have some sympathy for him. It's when, during his interrogation of Jesus after Jesus' arrest, Pilate says to Jesus, "What is truth?"
Given the circumstances, it seems unlikely that Pilate was asking for information or for Jesus' view on what truth was. Rather, it was a skeptical and perhaps even cynical reply to Jesus' statement that Jesus had come into the world to testify to the truth. Most likely, the sense of Pilate's response was, "Ha! Who's got time to worry about truth? I have to deal with what's expedient! And the truth isn't going to save you, anyway. Besides, who can say for sure what truth really is?"
I can sympathize with Pilate there because I know how I react when someone starts telling me that they know the truth: I start looking for the exits. I'm not objecting to honesty, which is a high virtue, but that is not what people are usually talking about when they say in a certain way, "I know the truth." That's often the opening line of a speech about life or politics or religion or who really shot John Kennedy or how to become an overnight millionaire or some other matter of human concern: My first thought is, "Uh, oh. I've got either a fanatic or a hyper-salesman on my hands."
Here's an example of the first: Several years ago, the members of a certain religious group gathered for a rally in Cleveland, Ohio. During a speech that was reported by the city's newspaper, the leader of this group said, "All churches except [our church] are prostitutes. Christendom is a huge religious mass today and is thoroughly leavened with paganism, worldliness, badness, traditions of men, hypocrisy, and doctrines of demons. All organized religion [except our group] are adulteresses."1 That is narrow-minded fanaticism, but its adherents would call it "Truth," with a capital "T."
For examples of the second, go to the Internet and type the word "truth" into one of the search engines. Then follow some of the links that the search brings up. One I found was a link titled "Finding the Universal Truth." When I clicked on that, it took me to a webpage that began with, "If we are to create abundance and prosperity using spiritual means, we must be grounded in truth." The copy went on to say how hard it is to find the truth, but that it can be done by using a certain powerful self-improvement technique, which it named. It went on to describe how wonderful I was going to feel with the guaranteed results of this self-improvement method, which I could obtain on a CD for only $239. At that point, I was right in sync with Pilate, sneering, "Right. What is truth?"
If Pilate's life experiences were anything like ours, we can understand why he took such a cynical view. But as we look more closely at the exchange between Pilate and Jesus, we can see that the two were not talking about the same thing.
One of the charges that had been brought against Jesus was that he claimed to be king of the Jews. Actually, we have no record of Jesus ever making that claim, but others said it about him. Even as early as the time of his birth, the Magi came asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2). At the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, when he called Nathanael to be a disciple, Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (John 1:49). And as recently as a few days before his arrest, as Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, the crowds welcomed him, shouting, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Luke 19:38).
The Jews, however, were not a free people. They had no political right to proclaim their own king. Palestine was a province of the Roman Empire, and for anybody other than Caesar to rise up and declare himself king would be perceived by the Romans as a threat to their rule. Thus Governor Pilate, as the local representative of Rome, had to be concerned about anyone rumored to have made such a claim. So his first question to Jesus, in chains before him, is "Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate wants to determine whether the prisoner is a threat to the state.
There follows an exchange where Jesus asks whether Pilate is really concerned that he is threat or whether someone, meaning the religious authorities, is manipulating the governor. Eventually, though, Jesus answers Pilate's question by saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." Pilate responds, "So you are a king?" missing altogether that Jesus is defining king and kingdom differently from how the empire views it. Jesus' answer, "You say that I am a king," tells Pilate that his understanding of kingship is inadequate to describe Jesus' role, which Jesus goes on to explain this way: "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." This then led to Pilate's mocking reply, "What is truth?"
Pilate understood enough of what Jesus said to realize that the prisoner was no danger to Rome, but the governor did not get on board with the rest of what Jesus said -- that his sovereignty applied not to a certain geographical location or to a certain tribe of people but to truth itself. In fact, earlier in John's Gospel, Jesus identified himself as truth itself, telling his disciples, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Here with Pilate, Jesus says that truth is something to which everyone who listens to him can "belong."
