Truth isn't a concept; it's a person

John 18:28-40

“What is truth?” is the best question that anybody asks in the Bible.

            I could be going out on a limb here, but I can’t think of a better one—maybe Peter saying, “Lord to whom shall I go?” though that’s sort of rhetorical. This question is an absolutely seminal moment in the history of the Christian faith. Of course the scene between Jesus and Pontius Pilate is most important because of the looming crucifixion, but it’s also important on its own. Here, Pilate raises one of the great existential questions of every age: What is truth? And Jesus’ response is telling. He gives none.

            That might seem like a let-down. We have this crescendo in the scene where Pilate is raising the stakes, where he and Jesus go back and forth—this game of cat and mouse—with Jesus’ life on the line, and then, at the most critical moment, Pilate raises THE question—the question of all questions. And we wait for Jesus to lay down the hammer—to give the answer to it all. What is truth? Tell us Jesus!

And the curtain falls and we have no answer.

But that’s not remotely true. If we’ve been reading along with the Gospel of John then we know that the question has already been answered before it was asked. Four chapters earlier, in John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus answered Pilate before Pilate even asked.

Denial means nothing to grace

John 18:12-27

            Even if we don’t know it very well, most of you are probably aware of Peter denying Jesus three times during his arrest. This is a semi-famous scene in the story of Jesus. But I bet fewer of you are aware of the scene after Jesus rises from the dead when he meets with Peter on the shore of the lake. This scene is only in the Gospel of John and we don’t read it in our four year cycle of worship readings at all. It occurs only once every three years in the Revised Common Lectionary, which means it’s probably been ten years since it’s been read in worship here, and even then it was paired with the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples while they are fishing so it’s simply not part of our worship enough. So, today, I am going to give the scene its due.

            The story goes like this: Having denied Jesus three times, which is what we read today, we hear nothing from Peter. Meanwhile, Jesus is crucified, he dies, and for three days there is not a word. Then, suddenly, Jesus reappears on the shore while the disciples are fishing and, after he tells them to fish on the other side of the boat, he meets Peter for breakfast. The Gospel of John picks up the story here:

“When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ (John 21:15-19)

            Three times Peter denies Jesus and three times he is given a new direction. The resurrection changes everything. Peter is given a second chance, but it’s more than that. This isn’t a shape up or get out moment; it’s Jesus nudging Peter as if to say, “The rules of the game have changed.” It’s no longer about whether you will deny me or not. Now, it’s about whether you love me, and that’s all that matters. As Peter’s story shows we are forgiven not because of our willpower or the goodness of our hearts but because of what God has done for us. All we can do is love in return.

We are not Jesus

John 13:1-17

This week I was reminded a hundred times, if not more, that I am not Jesus.

            I’ll get to that in a moment.

One of the many reasons why I love the Gospel of John is that it takes only twelve chapters to get to the Passover that is Jesus’ crucifixion, and we still have nine chapters left! The Gospel of Mark, by comparison, spends a scant three chapters on the happenings between the Passover, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. The Gospel of John includes so much detail, so many stories, and so many beautiful themes that thread through the Gospel that it can be savored for weeks on end, as we will do throughout the rest of Lent.

            The scene begins inauspiciously—just Jesus, washing the disciples’ feet. It’s a strange thing for Jesus to be doing if we think about it. Jesus is their Rabbi—their Lord and Teacher. He is in charge. The person who is in charge gets their feet washed by others; he does not do the washing. That’s the point, apparently, because when Peter complains that he would never allow Jesus to become so undignified as to wash his feet Jesus hits him with the ice cold reality: To be a follower requires that you be served, then it requires that you do the serving. It is both/and.

            We have the privilege to serve; we get to be served.

The Relief of Ash Wednesday

Happy Valen-Ash Wednesday! Or is that Ashentine’s Day?

            This combination doesn’t happen very often so it feels like the kind of thing that should be talked about. Lent has these strange cultural bookends this year. Today is Valentine’s Day. Easter Sunday is April Fool’s Day. It feels like a thing that should be mentioned.

            And in case you think I’m jumping into something secular when I should be preaching on Ash Wednesday, A) hold your horses, we’ll get there, and B) Valentine’s Day has historically been a minor festival in the church.

            There are a lot of legends about this day, including the idea that part of the reason Valentine was lifted up particularly is that almost nothing is known about him, but what we do know is in one sense enough: He lived, he was killed for his faith—some sources say he was beheaded—and then he was declared a saint by the church. Today he is the patron saint of epilepsy, fainting, the plague, beekeepers, and greetings card manufacturers. That last one has been quoted so often that I’m not sure if anybody knows if it’s a joke or not anymore. How can one saint be the patron saint of so many things? Because, in fact, there are 22 saints that go by the name St. Valentine.

