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. Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38)
“Is this the hill you want to die on.” That’s good advice, from a Marine or a family counselor. In this more modern time, some have decided the change the words in the last stanza of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me: As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.” More recently, some have changed that last line to, “Let us live to make men free.” I don’t think that’s an improvement. Nor do I suspect that the souls of the 600,000 plus who died in that war think it an improvement. It’s easy to live to make people free. It’s easy to kill others for freedom, by reducing them to ideological enemies whom we bludgeon with our cutting and clever arguments, or by the actual deed. It’s easy to win the battle. It’s not so easy to go into a battle knowing that more than likely we will be killed, and to do it anyway. What battles are so important to you that you would rather lose them than never even trying?
On the one hand, there doesn’t seem to be any battle in today’s Good News. Jesus just stands there and lets himself be taken, even though it’s clear that his mere voice is enough to bring men to their knees. But that’s the point. Jesus refuses to exit the battlefield with his life in danger. He makes no attempt to make a dignified retreat, or even an undignified retreat so that he can live to fight another day. And standing there before the Roman Governor who thinks he has the power of life and death, Jesus refuses to surrender on this one point. “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.” There is a hill that Jesus is ready to die on. And that hill’s name is truth.
Pilate would not have gotten where he was in the imperial structure of the Roman empire without becoming cynical. There was no pretense of democracy to make the fist of political power “legitimate” as the voice of the people. Power was naked in the Empire. It was given by one man, the Emperor Tiberius with the title that all emperors had inherited from Rome’s first dictator, Julius “Caesar.” Whatever power Pilate had been given and was afraid to lose had come from Caesar. And to have gotten where he was, I’m sure Pilate had already left some corpses behind. So it is with a tired and perhaps disillusioned cynicism that Pilate replies to Jesus, “What is truth?” But that question is a fair one to ask, even for the not-so-cynical.
What is truth? Is it fact? Is it authenticity? Is it correctitude? Is it accuracy? Is it conformity to rule? Those are just some of the synonyms for truth that I found in my thesaurus. For some, truth is purely scientific. It is only that which can be observed, dissected, known by the five senses of sound, sight, touch, smell and taste. If you can’t perceive it through one of those senses, then it isn’t real, it isn’t true. And what of love? has anyone ever seen “love?” Does that make love any less true? For others, truth is all about getting the correct answers to a divinely graded test, with heaven and hell in the balance. Was Jesus our substitute for God’s flaming wrath and anger, yes or no? Do you know what each letter in the acronym TULIP stands for in the Calvinist tradition? If you had to take a test on the 1,000 page Catechism of the Catholic Church, would you pass? For still more others truth is all about being “authentic.” This feels right to me, so it’s true for me, but not necessarily for you, and I’m ok you’re ok. In that thinking there are as many truths as there are human beings.
So, what is truth? Ironically, Pilate answers that question later: “Behold the Man!” The truth is a man, who earlier told his disciples, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). The truth is not a scientific experiment, an ideology, a set of man-made doctrines, or my personal search for authenticity. The truth is a human being. And you can’t get to the truth by proving it, or by getting the right answers on a test about it, or making it up yourself. You “get it” through a human being who can be understood in the only possible way that any other human being can be understood; that is, by love.
And whether it be the love of friends, of parents and children, of spouses, it takes a lifetime to learn the truth of another human being in relationship with them. It takes a lifetime of passing and failing test after test after test. But this is “Good News.” This is “gospel truth.” Because no matter how many tests we pass and fail, we are never kicked out of class for failing the course. And the only exam that matters is the final one. All the other tests are practice; practices in learning to love God and each other as Jesus has loved us.
And here is the other gospel truth. Jesus is risen. In our historical and chronological time, the cross is empty. But we live in time, past present and future. That is not God’s time. There has never been at time when God didn’t exist, nor a time when God won’t exist. God always “is.” So there is no past or future for God. If Jesus the Son of God was crucified once in our time, in the light of eternity, he is always crucified, and risen, and crucified, and risen, forever and ever. The love for his friends that led Jesus to embrace the cross is not something that happened only once. It happens every time we fail a test, and he says as we heard him say on Sunday, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” And as figure it out, little by little, step by step, he says to us as he said 2,000 years ago, “You will be with me in paradise.”
And then you will find that the truth is not something that you examine, or study all night before the final exam. You will find that you already “belong” to the truth, who is Christ Jesus, for you simply part of that truth, sort of like being assimilated into the Borg. But you will never have to sacrifice your individuality. You and Jesus will belong to each other like a hand belongs to its body. But for today it is enough to put yourself in Pilate’s place, and ask Jesus, “What is truth?” Never stop asking Jesus, “What is truth?” For he who loves you enough to die for you will always be there to help you find the answer.
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