April 6, 2007
Good Friday (Year C)
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22:1-11; Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-9;
John 18:1-19:42
I find this little sentence tucked away in this long recounting of the passion to be profoundly disturbing. For there was Pilate about to allow a man to die because the townies wanted him dead – and for something he (Pilate) did not know to be true. There was Pilate with the ultimate truth sitting right in front of him, and he couldn’t see it.
If we were to go around this room tonight and ask what we know as the truth about Jesus, I am certain we could all give religious words that we have heard since our childhoods about who Jesus is: the Son of God, the one who lives as we do but without sin, the Lamb of God, etc., etc., etc. But would any of these tell us the truth that Pilate was seeking when he jarringly asked Jesus, “What is truth?”
Could it be that there is no truth? Not in the concrete scientific way we want there to be truth? Truth belongs to the realm of holy mystery does it not? Even science calls things theories, never truths. News reporters print stories based on facts, but those facts are always collected from one person or another’s viewpoint. Retractions are printed when another “truth” comes to light.
This week one of the threads that is running on the Anglican listserve to which I belong is a discussion of the relationship of science to truth as opposed to the truth of faith found in religion or scripture. The discussion is particularly heated in regard to creation science and intelligent design, alternative “sciences” that are being promoted by the religious right. The “truth” in these sciences is limited to the words in scripture: the world created in seven days, the order as described in Genesis. There were never dinosaurs in this intelligent design form of truth. These same people who promote intelligent design are also denying that the Holocaust ever took place. They say there are no “facts,” no “truth,“ to support that “theory” of Hitler’s reign of terror.
One writer suggested that the search for truth has broken down. He says, and I agree, the bible tells us the “truth” about God, about creation, about the workings of the world and universe, in poetic ways that point way beyond the words in the bible to a larger “truth.” [He says] intelligent design takes the poetry out of the writing and tries to capture its message in a concise set of absolutes. It is an attempt to stuff everything into a left-brain approach to life.
This writer further notes that in our search for truth the western world has long understood that science tells us the “what” and religion tells us the “so what.” There is no dichotomy in that. It is not either/or thinking. It is the broader both/and. “When religion and science cut themselves off from each other, then we find danger. Science without religion and the questions of meaning results in Holocausts. Religion without science results in 9-11 suicide flights.” Both "whats” and “so whats” are needed to make a complete understanding of truth, each informs the other, each brings greater veracity to the other. (Harry Coverston)
Now I am certain that Pilate did not have such a theological debate in mind when he asked, “What is truth?” But I am certain that the discrepancy existed then as now between those who would depend upon “facts” only, and those who would twist what they want to believe into a “fact” so that truth can be proclaimed in absolutes, for there are very few things that are absolute, and rarely are those in anyway related to the “so what” that biblical, faithful truth embodies.
For people of faith those absolutes are not bound up in the physics and biology and science of the planet earth, not even in the realm of human bodies and lives. Rather for people of religious conviction truth is contained in the mysterious workings of faith and known in the deep recesses of the soul, often after examining physical evidence and weighing its relationship to the deeper truth.
This is truth: Jesus of
Getting bogged down in which detail of the story is the “truth” or which version, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, is more accurate and closer to the “truth” of what really happened merely separates us from the mystery that is all truth. And conversely insisting that one is true and others are not, or that the truth depends on accepting the words on the page as inerrant reality, denigrates the holiness and the mystery that is the truth of the mystery of a triune God.
The resounding truth in this case against Jesus that we recount tonight is contained in the “so what.” Not the “what.” Yes, Jesus died. But the “so what” of that death is the power of the gospel. The “so what” would say servant hood, self sacrifice, love of the downtrodden, and forgiveness are the way of God. Not death. Death is a mere constraint of mortality, a sign that we are subject to the temptations of human greed, oppression of others, twisting the facts to mirror our own human failures and greed. The “so what” is that God does not intend that to be the end of the story.
Tonight we sit on the precipice of that mystery of the ultimate truth. God’s ultimate intention for us. A truth Pilate knew was there in front of him, but he could not grasp. A truth Jesus was going to embody by allowing the forces of evil to have their way – for the moment.
As we ponder the great questions of life – and certainly truth is one such question – let us not be seduced, as Pilate ultimately was, by the pressures of political or “factual” realities. Instead let us cling to, search for, an informed truth, one that is not limited to the “scientific facts” but is also informed by the mystery of faith. I am not saying we let go of facts – as in a text book – but let us put them in their proper place, with companion questions. The “what” and the “so what” both need to be explored, each informing the other and our faith. Let us never do what Pilate did: come so close to having the answer and then letting go of it. We must live in the tension. Trust the mystery as much as the fact. Do what Pilate didn’t: accept that Jesus is indeed king . . . of a realm we can only get to by faith.
Amen.
Church of the Good Shepherd