            This suggests two things to me: One: The history of the Christian church is vast and astonishing; that a lot of people have sacrificed a lot for the faith. And Two: We need a season to remind us of this; to proclaim that we are dust and to dust we shall return.

            This is one of my favorite days in the church year. I just love it. We just need it. We need to be honest. We are dust. And we will become dust again… just give it time.

Blind people who can see, but do not see

John 9

One of the formative books in my life is Blindness by Jose Saramago. It’s the story of a society that is stricken by a disease of white blindness. The first patients are sequestered in isolation until the time that the doctors and the guards and everybody else in the world goes blind. All that’s left is a woman, who we only know as the “doctor’s wife,” who can still see, though she keeps it from everybody but her husband. It’s a stunning book that won Saramago the Nobel prize for literature, but this isn’t a book review—it’s a sermon—so I should probably get around to the point. There are, in this book, a number of incredibly wise, pithy statements. Perhaps the most famous of these is: “If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?” But the quote that strikes me every time I read this story from John’s Gospel of Jesus healing a blind man is the one that goes like this. Saramago writes, “I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”

Big Question #1: Evolution

This year in Confirmation we are talking about big questions. Each week through the winter and spring the students bring their big questions and we have conversations around the running list of really good thoughts and ideas they are wondering about. I do my best to give my answer. Sometimes I preface what I say by adding this is what I believe, or this is my best guess; other times I preface responses by saying this is what Martin Luther said or this is what the Lutheran confessions teach. These are hard questions for a reason: To presume I have some nicely-packaged answer is foolish, though still to say nothing to these questions is to let the loudest voices win the day. So, we tarry on and do our best to address what we may, understanding that this must be done humbly with an awareness that we are not God and, moreover, we don't get to tell God how things are.

With that said, I am going to be writing a long-form response to ten of the very best questions raised by our Confirmation students and posting it to my blog on a regular basis. Each time I will attempt to address first of all what the question is and secondly how, as a Christian, as a pastor, and as a human being I approach these questions. Hopefully, that sets the stage well enough. So, off we go...

Question #1: Can a Christian believe in evolution?

The story of living water (yet we care more about the woman)

John 4:1-42

If you want to make people obsess over a person give her no name. I feel like that’s how half of romantic comedies begin: The unknown woman. Add in a subtle implication that she might not be on the up and up and, well, then you have some serious intrigue. It feels like every commentary writer on the Gospel of John falls hook, line, and sinker for this age-old trope. Every one of them is obsessed with the woman at the well. Who is she? What is she doing there? If you read a more conservative commentary it tends to be overly concerned with the woman’s sinfulness, especially her sex life—she had five husbands after all, they say. If you read a more liberal commentary it tends to be overly concerned with the woman’s faithfulness in spite of the obstacles she faced in a patriarchal society. That she would even be at that well in the middle of the day was an act of defiance, they say.

            Friends, this is why Jesus had to come. Everything is not this or that. The lenses we wear color everything we see. Every bit of turf needs to be defended; even this scene from John’s Gospel. The woman must be righteous… or the woman must be sinful. If you want to know why I’m Lutheran in a nutshell, it is because Luther gave us the language to say she is without a doubt 100% both—saint and sinner—and we should be less concerned about her than we are about Jesus and what this story speaks to us as individuals, and yet we will always be more concerned about the woman because it’s easier to slice and dice her character than to actually deal with the hard ramifications of what Jesus has to say.

            Yes, there are real problems in the world. People have messed-up sex lives; patriarchal systems that denigrate women are still commonplace. However, this is about neither of those things. This story does not exist in the Gospel of John to tell us how to act or to point out the systems that oppress. Instead, Jesus is offering the thing that bridges this gulf: Living water. Jesus is offering a way out if only we stop with our own preconceived notions of what is important here, but I suspect this is too much for many of us most of the time. If the commentaries are any indication, it’s too much for the religious experts as well.

            I get nervous preaching like this because when I take shots at the way that people politicize the gospel it’s tempting to hear this as if I’m trying to be a moderate between the personal morality theology of the right and the systems theology of the left, as if I’m trying to have a little bit of both, but I want to be clear: Jesus does not cut a middle road. Instead, he takes the car head-long into the field; he takes the boat on to land; he takes the hovercraft wherever you can’t take a hovercraft. He defies teaching us about the simplicity of life on earth and centers his teachings on the work of God’s kingdom, which is diametrically opposed to the way we do business. Jesus simply does not play our games. Instead, he offers the woman living water.