25 November 2012

“What is truth?”
OT 34B / Christ the King
John 18:33-38b
25 November 2012


Those social observer experts who say they know such things … they who have been telling us that we’ve been living with one leg in “modernity” and one leg in “post-modernity” for about 40 years … well, now, they’re saying that the world has irreversibly shifted to “post-modernity.”
To me, that’s funny, because I think there are many, many of us who don’t even know what those terms ... modern, post-modern ... many of us don’t even know what they mean.
So ... a little primer.
The modern world is the mechanized world. The world of parts which make up a greater whole; the assembly line society. The educational system en mass turns out highly educated students for the workforce-world. Medicine and pills and chemicals, properly prescribed and ingested, make people healthier. We work to control nature through science. The modern world is full of things which can be graphed, charted, recorded, noted, and predicted, because they follow a precise, concise path.
And “every day, in every way, we’re getting better and better.”
Post-modernity throws all this on its ear. In the post-modern world, everything is personal experience and personal experience is everything. Mass mechanized models give way to individually tooled ones. Now we have charter schools ... holistic medicine, which is centered on the patient’s wishes rather than on the doctor’s convenience. And we find that nature is something … or someone, an entity, person-like … with which we must make peace; we must change ourselves and our ways to live with and within it. As for outcomes ... they are random, as random as people are random; they can’t be predicted or graphed or recorded, noted or polled, because they do not follow any precise, concise path. And optimism? Well, at best, it’s not corporate, it’s personal ... and at worst, it sounds like Generation X and Generation Y – millennial … read, those of us who are about 50 and under … OUR angst about the future ... post-industrial, it’s “the downward spiral.”
You and I have seen – have been part – of this seismic shift in our society ...most likely, standing with one leg in modernity and the other in post modernity. But the move into post modernity … or even post-post-modernity (which is post modernity’s movement to try to recover some of the aspects of pre-modernity, all the while with a post-modern twist … boy, can that ever make your head hurt!) … this move into post modernity is actual, and final … in other words, we’re not going back. One only needs to take a look around, and you can see that we are most certainly in the post modern world … in business, manufacturing, education, medicine, and yes, politics. Some are saying that the recent election was the first truly post-modern one … with highly visible ... and yes, sometimes contradictory ... outcomes.
Post modernity is here to stay. Whether you like it or not … it IS.
And so today … when we denizens of post modernity encounter Pilate’s question of Jesus …

What is truth?

… well, it can set our heads a-spinning.
Truth? In a post-modern world? What is that, anyway?
In the pre-modern and the modern world, we the church knew what truth was.
It was objective. Solid. An either / or proposition; either you are with it, either you are in; or you are out.
I BELIEVE …
I believe in God the Father almighty … In Jesus the Christ … In the Holy Ghost.
Creedal statements. Doctrinal truth. “God said it … I believe it … that settles it.”
Ah, but now …
Now, Christians are just one of many … a world, a nation, a county, full of Buddhists and Sikhs and Muslims and that most-rapidly-growing-of-religious-preferences … the one which claims adherents from 30+% of our neighbors and even 25% of us nationally … NONE OF THE ABOVE.
So what is truth?
It’s what I believe. But it’s just what I believe, in my own personal world. You can believe whatever you want. And you will. Because that’s your truth.
But what if my truth and your truth conflict … disagree? Between religions … or even in the same church congregation?
Well, then, that’s your opinion.
And haven’t we all heard that. I … you … we’re free to have our truth, but hey, keep your own truth to yourself.

But back to Pilate’s question of Jesus.
It certainly didn’t have the taint of the pre-modern/ modern / post modern mix about it.
Pilate was simply asking a question, for which he didn’t have an answer.
Let’s back up a little here to get some perspective.
Our Gospel passage is a small part of the Passion narrative in John’s gospel … that last day in Jesus’ life, his arrest and trial, his suffering and crucifixion and death.
Here, Jesus is before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, Jesus’ own people having turned him over to the political authority (who, they hoped, would execute him for sedition … so they wouldn’t have to do the deed before their Passover festival) … and Pilate is simply trying to find out what is going on.
We need to understand some things that this passage is not about.
First, it’s not anti-Jewish. It would be better to translate the words here as “some of the Jews” instead of the blanket “The Jews.” Since Jesus’ followers here … and Jesus himself … never stopped being Jewish. It’s an unfortunate slander, perpetuated in error; it’s time for that error to stop.
Second, it’s not really a trial. What’s happening here is nothing like how we experience trials in court today. It’s more of a hearing, really; the representative political governing authority for an occupied nation, trying to figure out why the leadership of the occupied people has such a problem with Jesus.
And so what is this passage about?
The reader – we- need to understand that Jesus’ kingship isn’t like a usual king of his time. We in our era and place have a difficult time understanding what a “king” or “royalty” is … especially since we haven’t had any for over 200 years … but Pilate represents what that would mean to the original hearers and readers of this text. The king was the author and guarantor of the prosperity of his people … kings ensured prosperity on land and sea … in other words, the one who was expected to provide “the good life” to and for his subjects.
Pilate was the local representative of Caesar, and Caesar was the king. The political / religious / social leader of his time.
Pilate calls Jesus “King of the Jews” because he’s heard the Jewish people themselves call Jesus this … perhaps expecting him to lead a rebellion, to try and throw off the Roman invader / occupiers … and bring them “the good life” once more. It is this charge that the religious leaders of Israel have leveled against Jesus … that he was trying to draw the people away from Caesar and into open rebellion. Pilate is trying to check Jesus out, and see if he’s really seditious … a terrorist … a threat to the Empire.
He wants to know what kind of “kingly” actions Jesus has taken.
None. That’s the point.