I find it significant that Jesus chose this word "belong," which implies that truth possesses us, rather than a word like "corner," which implies that we possess truth. Jesus could have said, "Everyone who corners the truth listens to my voice," but he didn't, and I think that is why I am so bothered by people who advertise, "We've got the truth" or "Only our group is true."
To see the difference between belonging to the truth and assuming you can corner it, consider the three basic tests of truth that classical philosophy offers.
The first is the correspondence theory. Truth is the agreement between statement of fact and actual fact. For example, if someone sells you a device for your car that purports to double your gas mileage, but after being installed it makes no difference, then there is no correspondence between the claim and reality. Thus, you conclude the claim is not the truth.
The correspondence theory has significant limitations as a truth test, however, because many situations offer no opportunity to check a claim against fact. If, for example, someone says, "You will go to heaven if you follow Jesus," there is no way to verify that by correspondence, since in this life we have no access to the fact of heaven.
The second classical truth test is the coherence theory. Something is true if it is consistent with other judgments already accepted as true. For example, if I say, "If you play with fire you are liable to get burned," you likely accept that as true because it in no way contradicts your previous experience with fire.
But there are limitations to the coherence theory. If your initial system of judgments is incorrect, new errors could be consistent with the errors in that system. If you start with the assumption that the white race is superior to all others, and then you hear of a black person who does something stupid, that does not contradict your racist presumptions, but that does not make your racist view correct. You started with a flawed system of ideas.
The third classical truth test is the pragmatic theory. Truth is what works or gives satisfactory results.
But some beliefs may work for a while only to be shown unworkable later. For example, in an earlier time, burning people to death as witches may have freed some people from certain fears, so in that sense it "worked." But it would not work today.
All three of these tests are helpful in making decisions about what is true, but as we have said, all three have their limitations, and answers of unshakable certainty will continue to elude us.
Another way to think about truth is to consider what it is not.
For starters, truth is not majority opinion. While this may seem obvious, consider how often we accept something as true simply because it seems to be believed by most people. But the majority can easily be wrong. At one time, most people believed the world was flat.
Truth is not edict, whether it is from the president of the country, the bishop of our church, or the smartest individual in the world. No matter how noble any of these sources might be, they cannot guarantee their decisions will be the truth. In the seventeenth century, Galileo was hauled before the church Inquisition for his claim the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. He was forced to recant, but that did not change the truth of his scientific assertion. In 1993, by the way, the Vatican officially, though belatedly, affirmed the validity of his work.
Truth is not something we can just sense. Many people have said, "I can tell when someone is lying" only to discover later they were wrong. Our instincts can be conditioned by many elements of our environment and upbringing, and can be very unreliable guides to the truth.
Truth is not pure logic or reason. Logic declares, for example, that it is mathematically impossible for any of you to leave this church building this morning. Logically, before you reach the door, you have to cover half of the distance, then cover half of the remaining distance, then half of that remaining distance, and so on, and never reach the door. Reason and logic can point toward ultimate truth, but they cannot take us all the way.
Truth is not enthusiastic sincerity. A church janitor, cleaning the pulpit after a Sunday service, found the preacher's notes. He noted a comment in margin: "Argument weak here, better holler!"
Truth is not a deposit of knowledge. We have more knowledge than ever today, and thanks to the Internet and other technology, better access to it than ever. In many places, part of that knowledge contradicts other parts, but even when it does not, it does not yield final answers. That body of knowledge is wonderfully useful and helpful, but it cannot be all there is to truth.
Finally, truth is not certainty. People who declare they have a corner on the truth usually are very certain about their claims. But they are almost certainly wrong.
Perhaps then, Pilate asked the wrong question. Instead of "What is truth?" he would have done better to ask, "Who is truth?" And to that Jesus responds, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
For us, the value of that statement is that while we cannot claim to know what is true in every situation, we can still belong to the one who is truth. We cannot prove to others that he is the truth, but we can experience the impact, affirm its glory, and proclaim its liberating effect.
