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A long, long, long, long time ago I was a Boy Scout and I will go on record saying that there are/were few organizations as effective as scouting at taking boys and girls and preparing them to be good men and women emphasis on the word “Good”. It is sad that scouting like all civic organizations and similar groups that teach values is going the way of the dodo. I was in Troop 73 in Waynesboro, VA. We met every Thursday night. Each meeting started with us standing in front of our flags, right hand up in the Scout Sign and saying the Scout Oath, “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” Then, we would say the Scout Law: “A Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.” I know that’s a little different than what Canadian Scouts say.
Looking at the Scout Law I think it is noteworthy that it starts with the trait of character known as being trustworthy. Indeed, honesty is at the top of the list. This creates the expectation that a scout can be counted on to tell the truth at all times to oneself and to others. Apparently, telling the truth matters, or at least should I say it mattered. I may be wrong but the only time I can remember lying being acceptable behaviour was those Liar’s Contests they would have at fairs and festivals. People would spend all year baking up a tall tale for the Liar’s Contest, go on stage to tell it, and everybody was rolling on the floor by the time you were done. These days Liar’s Contests seems to be what we call elections to public office. The biggest liar wins the election but ain’t nobody rolling on the floor laughing. Instead, people want to do violence to each other. If people are not trustworthy, human community falls apart. Trust is at the heart of human community, the heart of friendship, marriage, family; neighbourhood, business, towns, cities, provinces, and nations, and relationships between nations. There is no peace without trust. We need to know that those we rely on will not betray and lie to us. The truth and telling it is important.
Looking here at our reading from John, we do best to truly take to heart just how politically centered this conversation Jesus and Pontius Pilate are having is. It is about who has the right reign. The charge against Jesus is at one and the same time one an accusation of blasphemy and treason. The Jerusalem authorities brought Jesus before Pilate to be tried and put to death for his identifying/revealing himself as God, Son of God, and Saviour or Christ. Pilate stood before Jesus as the representative of Caesar, the Roman Emperor, who himself made claims to be God, Son of God, and Saviour. Caesar was a pretender whose power was a lie that was embodied in a very powerful military. Jesus was the Truth before whom the Pretender would not stand except by means of proxy. The real deal whose power was manifested in healing, setting people free from oppression, feeding the multitudes, and, above all, compassion. If anybody had a rightful, true, and just reason to be called “King” it was Jesus. This was Truth, reality, undebatable.
Take note of what Jesus does here in this politically charged conversation he is having with Pilate. Jesus does not claim his kingship. Pilate asks him if he was a king. Jesus wants to know who told him that because the Jewish nation was certainly not calling him king. His ragtag, motley crowd of on the verge of being disillusioned followers were the only ones doing that. Pilate says a king is what your own people claim that you claim to be. Jesus doesn’t deny it, but quantifies it by saying his reign, his realm, his kingdom is not rooted in this world; a fact made obvious by his followers not rising up in armed revolt to save him. Pilate, thinking he’s got the cat by the tail, says, “So you are a king.” Jesus points out that the only person who is saying that is Pilate and being a king is not why he has come into the world. Jesus’ reason for being in this world is testifying to the Truth. Please note that we get our word “to martyr” from the Greek word for “to testify”. Jesus is going to die for the Truth, for telling the Truth. And Pilate then asks the perfect question, the most perfect of all questions and its really big, huge, the hugest of all perfect questions: “WHAT IS TRUTH?”
Let us take a minute to note the chess move, so to speak, that Jesus has made. He has superseded kingship with telling the Truth. Real power to reign is the power of telling the Truth. Jesus tells the Truth. Those who belong to the Truth listen to his voice. His kingdom is found around, centered upon the Truth. That’s very different from the way the kingdom, which is the power to rule, works in this world. Let me describe how ruling in this world works.
