What is truth? Sermon for Christ the King (November 24, 2024)
Sermon for Christ the King (November 24, 2024) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.
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Transcript
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
So Jesus says to Pilate, You say that I'm 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.
Do you remember what Pilate says?
Pilate says, what is truth?
I don't know if Pilate is being cynical. Maybe he's being cynical. Truth. What is truth? Isn't truth whatever whoever has the most power says it is? You stand before me helpless on trial and you tell me you're here to testify to the truth? I'm the governor. I make the truth. What is truth? Or maybe it's a more serious question. I think behind every cynical question there is a serious question.
Here Pilate stands before the truth. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life and Pilot stands before him and says, what is truth? When I hear this question cynical or sincere, I always think of the snake in the garden of Eden wrapped around the tree. What does the snake say? Did God say that? Again, I'm always like, is the snake being cynical? Is the snake being manipulative or is there a part of the snake that really wants to know the answer but can't hear it or can't see it even though it's right in front of them? Pilate stands before the truth asking what is the truth? Even though he's standing there, he can't see it, he can't grasp it, he can't know it. And the same with the snake who heard what God said to the people in the garden, but still finds itself having to ask, what is it that God said?
And Jesus is saying, if you belong to the truth, you'll hear my voice. If you belong, you'll know what is truth, and yet it is possible to live in this world right where truth is, right there in front of us like Pilate and to miss it completely. There's something about this whole trial scene in John's gospel. It's supposed to be Jesus who's on trial. He's the one who's supposed to be in trouble, and what we should see and experience in the whole story is Jesus being yanked out of this room and thrown into this room and put in front of these people and forced to prove himself and defend himself. We should see Jesus agitated and doubtful, thrown off. Jesus revolving around these hallways of power where these people are about to put him to death, but Jesus in the world turns that whole situation on its head, and instead, when we read this trial scene, it feels like it's Pilate who keeps coming in rooms and out of rooms and asking questions and getting agitated. It's Pilate who's thrown off his game and Jesus seems to stand at the center of it all unperturbed.
There's a stillness to Jesus in the trial when he's asked a question, he says, will you say that I am King? Pilate says, don't you want to defend yourself? Why aren't your people defending you? Why do your own people accuse me? Jesus is still and quiet and that whole hall of power starts to circulate around him. He is the center, the still and quiet center of that stormy scene. And the more true that is, the more quietly and faithfully and calmly Jesus stands, the more agitated and wild Pilate gets, the more agitated and wild the crowd becomes and all the power of Pilate, the empire that he represents, the violence of the crowd that has turned on Jesus because it has all been called into this circulation around Jesus and because all of it is revealed in Jesus quiet as so much bluster and it is, it's bluster.
The violence and the hatred around Jesus do not change who Jesus is, and they do not change the truth for which Jesus came into the world. And the more Jesus stands in the truth, the more powerless the powers of the world are revealed to be. It's hard because Jesus still dies, but he does not change who he came into the world to be, and he does not lose his strong footing in the truth, and it makes the world crazy, but he remains steadfast, loving, and in his steadfast lovingness, he reveals all that power for what it really is.
And even though the king of the world and the violence of the people in it who as our prayer this morning says are divided and enslaved by sin, even though those powers do have temporary power over Jesus and he loses his life, he does come back into the world because the truth, the truth of love and steadfastness and faithfulness, it doesn't change and all the power and the screaming and the violence of the world, it can't change the truth, the inability of the world to hear the truth doesn't change what the truth is.
Imagine if at any moment Pilate had allowed himself to move from asking a cynical question to asking a real question. If he had allowed the truth to move his heart, he might not have been complicit in the killing of Jesus in the way that he was. I think this is the invitation that the Jesus we see on trial today has for all of us because the world is a blustering world. It's a violent world. This world is divided and enslaved by sin, and we, the people of the world, are torn from each other. Moment by moment. Still at the heart of the world is the truth, and the truth is love. The world worlds violently, but the beating heart of the world, the truth is love. And the truth is that we belong to the heart of the world and not to the wildness and to the violence and to the division.
What is truth? Our invitation is to let that be our real question. Truth is love. Love doesn't change. Love sustains us. Someone said to me last week, I hang on to the idea that I see in Jesus that no matter what somebody does to me, they can't make me hate them. That is truth. That is the truth at the heart of the world, the rootedness and the groundedness of Christ on trial is that he stuck with the truth and stuck with love no matter what the wild world threw at him.
This is our invitation this week, rooted and grounded in truth and love. It is always accessible to you. When you find your heart caught this week because inevitably it will be caught. Someone will say something to you or somebody will cut me off in traffic or I will read the newspaper or you'll hear something on the news and your heart will be caught and fury will rise up or resentment will rise up. When that happens, I want you to remember Jesus in Pilate’s Hall of Power or Pilate, and the people are throwing at Jesus every question, every violence, every hatred. He is not moved because he stands in the truth of love. And even if your heart wants to be torn off center by suffering and hatred and violence, I want you to meditate on that picture of Jesus, the still heart of love that is unmoved in the center of the violence. Let that picture, let that image of Christ rule in your heart. Let it steady and calm and root your heart. Your heart belongs to truth and the truth at the center of this world. It is love. Amen.