Our faith says that God is the final source of truth, and Jesus is truth that leads to God. Thus, any honest search for truth leads us to God. In fact, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil once said, "Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms."2
The question "What is truth?" comes from a seeking mind, but the answer is only found by a seeking heart. God cannot be grasped by the gropings of our minds but he can be experienced through the depth of our commitment to him and the way we practice the things Jesus taught, such as loving our neighbor.
A few years ago at Trinity United Methodist Church in Youngstown, Ohio, there was a custodian named Katie Johnson. She had held that position for more than forty years, and the church had a policy in place that provided a pension for longtime employees when they retired. The policy specified that the person had to be 65 to receive the pension and submit proof of age. When Katie said she was ready to retire, however, there was a problem. Katie was a black woman who had been born to sharecropper parents in the deep South in days when some county governments didn't bother to record births of black children. Consequently, Katie had no proof of her birth date. If fact, she was not absolutely sure how old she was, though it was likely that she was at least 65. In any case, without a birth certificate, the church trustees, who oversaw the pension plan, were in a bit of a quandary about what to do. But that was solved pretty quickly when one of the trustees did the following: He said, "Katie has earned this pension and we want her to have it. I move that for purposes of retirement, Katie Johnson is 65 years old." Another trustee immediately seconded the motion, and the affirmative vote that followed was unanimous. Katie retired and received the pension, along with a celebration at the church in her honor.
Now you can argue that the trustees' action did not establish truth in the absolute sense, and you would be right. But I maintain that their action was a loving, Christian thing to do. They were not saying they had a corner on the truth -- who knew how old Katie actually was? But their action belonged to the truth. It was something that Christ would have done. It was kingdom behavior.
Likewise, we here who sincerely declare that Christ is our Lord belong to the truth. Truth is not something we have the corner on, or have the inside track on, but it is someone we follow and something we live.
____________
1.ÊFrom The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) sometime in 1975.
2.ÊQuoted by Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Friend, p. 7.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ. Thus, you'll not be surprised when I say that Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator who authorized Jesus' crucifixion, is not on my Christmas card list. But I also have to say that there is one point at which I have some sympathy for him. It's when, during his interrogation of Jesus after Jesus' arrest, Pilate says to Jesus, "What is truth?"
Given the circumstances, it seems unlikely that Pilate was asking for information or for Jesus' view on what truth was. Rather, it was a skeptical and perhaps even cynical reply to Jesus' statement that Jesus had come into the world to testify to the truth. Most likely, the sense of Pilate's response was, "Ha! Who's got time to worry about truth? I have to deal with what's expedient! And the truth isn't going to save you, anyway. Besides, who can say for sure what truth really is?"
I can sympathize with Pilate there because I know how I react when someone starts telling me that they know the truth: I start looking for the exits. I'm not objecting to honesty, which is a high virtue, but that is not what people are usually talking about when they say in a certain way, "I know the truth." That's often the opening line of a speech about life or politics or religion or who really shot John Kennedy or how to become an overnight millionaire or some other matter of human concern: My first thought is, "Uh, oh. I've got either a fanatic or a hyper-salesman on my hands."
Here's an example of the first: Several years ago, the members of a certain religious group gathered for a rally in Cleveland, Ohio. During a speech that was reported by the city's newspaper, the leader of this group said, "All churches except [our church] are prostitutes. Christendom is a huge religious mass today and is thoroughly leavened with paganism, worldliness, badness, traditions of men, hypocrisy, and doctrines of demons. All organized religion [except our group] are adulteresses."1 That is narrow-minded fanaticism, but its adherents would call it "Truth," with a capital "T."
For examples of the second, go to the Internet and type the word "truth" into one of the search engines. Then follow some of the links that the search brings up. One I found was a link titled "Finding the Universal Truth." When I clicked on that, it took me to a webpage that began with, "If we are to create abundance and prosperity using spiritual means, we must be grounded in truth." The copy went on to say how hard it is to find the truth, but that it can be done by using a certain powerful self-improvement technique, which it named. It went on to describe how wonderful I was going to feel with the guaranteed results of this self-improvement method, which I could obtain on a CD for only $239. At that point, I was right in sync with Pilate, sneering, "Right. What is truth?"
