First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA October 20, 2024
John 18:33-39 (The Message) Pilate went back into the palace and called for Jesus. He said, “Are you the ‘King of the Jews’?” Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you this about me?” Pilate said, “Do I look like a Jew? Your people and your high priests turned you over to me. What did you do?”
“My kingdom,” said Jesus, “doesn’t consist of what you see around you. If it did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jews. But I’m not that kind of king, not the world’s kind of king.” Then Pilate said, “So, are you a king or not?”
Jesus answered, “You tell me. Because I am King, I was born and entered the world so that I could witness to the truth. Everyone who cares for truth, who has any feeling for the truth, recognizes my voice.”
Pilate said, “What is truth?”
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
I’d had something else on my mind, but early last week, with the choices of the election before us, I began to hear another question emerging… along the lines of “who can you trust, these days? Who is telling the truth?”
Maybe it was the politician who sent me a begging email, claiming to be short on funds, when other sources said he was rolling in money.
Or, how about the Providence tv station, an NBC affiliate, who showed a report from “our man in Washington” – and it turned out to be a far-right-wing employee of the corporation that owns the station, not an NBC correspondent.
It surely wasn’t the colleague who told me she’d call me for a lunch “next week”… but didn’t…. but one way or another, this past week I’ve been pushed to think some more about truth – what it is, and whether or not it’s a necessary part of the lives we build together, necessary to form community.
It reminds me of the first time I enjoyed a Thanksgiving Dinner at my seminary. Just before the holiday, Andover Newton would put on a feast for all the students and faculty… turkey, stuffing, and all the trimmings. There was even a steamed pudding and hard sauce. And that was where I learned that butter was a necessary ingredient for hard sauce. You cannot substitute lard, or Crisco…it has to be butter, or it’s just not edible.
Without truth, can we have community? Or do we just have a hard white lump that actually ruins the meal?
What is truth, Pilate asks, and it is not an idle question. Truth is that which agrees with the facts. It is true, truth, that our leaves are turning color right now. That’s a fact. It’s a fact that Route 20 east of Sturbridge is difficult to drive because of construction.
Sometimes we confuse fact and opinion. I have two friends who, right now, are arguing about whether or not the best cheese comes from Oregon, where one friend lives, or Wisconsin, where the other one lives. I could jump in and say, no its Vermont…but that’s just my opinion.
But what’s going on these days is not really about confusing fact and opinion…. It’s about offering as fact that which is untrue, turning lies into truth… If a person tells you that there is no problem driving Route 20, or if they tell you that there are no slowdowns on the Mass Pike, and you believe them, those untruths can cause you problems.
What is truth? It’s not just facts. Truth is the foundation upon which we build our world. In Matthew 7, Jesus tells the story of the two carpenters – one built his house on the rock, a solid foundation, trustable, reliable. The other built on shifting sands… and when the storm came – think of those houses in places like the Outer Banks that are falling into the sea… Truth is that rocky foundation, unmovable, dependable.
Without a reliable basis of truth, it is enormously difficult to build community. We can see this all around right now. Sure, we all agree, I think, that twelve inches makes one foot, but on other, less-factually-based issues, we find ourselves divided by what we believe to be true or false. We are divided by our understandings of the meaning of truth. There is, in short a difference between truth, based on facts, and truthiness, based on nothing much at all
Wikipedia says that:
“Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions.”
Let’s be clear; we cannot build a good world, a healthy world, on the shifting sands of untruth, or opinions. We can say we don’t “believe” in climate change, but those houses keep falling into the ocean. People keep losing their homes. Hurricanes keep getting more and more powerful. Truthiness destroys lives, people. Communities, and even countries. Lying cannot change the basic fabric of society.
I wonder if the struggle we’re in isn’t really a struggle between a vision of a community, a world, built on truth – and a world built on assumptions – between truth and truthiness. It can be difficult to tell the difference sometimes, but we have been given some guidelines on that by Jesus.
We believe that Jesus was the living embodiment of truth, that truth which is revealed in the active practice of love – love of our world, love of our communities, love of one another. That is a love which leaps across the wall between peoples and has the capacity to bring together enemies and transform them into friends.
The ultimate truth of our world is a truth which is built on love, which seeks to build up the community, to make life better for us all, not just good for the top layer. When Jesus says “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” he is pointing towards a way of life which is built on truth and planned to bring people together, to create a community where all can thrive.
This, then is truth: facts matter. People are important. God is about Love, not just some, but all of us, all the time.
Amen.
©2024, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 