My kingdom is not from this world.

Jesus’ kingdom is not one with borders and capitals and armies and palaces.
Pilate can’t get this.
Even though Jesus explains this, to Pilate, and to us.

Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.

Actually, that’s a poor translation of what John’s gospel actually puts forth in his original language.
Literally … it goes like this:

All of the ones who are out of the truth – who have come out of the truth-tradition – they listen to my voice.

And now we can start to get it.
Pilate hasn’t come out of this truth-tradition of which Jesus speaks. He hasn’t been listening to Jesus, he hasn’t seen him do the miracles, turn water into wine, heal the man born blind … raise Lazarus from the dead … he’s never encountered Jesus until now … so he has no currency, no background, no ability to understand what Jesus is saying. And so his answer … simply displays his lack of understanding … and perhaps, even his contempt, at having this “case” brought to him.
Indeed, in the next sentence, when Pilate goes out to the religious leaders, he tells them that he finds no case against Jesus … even though, being a good politician, he ends up releasing Jesus to them, to do to him as they wish.

What is truth?

That’s our question, too, people of Nativity, people of new birth, new life, as we live in this world, this post-modern world.
We’ve spent the last year steeped in the waters of our baptism … for twelve months, walking wet through the church year, the life cycle of Jesus … birth … baptism … ministry … serving … suffering … dying ... rising … and proclaiming … through the past twelve months, we’ve recited and remembered, given thanks for, celebrated our baptisms.
But to what end?
If we’ve simply done this as a nice little exercise, an ornament to our usual Sunday morning worship, well, perhaps then we learned something, but it was all rather pointless, wasn’t it?
And so we turn once again to Jesus’ words to Pilate, the words which confound Pilate, but the words which bring it all ... word, water, baptism, walking wet for the past year together ... our living in a post modern world ... bring it all into focus for us.

All of the ones who are out of the truth listen to my voice.

Friends in Christ, we are the ones who are out of the truth. We are borne out of the truth through water and Word of welcome and forgiveness, new birth and everlasting life ... we are fed in the truth through Word of instruction and faith, Word that forms us into people of the truth ... fed in the truth at Christ’s table of grace, welcoming, giving, receiving, taking his very body into our bodies ...
... and so, now, as ones “out of that truth,” born, fed, raised ... we are now sent in that truth to the world.
Which is precisely the way this post-modern world so needs to see, to hear, to receive us. Our experience, together, as Christ’s body, in this place, creates us, makes us authentic, Christ’s real body of real flesh and blood people, sent out to live and to love as Christ’s personal ambassadors into the world.
Into a world where the old modern ways of proclaiming “church” ... that we proclaim the institution first before, instead of the Christ who gives it, gives us life ...
... instead of starting with, and arguing over, doctrine and creeds, music styles and liturgies, days and seasons, clergy and leadership ... that old modern way, when we start with an argument that “our club rules are better than theirs” ... in a post-modern world, this argument falls on deaf ears, it is unwelcome ...
... so instead we start with the personal, personal experience, personal authenticity, faith lived as Christ’s body going out in service, in love, into the world ... this speaks far louder, far closer, far deeper ... and this Word will be heard, in our post modern, post post modern, and whatever other human colorings and creations will come along in and for this world ...
... so that the old song will continue to be true ...

They will know we are Christians by our love.

May the love, the peace, the joy, the hope that is Christ our King, come to us, given and shed for us, bathed over us, fed into us ... may he continue to form us into his body of love, given, strengthened and sent, into the world God loves ... for all our sakes. Ours ... and most especially ... theirs ... they who have not seen, have not heard, who stand and watch and wait as they ask that question still ...

What is truth?

They watch, and they wait, for us to bring them the answer.
So may you ... the ones out of his truth ... may you continue to be fed, and blessed, fed and blessed to share, to share in your own places, in and into your own worlds, into, until, through the day when we are all gathered into the blessed and glorious reign of Christ our King, the One in whom and for whom all that was and is and will be is made One.
For his sake, and in his name, amen, and AMEN.