If Pilate's life experiences were anything like ours, we can understand why he took such a cynical view. But as we look more closely at the exchange between Pilate and Jesus, we can see that the two were not talking about the same thing.
One of the charges that had been brought against Jesus was that he claimed to be king of the Jews. Actually, we have no record of Jesus ever making that claim, but others said it about him. Even as early as the time of his birth, the Magi came asking, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?" (Matthew 2:2). At the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, when he called Nathanael to be a disciple, Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (John 1:49). And as recently as a few days before his arrest, as Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, the crowds welcomed him, shouting, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" (Luke 19:38).
The Jews, however, were not a free people. They had no political right to proclaim their own king. Palestine was a province of the Roman Empire, and for anybody other than Caesar to rise up and declare himself king would be perceived by the Romans as a threat to their rule. Thus Governor Pilate, as the local representative of Rome, had to be concerned about anyone rumored to have made such a claim. So his first question to Jesus, in chains before him, is "Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate wants to determine whether the prisoner is a threat to the state.
There follows an exchange where Jesus asks whether Pilate is really concerned that he is threat or whether someone, meaning the religious authorities, is manipulating the governor. Eventually, though, Jesus answers Pilate's question by saying, "My kingdom is not of this world." Pilate responds, "So you are a king?" missing altogether that Jesus is defining king and kingdom differently from how the empire views it. Jesus' answer, "You say that I am a king," tells Pilate that his understanding of kingship is inadequate to describe Jesus' role, which Jesus goes on to explain this way: "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." This then led to Pilate's mocking reply, "What is truth?"
Pilate understood enough of what Jesus said to realize that the prisoner was no danger to Rome, but the governor did not get on board with the rest of what Jesus said -- that his sovereignty applied not to a certain geographical location or to a certain tribe of people but to truth itself. In fact, earlier in John's Gospel, Jesus identified himself as truth itself, telling his disciples, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). Here with Pilate, Jesus says that truth is something to which everyone who listens to him can "belong."
I find it significant that Jesus chose this word "belong," which implies that truth possesses us, rather than a word like "corner," which implies that we possess truth. Jesus could have said, "Everyone who corners the truth listens to my voice," but he didn't, and I think that is why I am so bothered by people who advertise, "We've got the truth" or "Only our group is true."
To see the difference between belonging to the truth and assuming you can corner it, consider the three basic tests of truth that classical philosophy offers.
The first is the correspondence theory. Truth is the agreement between statement of fact and actual fact. For example, if someone sells you a device for your car that purports to double your gas mileage, but after being installed it makes no difference, then there is no correspondence between the claim and reality. Thus, you conclude the claim is not the truth.
The correspondence theory has significant limitations as a truth test, however, because many situations offer no opportunity to check a claim against fact. If, for example, someone says, "You will go to heaven if you follow Jesus," there is no way to verify that by correspondence, since in this life we have no access to the fact of heaven.
The second classical truth test is the coherence theory. Something is true if it is consistent with other judgments already accepted as true. For example, if I say, "If you play with fire you are liable to get burned," you likely accept that as true because it in no way contradicts your previous experience with fire.
But there are limitations to the coherence theory. If your initial system of judgments is incorrect, new errors could be consistent with the errors in that system. If you start with the assumption that the white race is superior to all others, and then you hear of a black person who does something stupid, that does not contradict your racist presumptions, but that does not make your racist view correct. You started with a flawed system of ideas.
The third classical truth test is the pragmatic theory. Truth is what works or gives satisfactory results.
But some beliefs may work for a while only to be shown unworkable later. For example, in an earlier time, burning people to death as witches may have freed some people from certain fears, so in that sense it "worked." But it would not work today.
All three of these tests are helpful in making decisions about what is true, but as we have said, all three have their limitations, and answers of unshakable certainty will continue to elude us.
Another way to think about truth is to consider what it is not.
