A message on John 18:37-38 by Don Heatley, pastor of Vision Community Church in Warwick, NY. Given at the Warwick Valley Ecumenical Council's Lenten Luncheon.
I have noticed something when I talk to people of younger generations? Well, it started with younger people? And then moved on to include even people my own age? I’m 46 years old? But notice I am telling you I am 46 years old? But it sounds like I am asking you if I am 46 years old? It’s a way of communicating where our inflection always sounds like we are asking a question? It’s a way of conversing where it always seems like I am looking for your approval? Or reassurance from you? Like I have no passion? Or conviction? Whatever?
I don’t know if Pontius Pilate spoke that way, but I think he thought that way. When Pilate asks, Jesus, “What is truth,” I don’t think he is seeking a philosophical debate. He isn’t starting a discussion about the meaning of existence. Pilate was not a secret Christian. History tells us he was a mean S.O.B.. He once crucified 2000 people in a one day. Pilate’s “what is truth” is the imperial equivalent of “whatever”, “who knows?”, “yeah, what are you gonna’ do?”
Having experienced the intersection of multiple cultures, Pilate was jaded ruler who ahd seen it all. Even his conclusion of “I find no case against this man” reveals his view that Jesus is no one special. “Sure, you’re the messiah Jesus. That guy over there, he’s the Messiah, The guy sitting in a drawn circle on the ground and praying, he says he’s the Messiah too. Yeah, you’re the Messiah. Whatever works for you. Whatever.”
We have all encountered this viewpoint in our own time. Simply put, it is the relativist point of view which claims “You believe what you want. I’ll believe what I want. As long as it works for you.” Although it denies the existence of truth per se, it conveniently ignores the fact that it itself is a making a truth claim.
While such a viewpoint sounds at first appealing, it does not work out well in real life. You wouldn’t want to be with a group of relativists if you were on the Titanic. Imagine that as you gather on the deck of the sinking ocean liner someone were to announce, “OK what I hear this group saying is ‘every man for himself’ and what I hear you saying is ‘women and children first.’ Let’s all break up into small groups to discuss.”
In parodying such a view, I myself am guilty of the other extreme – absolutism. Absolutists staunchly claim truth is absolute, knowable and wow by some wacky coincidence they just happen to have it. In Jesus’ day the absolutists were the religious leaders. They clamed to have it all figured out and a book that proved it. “We know what a Messiah is Jesus and you ain’t it. It says so right here.”
As an aside, let me be clear here. We Christians have an obligation to our Jewish brothers and sisters to correct the awful misconception that the Jews killed Jesus. That belief has been responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of Jews throughout history. When John’s Gospel uses the phrase “the Jews” we must keep in mind it was written by a Jewish community that was undergoing a painful conflict within itself. We are reading the writings of people in the midst of a church argument and as man of us know, nothing is worse than a church conflict. People get vicious. I may not anything about your church, but I can almost bet that within your church are two women who aren’t speaking to each other and I all goes back to an argument they had at a chicken dinner in 1957. “Look at her with her ‘I Like Ike’ button!”
This tension between absolutism and relativism comes up a lot today. If you look at my email’s inbox, you would think I am in the military. The word “war” appears repeatedly. My conservative friends send me invites to join the war on gay marriage or liberals. My liberal friends invite me to war with Fox News, or even declare war on the war. In addition, I get ads for church curriculum about the “Truth Wars”. Apparently God needs our help to defend his truth. It pits absolutist against relativists. No other choices are given. Yet I think that for many people, neither the absolutists not the relativists provide satisfactory answers to us.
I believe God knows this too. When we read the stories in our Bible we can see it. God tried letting us discover truth on our own and it degenerated into relativism and ended in a Flood. God tried carving truth in stone and it led to a Golden Calf, legalism and a demands no human could possibly meet. So God tried giving us truth in a person.
Between Pilate’s relativist whatever and the religion’s “these are the rules” absolutism is Jesus. Jesus is truth in the form of a person and that implies truth as a relationship. Jesus does not tell Pilate everyone who believe the truth listens to his voice. Believing does not precede listening. Instead Jesus makes the astounding claim that those who listen to his voice already belong to his truth. We can belong before we believe. Can we really say that is a rue descriptions of our churches? For 2000 year, we humans have tired to either set him in stone or make him relevant to the point of being irrelevant.
Recently, there have been several studies and polls that present bad news to Christians in our culture. The number of Christians is declining and the number of people who consider themselves as having no religion is rising. Another study showed that Protestant Christians are more likely to switch their denomination than switch the brand of the toothpaste they use. A few years back, A study by the Barna group showed that among twenty-somethings outside the church, a bad impression of Christianity exists. They see us as judgmental, hypocritical and too divisive and political. The impression among Evangelical twenty-somethings was not much better. Dan Kimball wrote a book about this trend called They Like Jesus But Not the Church.
How can that be? How did we reach the point where the culture has such a favorable view of Jesus, btu such a negative view of churches. For answers we must turn to the great theologian of relationality – George Costanza and his famous quote, “It’s not you. It’s me.” Although Christians often tend to look at those outside the church and say, “Ah look at those horrible people. They’re all relativists.”
The bottom line is that people are drowning in a cultural sea of relativism and when they come to our churches, are turned off by a cold current of absolutism. They encounter churches where we are more than willing to introduce them to their programs, their pastor, the band, the video screen – even their new carpet. But do we introduce them to Christ? We present them with arguments, propositional truths and dogma to prove to them that Jesus is the truth. But that’s not how Jesus did it. Jesus introduced his followers to a relationship with him.
Did Jesus say that we would know the truth and that truth needed to be proved and protected? No, he said, again in Johns’ Gospel, we would know the truth and the truth would set us free. In that same Gospel he also said that one day we would worship God in spirit and in truth. This is the same spirit that he describes in John 3, not as a fixed solid object, but as something ephemeral and mysterious like the wind which blows wherever it will.
God’s truth in Jesus is so wide and incomprehensible that it took four Gospels and Paul’s writings to even begin to capture it. The truth of Jesus is so multifaceted, it takes all our churches, traditions and denominations to just begin to point at it. It would be much simpler if God did it another way. If it was all like the bumper sticker that says “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” But I believe in a God that is too big to be contained to a bumper sticker.
Some would say - that’s messy. Truth is messy. The truth of Jesus Christ came to us in messy manger, in the midst of bodily fluids and animal manure. This truth grew in wisdom and stature, touching lepers, healing with spit and mud, opening stinking tombs, rearranging the furniture of sacred places, overturning tables in the Temple, a crown of thorns digging into its temples, whips lashing into its back, nails through its hands. Truth is an omnipotent God expressing that power through vulnerability, hanging on a cross, thirsting, pierced and dying so that same truth can set us free.
Jack Nicholson was
right. We can’t handle the truth.
At the end of John’s Gospel, the Risen Christ tells Mary literally,
“Don’t handle me!” Truth is not
something we humans can contain or control. We can only hold it in humility and submit to it.. Truth of
Jesus Christ is not an absolute that we possess. Truth of Jesus Christ is a
relationship that possesses us.
Well done, and thank you for the mid-week blog entry. I check in a few times a week for the sermons-- this was a treat. Especially because I am wrestling with the topic of "church" in my bible study class. I too believe God is so amazingly beyond our understanding that we can only hope to grasp the best we can of the truth, and behave accordingly, while remembering we've always more to learn. Unfortunately, I'm still struggling with the concept of "church" in all it's meanings visible/invisible. Your blog added more for me to consider. Thank you.
Posted by: Lisa Schoelles | March 27, 2009 at 02:45 PM