"What is truth?" Questions and answers in John's Gospel

Scripture: John 1:19-34

            The only thing more annoying than a person always asking “why?”—and, yes, some parents with young kids during the Christmas season can probably argue there’s nothing more annoying than that—is a person who always has an answer. That’s really an unfair statement (some people who give answers are compelling and many people who ask questions are doing us a favor), but I want to start there because we have this natural reaction both to questioners and know-it-alls that I find fascinating. Firstly, we have all had that person, hopefully a child, who is a perpetual “Why?” machine. “Why can’t I do this? Why not? Why? Why? Why?” Eventually, no matter how hard you resist, you will get down to the heart of the matter and the answer to “Why?” will always be “Because!” If you’re like me you hate that moment because the truth is I just don’t know, or I just don’t have a good reason, or I’m not willing to enter into a philosophical debate with a four-year-old. I want to suggest that there is more going on here than petty annoyance. When we dig deep enough underneath all of the questions, our only answer is ever really “because,” because all of our answers hinge only on guesses that lie under the assumptions on which we base our lives.

I think this is also why we don’t care much for know-it-alls, because underneath their public face of certainty is the same fabric of humanity that assures us that, if you dig deep enough, they don’t really know either. This is what it means to be human and not God; your knowledge stands on assumptions and presuppositions, many of which are very likely true, but the ultimate reason behind the knowledge is always just “Because!” A few weeks back when it was first reported that Paul Walker, the actor from The Fast and the Furious, died in a car crash, there was at first only one (not so reliable) outlet reporting the news. Within an hour there followed a report that the story was a hoax. Shortly thereafter, there was another report that the report about the hoax was actually a hoax. The internet, ladies and gentlemen! Before the initial report was finally confirmed there were those sure that the report was true, sure it was a hoax, and mostly unsure about everything but pretty willing to take a stand one way or another based on nothing but the shoddy info that Twitter could give them. Lots of people knew things that nobody actually knew.

The Gospel of John is big on questions, some of which are rhetorical but many are thoughtful and poignant. These verses today mark the beginning of the narrative of Jesus’ ministry, and it all begins with a long series of questions directed at John the Baptist. But, in direct contrast to the way we sometimes talk about our faith, John the Baptist refuses to give the answer the Pharisees would like to hear; all he does is point forward to somebody greater than him. The Pharisees asking the questions want to fit John the Baptist into the prophetic box of the one who comes claiming to be the Messiah: so he must claim he is Elijah, or Moses, or the Messiah himself--those are your choices, John, which are you going to claim to be? No, no, no. He claims none of those . John wants to make it clear that God is doing a new thing here, not repeating some old trick. John is not in this to bask in the reflected glory of heroes gone by. The Messiah is not a king in the way the Pharisees expect, and John suggests from the very beginning that Jesus is not coming to give you the answers you’re looking for.

It’s not that the questions themselves are bad, but it is the answers we expect that doom us. I love questions, and I especially love when kids ask questions because they do so acknowledging that they don’t have it all figured out. When a five-year-old does that we think it’s cute. But when that child turns ten, or thirty, or fifty, or seventy years of age he becomes increasingly ashamed to ask basic questions, because he assumes he will be judged for his ignorance. And, frankly, we all want to put off the perception that we know things. It’s ironic that we all love the people who ask the questions we wanted to ask, but we remain afraid to ask the questions ourselves.

None of us have all the answers; in fact, none of us really know all that much. In John’s Gospel this is abundantly clear. John goes out of his way to address the question of truth when Jesus is face-to-face with Pontius Pilate in that famous scene with the crowds in the street. The last question Pilate asks of Jesus before going out to the crowd could very well sum up every question in the Gospel. “What is truth?” he asks (John 18:38). And, for the first time in the series of questions, Jesus doesn’t respond, because truth is standing right in front of Pilate and he does not realize it. Earlier in John’s Gospel, Jesus said, “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life” (John 14:6). Truth is not a concept; it is not some realm of factual answers. Truth is not the claim that Jesus is Lord; rather, truth is Jesus himself.

I love that question, “What is truth?” because in that moment Pilate so perfectly represents all of us, desperately seeking the place where all our questions are answered. In Pilate, we catch a glimpse of Adam and Eve taking the bite of that fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and inviting into the world questions that we are suddenly ill-prepared to answer. The first question that any human asks in the Bible is Cain to God, saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” If there’s a better question for all humanity to ask I can hardly imagine what it is. The answer he’s looking for is “No,” but the answer God would have Cain give is “Yes! Very much so!” So are we all, and the fact that you ask the question shows how very far you have come from the Garden.

From the beginning of human life on the earth there has been this push and pull with questions and answers, and mostly it is a very upsetting area of being human. Yet, for those of us who are Christians, we don’t confess that truth can be found if we just dig deep enough inside of our souls. We are not Buddhist in the way we purge ourselves of a sinful shell to find some kind of inner enlightenment. Rather, we believe all truth is external to us because truth is Jesus. All things that are true will reflect the baby in the manger and the Savior who died for us on a cross. If it doesn’t point to Jesus, as John the Baptist did, it isn’t true.

That doesn’t mean we should stop asking questions; in fact, quite the opposite. If Jesus is the only ground of truth then any question asked out of humility will only lead us deeper into faith. The trouble is that few of our questions go that way; most of the time we go out looking for a specific answer. That’s the Pharisees’ problem—not that they are asking questions but that the questions are not asked to inform but to entrap or excuse. It’s “Am I my brother’s keeper?” all over again. If you ask the question you had better be ready for the answer. Throughout the Gospels Jesus will take those questions and turn them around on the ones asking, angering them more and more until they bring him before Pilate and the truth is laid bare. Moreover, this is a story that does not end on the cross but continues on to this very day. All who ask questions with an answer in mind will get that answer and find neither truth nor wisdom; but for those who humbly ask they will receive; it just might not be the answer you’re looking for. It’s one of the most difficult things for us to do: to humbly come before God with the deepest question in our heart and ask it without expectation of any answer we would like.

But when we take that difficult step, we tend to find that the thing we most fear is just our inadequacy to testify to what is true. If truth is only a concept then all we have is academic credibility to fall back on. And if academic credibility is the best we have then we can give up on faith, hope and love--mere concepts that are grounded only in emotions. But in Jesus we have a promise that truth is God-incarnate; not some facts about God, but God’s very self. So whatever is true is Christ, whatever is self-serving is not. The questions lead back to the baby in the manger. So, we are not to fear them but to let them out, humbly and without shame, because the surest sign of faith is a difficult question to which we expect no answer.