For starters, truth is not majority opinion. While this may seem obvious, consider how often we accept something as true simply because it seems to be believed by most people. But the majority can easily be wrong. At one time, most people believed the world was flat.
Truth is not edict, whether it is from the president of the country, the bishop of our church, or the smartest individual in the world. No matter how noble any of these sources might be, they cannot guarantee their decisions will be the truth. In the seventeenth century, Galileo was hauled before the church Inquisition for his claim the sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe. He was forced to recant, but that did not change the truth of his scientific assertion. In 1993, by the way, the Vatican officially, though belatedly, affirmed the validity of his work.
Truth is not something we can just sense. Many people have said, "I can tell when someone is lying" only to discover later they were wrong. Our instincts can be conditioned by many elements of our environment and upbringing, and can be very unreliable guides to the truth.
Truth is not pure logic or reason. Logic declares, for example, that it is mathematically impossible for any of you to leave this church building this morning. Logically, before you reach the door, you have to cover half of the distance, then cover half of the remaining distance, then half of that remaining distance, and so on, and never reach the door. Reason and logic can point toward ultimate truth, but they cannot take us all the way.
Truth is not enthusiastic sincerity. A church janitor, cleaning the pulpit after a Sunday service, found the preacher's notes. He noted a comment in margin: "Argument weak here, better holler!"
Truth is not a deposit of knowledge. We have more knowledge than ever today, and thanks to the Internet and other technology, better access to it than ever. In many places, part of that knowledge contradicts other parts, but even when it does not, it does not yield final answers. That body of knowledge is wonderfully useful and helpful, but it cannot be all there is to truth.
Finally, truth is not certainty. People who declare they have a corner on the truth usually are very certain about their claims. But they are almost certainly wrong.
Perhaps then, Pilate asked the wrong question. Instead of "What is truth?" he would have done better to ask, "Who is truth?" And to that Jesus responds, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life."
For us, the value of that statement is that while we cannot claim to know what is true in every situation, we can still belong to the one who is truth. We cannot prove to others that he is the truth, but we can experience the impact, affirm its glory, and proclaim its liberating effect.
Our faith says that God is the final source of truth, and Jesus is truth that leads to God. Thus, any honest search for truth leads us to God. In fact, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil once said, "Christ likes us to prefer truth to him because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go toward the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms."2
The question "What is truth?" comes from a seeking mind, but the answer is only found by a seeking heart. God cannot be grasped by the gropings of our minds but he can be experienced through the depth of our commitment to him and the way we practice the things Jesus taught, such as loving our neighbor.
A few years ago at Trinity United Methodist Church in Youngstown, Ohio, there was a custodian named Katie Johnson. She had held that position for more than forty years, and the church had a policy in place that provided a pension for longtime employees when they retired. The policy specified that the person had to be 65 to receive the pension and submit proof of age. When Katie said she was ready to retire, however, there was a problem. Katie was a black woman who had been born to sharecropper parents in the deep South in days when some county governments didn't bother to record births of black children. Consequently, Katie had no proof of her birth date. If fact, she was not absolutely sure how old she was, though it was likely that she was at least 65. In any case, without a birth certificate, the church trustees, who oversaw the pension plan, were in a bit of a quandary about what to do. But that was solved pretty quickly when one of the trustees did the following: He said, "Katie has earned this pension and we want her to have it. I move that for purposes of retirement, Katie Johnson is 65 years old." Another trustee immediately seconded the motion, and the affirmative vote that followed was unanimous. Katie retired and received the pension, along with a celebration at the church in her honor.
Now you can argue that the trustees' action did not establish truth in the absolute sense, and you would be right. But I maintain that their action was a loving, Christian thing to do. They were not saying they had a corner on the truth -- who knew how old Katie actually was? But their action belonged to the truth. It was something that Christ would have done. It was kingdom behavior.
Likewise, we here who sincerely declare that Christ is our Lord belong to the truth. Truth is not something we have the corner on, or have the inside track on, but it is someone we follow and something we live.
____________
1.ÊFrom The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) sometime in 1975.
2.ÊQuoted by Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Friend, p. 7.
