The Preservation of the Truth

A Sermon By Brent J. Eelman

Abington Presbyterian Church

February 4, 2007

 

John 18:33-38

Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ ³⁴Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ ³⁵Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ ³⁶Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ ³⁷Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ ³⁸Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’* 
 

 

“Let me tell you the truth.”  That is a strange, but all too common, expression.  “Let me tell you the truth.”  When someone uses that phrase are they implying that they have not been telling the truth until that point?   Truth seems to be fleeting in our world.  When I was in college, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, I remember hearing Ron Ziegler, the Whitehouse press secretary, tell reporters that a statement that he made a few days earlier was “in-operative.”  What did that mean?  Once true, but no longer true?  Stephen Colbert, the political humorist, coined the word “truthiness” which refers to knowing something intuitively, instinctively, or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts.  Do we live in a world where truthiness is more readily accepted than truth?  

Fifty years earlier, George Orwell used the term :”Newspeak”  to describe how language was being manipulated and shrunk to fit the purposes of propaganda and myth creation.  Truth is fleeting in our environment of technology and instant communication.  It is not uncommon to hear someone say: “I don’t know what to believe.”  Those words echo the words spoken by Pilate:  “What is truth.” 

 

The great end of the church, which I wish to look at today is “the preservation of truth.”   The church exists to preserve the truth.  Two points;  First.  What is the truth?  And Second: How do we preserve it?

I

What is the truth?  One of the popular books of the last decade was entitled: Men are from Mars, Women from Venus.  The thesis of the book is that the sexes perceive reality differently and use language differently, consequently men and women don’t understand each other.  In the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate, we might conclude that Jesus was from Earth and Pilate from Jupiter, so different are their views of reality.  When Pilate asked the question of Jesus, “What is truth?” he was speaking from his background in the Roman Academy.  Truth in Greco-Roman thought was an idealistic abstraction.  It existed apart from the senses as an objective reality.  How strange that question seemed when it was posed to Jesus.

 

Jesus, a Middle-eastern peasant, was not schooled in the idealistic philosophies of Greece and Rome.  When he spoke of truth he said: “I am the truth.”   The Gospel of John also identifies Jesus with the truth, and concludes with the words: “the truth shall set you free.”  For Jesus, the truth is not some abstraction that exists apart from the experience of life.   Truth is not merely an idea.  Truth is experienced and most importantly it is lived.  If it is not lived, it is not truth.  Truth is not the ascent to an idea, it is a way of life.  It is following Christ as his disciple, even to the cross.  

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the primary task for the Christian in the modern world is to struggle with the question:  “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”  This is the question of truth.  2000 years after the life of Jesus, we need to wrestle with the question of who he was, and is.  Jesus did not live in the computer age.  Many of the problems and challenges that we face today could not even be described in the language that Jesus used.  What is Truth?  It is not an idea, a concept or an abstraction, the truth is Jesus Christ. 

II

How do we preserve truth?  We live truth, we do not learn it.   Sally Lowe Whitehead wrote in her memoir:  "The truth might set you free, but first it will shatter the safe, sweet world you live in."  That is the trouble with the truth.  It has a way of upsetting the applecart and shaking up the simple myths by which we live our lives, because truth is lived not learned.  The preservation of the truth is not merely realized through study or intellectual ascent… truth is preserved in concrete actions… Truth is preserved in the feeding of the hungry, the healing of the sick.. truth is preserved in building homes for homeless and visiting those in prison, be it the lockups that we know, or the prisons of addiction, loneliness and despair.  Truth is preserved in transforming the prayers which we say and the hymns which we sing into concrete actions that witness to the spirit of Jesus Christ and the work of Jesus Christ in our lives and the world.

 

Truth is also preserved in exposing all that masks truth.  It unmasks all that stands in the way of truth, and in this world that often leads to discomfort and even  intimacy with the cross.  Truth is preserved where the light of Christ is allowed to shine in the darkness of evil and death, and when it shines, those who perpetrate lies will scatter like cockroaches in the light. 

 

The purpose, (the great end) of the church is to preserve the truth.  That means that we not only speak the truth in love.  We live the truth with love.  This is the challenge of Christian life… the challenge of discipleship.  Amen.