Scripture: John 18:28-40
This
is what it’s all been leading to. I’ve only mentioned this moment about a
hundred times since we started the Gospel of John at Christmas: Jesus before
Pilate and Pilate’s rhetorical question, echoing across time and history: “What
is truth?”
It’s a question behind how we think
and act and order our lives. Is truth a series of true events that have
happened? Is it a series of things that can be claimed as “facts?” Is truth an unapproachable
ideal? Or is truth something beyond comprehension? For those of you who have
listened these past few months, you already know the answer to the question—at
least according to John’s Gospel—but rather than just giving you that answer
and moving on I’m going to spend some time today talking about why the other
answers to the question are insufficient.
Let’s start with truth as a series
of historical events. This is probably the most common way we think about what
is true. If something happened, then it’s true. If it didn’t, then it’s false.
Academics use this approach to address everything from historical events to
scientific hypotheses, but Christians use this approach as well. For example,
every time a movie or TV show about the Bible makes its way into the public
sphere—like, I don’t know, Noah—there
is always debate about to what extent the movie accurately portrays what the
Bible portrays. Usually what people mean when they critique a movie like this
is that it does not follow the history
of the Bible; less often do you hear critiques about the meaning of the story.
I haven’t seen the movie, Noah, but
it’s pretty predictably not the Bible’s version of history—even if its themes
may be biblical through and through. This is fairly predictable, because
Hollywood is interested in making movies that involve explosions and battle
scenes and Russell Crowe standing around shirtless. The Bible tends to care
less about the particulars—even the epic battle scenes—than it does about what
the story tells us about God and about human beings. The particulars of the
story matter but only insofar as they tell us about God and about us. However,
in the modern world, we are taught from a young age that the most important
thing is how events took place, and never mind what they mean until it has been
firmly established that they happened as portrayed.
It’s very difficult to read the
Bible this way, because the people who were inspired to write the Bible don’t
seem to think anything like that. The authors of the Bible seem perfectly fine
with conflicting events—even written by the same person!—and that should give
us pause, because, we waste so much time analyzing particulars of stories,
analyzing details to give clues about all sorts of little things, that we often
miss the forest for the trees. We do this because we have all sorts of
conceptions about the Bible that we want to prove to be true. Some people believe
the Bible is infallible, which is to say that everything the Bible says is
true, and they will spend countless amount of time trying to prove that
scripture all holds true. Meanwhile, other people want to spiritualize
scripture and will go out of their way to point to historical contradictions.
Both sides are reading scripture written at least two thousand years ago as if
the people who wrote it thought like you and me. Meanwhile, most of the world
looks at both groups like they’re a little crazy, because both sides don’t
actually seem to spend much time talking about what the Bible is actually
saying, as rapt as they are with the questions of history. God has a word for
this and it is “sin.” The question, “What is truth?” has to be about more than
history, because God doesn’t work just in yesterday but also today and tomorrow.
Truth has to encompass both history and meaning. The question, “What happened?”
means very little without the follow-up question, “What does it mean?”
So, perhaps instead truth is some
kind of perfect ideal that we strive toward—maybe the more you know and the
more you learn about the world the closer you will come to truth, as the ground of all things. Purge yourself of all
distractions and you will find inner truth. This sounds great. That sounds
great, but that inner truth is just another form of turning in on oneself; a
different kind of selfishness—in fact, to be curved in on oneself is another
fantastic definition of sin. Moreover, all these wishy-washy ways of talking
about truth makes it into something resembling a feeling. Just spend two
seconds watching how a person acts when they are in love, and you should
understand why truth needs to be more than a feeling. Our feelings are extremely temperamental. There may be
many things true about us at our core, because we are, after all, made in the
image of God, but that does not mean that is where we go looking for truth. We do
enough navel-gazing as it is, and we certainly aren’t objective about what it
is that lies at our core.
So, is truth unattainable? That’s the
final popular choice. Our brains are so small and they can take in so little in
the grand scheme of things that maybe truth is just something we can’t even
begin to understand. Maybe, like the Matrix,
our perceptions of what is true are forever shrouded by a deeper truth we can
never approach. I get why people think this way. In fact, it’s a really humble
way to approach the question because it means admitting we will never have life
figured out, which (at the very least) is honest. However, it doesn’t leave us
with much to hold on to. I worry that many progressive Christian churches enjoy
hanging out in the deep-end of not knowing what is true a bit too much. It’s
great to have humility, but Christianity has a promise better than that—we have
something tangible to cling to—which brings me back to what truth is and why I
think this is so important.
In John’s Gospel the answer to the
question “What is truth?” is simply this: Truth is Jesus. That’s a statement
that wins very few fans to the Christian faith, because, honestly, what on
earth does that mean? Does that mean that Jesus is true? Well, yes, I’d hope
so. But it’s also much deeper than that. It means, in fact, that everything in
our world, as well as everything we think or imagine, and every proposition and
theory we concoct is true only if it meets one criteria: Does it reveal Jesus?
This is completely backwards to how
we normally approach these questions. Usually, we take event A from the Bible,
or event B from Jesus’ life, and then we ask: Did it happen? And if it did,
then it’s piece of evidence A or B that Jesus was speaking the truth. Jesus
flips that upside down (as he is wont to do). He suggests that we look at all
things we experience: events in our lives, history that we encounter in the
Bible, would-be prophets, church councils, and popular opinions, and that we
ask the question, “Do they show us Jesus?” If yes, then they are acting out
truth; if not, then they’re not.
This is a very messy process. It
means disagreeing a lot. Many of us have very different ideas about what
reveals Jesus, because many of us have very different ideas of who Jesus was. These
are things that split churches. If only we could see the world without our own
filters—if only we could see Jesus as he is, rather than how we want him to be.
If only we could read the Bible without the lenses we choose to use. Then,
truth would be self-evident. We wouldn’t need to hold on to all of these
shallow imitations, but we’re not there…. We’re not remotely there.
So, we continue to argue over
whether to support charities that disagree with our moral standards, again
demonstrating, as much as we claim otherwise, even our charity is all about us.
We continue to speak poorly of others who believe in Christ differently from
us, because they clearly do not understand the deeper truths that we do, again
demonstrating, as much as we claim otherwise, that even our faith-life is all
about us. We continue to live our lives in the name of righteousness,
demonstrating our standards are more important to us than the sick and the
hungry. Every approach we take to the truth question is absolutely 100% all
about us. It reveals us for the selfish people that we are.
And that’s why truth has to be more
than a concept or a set of written rules, because concepts and rules, history
and metaphysics, are things that human beings can lay claim to; they are things
we can fool ourselves into thinking we have all figured out. The one thing that
is completely and utterly unapproachable in this world is God, who we know in
this person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is truth. Everything else is commentary.
Everything else is much too shallow.
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