What Is Truth?
This is what Pilate really wants to know. It is the central question in this passage assigned to us for this Christ the King Sunday from John 18:33-37, but we would not know that given verse 38 was left off. Verse 38 is the climax in this story of Good Friday, the Day of Preparation for the Passover in Jerusalem that year Pilate’s day has been interrupted as he tries to get some idea from Jesus as to why there is such a commotion among the Temple authorities. Pilate seems to understand what all of us come to know at one time or another: we live in a world of competing truths, competing world views or narratives if you will. It’s early in the morning. Pilate has yet to finish his first cup of coffee and what he promises will be his last cigarette. Every year, the city is awash with people from all over the ancient world; some to celebrate the Passover, others curious to see just what this Festival of Freedom and the God of the Jews is all about.
Pilate asks Jesus if he is in fact king of the Jews. Jesus says his kingdom, that is, his Father’s kingdom, is not of this world. It’s not at all like this world in which there are competing kings and emperors all claiming to be anointed by some god or another, or, like Caesar, claiming to be god themselves. Jesus makes the point that were he a king, his followers would be “fighting to keep me from being handed over” to the authorities. That is how unlike Caesar’s Rome the kingdom of God is. And as we hear from John the Revelator, his Father’s kingdom was, is, and will always be very different than Rome, or Judea, or Egypt, or Babylon, or Syria. And from every kingdom throughout history to this day. [i]
To Pilate, who has successfully risen up the ladder of the Roman power structure to be the fifth governor of the province of Judea, all this sounds pretty much like blah, blah, blah. Why can’t these so-called messiahs give a straight answer. “So, you are a king,” he says, taking another slow drag on his last cigarette. Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. 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.” Exhaling, Pilate says in a voice half-interested and half-sarcasm, “What is truth?” This is the missing verse 38. Jesus is silent. There is nothing else to say. For Truth stands before Pilate in the flesh. The God of the Passover, the truth, who was, who is, who is to be. Truth is everything from Alpha to Omega; or, as we might say, from A to Z; all that is seen and unseen; all that has been, is, and is yet to be.
In his novel Desert, Noble Laureate author J.M.G. Le Clezio writes about the desert: “Out there, in the open desert, men can walk for days without passing a single house, seeing a well, for the desert is so vast that no one can know it all.” [ii] As it is with the desert, so it is with Truth, with God. The vastness of it all. No one can know it all. What more is there to say? Truth stands in the silence. If only Pilate, if only the rest of us, could see that; know that; feel that.
In a time not unlike the first century world of Rome, Judea, Galilee, Greece, and the rest of the ancient world, after World War I, Pope Pius XI saw a world of authoritarian-strongmen, fascists, dictators, who sought to rule like kings, espousing extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, white supremacy, racism, and anti-immigration and anti-democratic policies throughout Europe. Recognizing the falseness of these ideologies, Pius instituted Christ the King Sunday in 1925 to refocus us all on why we are here – to be icons of God’s love in this seriously broken world. Originally set as the last Sunday of October, in 1969, Pope Paul VI moved it to the Last Sunday before Advent and called it, “The Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.” Pius noted that while there had been a cessation of hostilities, there was no true peace. He wrote, “Christ reigns over the minds of individuals by his teachings, in their hearts by His love, in each one's life by … imitating His example…The faithful, moreover, by meditating upon these truths, will gain much strength and courage, enabling them to form their lives after the true Christian ideal ... He must reign in our minds…in our wills…in our hearts… [so that in] the words of the Apostle Paul, [we might serve] as instruments of justice unto God.” [iii]
What is the truth Christ and his followers lived? What kind
of king is Jesus, if he is to be a king at all? These words from a pamphlet at Bath
Abbey, Bath, England, tries to sum it up like this:
“Jesus was born in an obscure
Middle Eastern town called Bethlehem, over 2000 years ago. During his first 30
years he shared the daily life and work of an ordinary home. For the next three
years he went about teaching people about God and healing sick people by the
shores of Lake Galilee. He called 12 ordinary men to be his helpers.
“He had no money. He wrote no
books. He commanded no army. He wielded no political power. During his life he
never travelled more than 200 miles in any direction. He was executed by being
nailed to a cross at the age of 33.
“Today, nearly 2 billion people
throughout the world worship Jesus as divine - the Son of God. Their experience
has convinced them that in the wonders of nature we see God as our loving
Father; in the person of Jesus, we discover God as Son; and in our daily lives
we encounter this same God as Spirit. Jesus is our way to finding God: we learn
about Jesus by reading the Bible, particularly the New Testament and we meet
him directly in our spiritual experience.
“Jesus taught us to trust in a
loving and merciful Father and to pray to him in faith for all our needs. He
taught that we are all infinitely precious, children of one heavenly Father,
and that we should therefore treat one another with love, respect and
forgiveness. He lived out what he taught by caring for those he met; by healing
the sick - a sign of God's love at work; and by forgiving those who put him to
death.
“Jesus' actions alone would not
have led him to a criminal's death on the cross: but his teaching challenged
the religious, political and moral beliefs of his day. People believed, and do to
this day, that he can lead us to a full experience of God’s love and
compassion. Above all, he pointed to his death as God's appointed means of
bringing self-centered people back to God. Jesus also foretold that he would be
raised to life again three days after his death. When, three days after he had
died on the cross, his followers did indeed meet him alive again; frightened
and defeated women and men became fearless and joyful messengers.
“Their message of the Good News about Jesus is the reason Bath Abbey exists. More importantly, it is the reason why all over the world there are Christians who know what it means to meet the living Christ, and believe that He can lead us all to heal and repair a broken world. May your time in Bath Abbey be a blessing to you, and also to us in the church.” [iv]
This is why the Church is here at all: to follow Christ; to heal, gather, repair, restore, and unite everyone and everything in this broken world. To be icons of God’s love to all the earth, and everything therein. To be a community of God’s Love. May God for us, whom we call Father; God alongside us, whom we call Son; and God within us, whom we call Spirit; hold and enliven us to a full experience of God’s love and compassion; that in all that we say and all that we do, we may become God’s Truth, a community of Love, Justice and Freedom for all peoples, all creatures, and all the Earth. This is Christ, the Truth that stands silent before us. Amen.
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