Bob Woodward, an American Investigative reporter known for getting to the truth of the matter recently asked a politician who is well-known of late, “What is power?”. The politician gave a very telling answer, “Power – and I hate to say it – is fear.” It is no secret that the people who govern in this world are tempted to use intimidation to have power and they will inevitably use it. Kingship in this world finds its power in fear and intimidation. Jesus, on the other hand, reigns with the power of the Truth. Those who listen to him belong to the truth.
With great frustration, the kind of frustration that easily becomes futility, Pilate knowing the impossibility of ever hearing and recognizing the Truth within the system of fear, intimidation, and groveling for favours in which he lived and moved and had his being threw his hands in the air in an act of self-justification and asks, “What is Truth?” One can’t help but feel for him. He’s nothing more than a pawn, a middleman, the fall guy in all this. As best as he can, he tries to wash his hands of the crime of killing the Truth, a crime for which he became notorious.
What does the truth, testifying to the truth, look like? In John’s Gospel there are seven instances of Jesus demonstrating his power to tell the Truth. At a wedding in Cana, they ran out of wine. There were empty jars there each holding forty or more gallons of water. The jars held the water that Jews used for ritual washing before eating but they stood empty because that way of being religious was empty. Jesus had the jars filled with water and he turned it into very fine wine. Truth invigorates. It is the life of the party, so to speak, when religion gives out.
The son of a royal official in Capernaum was ill and near death. The father begged Jesus to heal him. Jesus told him his son was healed and sent him home. The man found his son was healed at the exact time Jesus pronounced it. Truth heals.
A hopeless paralytic lying beside a pool of water in Jerusalem, the pool of Bethesda, believed that when an angel rippled the water the first to jump in will be healed. But he was unable to jump in because he was paralyzed. Jesus asked him if he really wanted to be made well. He said he did but other people always managed to get to the water first. Jesus told him to pick up his mat and go home. Suddenly finding himself healed, he picked up his mat and went home. The Truth heals those hopelessly paralyzed in disability.
A crowd of over 15,000 was following Jesus around and at the end of the day they were in a barren place with no food. Jesus told them to sit down and he fed them all with five loaves of bread and two fish that a little boy had given to the cause. In the Truth there is abundantly enough for everybody. No one has too much or too little.
Jesus sent his disciples out into the sea of Galilee in a boat. He stayed behind to pray. A great wind blew up making it impossible to move forward. Jesus came walking to them on the water. They were afraid for their lives. He told them, “I am (the Hebrew name for God.”). Don’t be afraid.” He got into the boat and they got to where they were going. The Truth quells fear even when it seems the unseen forces hidden behind creation are against us. The Truth gets us unstuck and moving forward to where we need to be.
Jesus healed a man born blind, a man whom everyone was cursed by God for some hidden sin of his parents. Jesus spit into the dirt and made some mud that he rubbed into the man’s eyes and sent him to wash in the pool of Siloam. He found his way there, washed the mud off, and he could see. He got kicked out of the synagogue because Jesus healed him on the Sabbath. It didn’t matter for he now put his loyalty in Jesus, the Truth who gave him sight rather than the religious people who said he was cursed. Seeing the Truth, we see Jesus.
A man named Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus, died. Four days later, Jesus went to Lazarus’s heart-broken sisters and he wept with them. He went with them to the tomb as if to grieve. Instead, he had the stone rolled away. In a great voice, he commanded Lazarus to come forth. Lazarus came forth. They removed the stinky graveclothes from him. The Truth grieves but it also raises the dead.
It is Christ the King Sunday, the day we celebrate his reign over all creation. We worship him today in a world that thinks that lying is the new acceptable norm, that intimidation and fear are the way to get things done, that escalating wars with more brutal weapons will somehow bring peace. In this world, where is Jesus reigning? Look for the Truth. The Truth, Jesus, doesn’t lie or intimidate. It’s not legalistic and judgemental. The Truth loves our children. The Truth heals. The Truth frees. The Truth feeds. The Truth calms. The Truth gives sight. The Truth restores. The Truth knows the pain of grieving. The Truth gives new life. The Truth resurrects. The Truth speaks. Do you hear his voice? Amen.
