November 25, 2018 (Reign of Christ) – John 18:33-37
John 18:33-37
The Reign of Truth in a Post-Truth World
Reign of Christ – November 25, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The Christian writer Debie Thomas recently did a search for headlines that
contain the word “truth.”
Not surprisingly, I guess, she found that most of the results were pretty negative.
Headlines that came up most often were ones like this:
“The Death of Truth.”
“The Assault on Truth.”
“Notes on Falsehood.”
When I conducted my own search, I discovered the 2016 Oxford Dictionary word of the year,
which lifts up a new word that reflects the times we live in.
The word of the year for 2016? Post-truth.
Apparently we live in a post-truth world.
This is the definition of post-truth: relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
Like Jesus on the cross, the truth has become a victim in our age.
Apparently it is okay to say any old thing – as long as it gets the results you want.
The term implies that the truth has become irrelevant.
It is more than a little surprising to come to church on Christ the King Sunday –
or what I am calling “Reign of Christ” Sunday this year – and get an image of Jesus
which is not exactly kingly.
The reading is not about Jesus in all his glory, powerful, surrounded by attending angels and
parading his armies of warrior angels.
That is not what the lectionary is pointing us to.
Instead we get a reading of Jesus at close to the low point of his life.
Unjustly accused, on trial, abandoned by his friends, apparently a failure.
I mean, isn’t that weird?
Jesus even seems ambivalent here about being called a “king.”
You say that I am a king, he says to Pilate. As if to say, “Your words, not mine.”
And certainly he is not a king in the conventional way.
He is, as we say, a king of love – and look where that gets him.
He seems to steer Pilate away from the notion of being a king,
and instead speaks to Pilate of something else.
He says what he has really come for is to testify to the truth.
You rarely get a clear, unambiguous statement from Jesus telling us what he is all about.
This seems about as clear as Jesus ever gets about his role:
I came to testify to the truth.
Jesus, in his life, bears witness to the truth.
Simply put, Jesus bears witness to the truth about God – that God is love.
And Jesus bears witness to the truth about a human life – that we are made for loving.
Even though we don’t have it in the reading, we know Pilate’s famous response in the next verse:
What is truth? He scoffs.
That scoffing question perhaps has a lot more resonance for us now in a post-truth age.
What is truth? Truth is whatever you say it is.
You can make stuff up and peddle it as the truth as long as it suits your needs and
as long as it achieves whatever you want it to.
The great irony in this scene – and John’s gospel is famous for its delicious irony –
the great irony is that as Pilate looks at Jesus and mocks the truth . . . he is in fact,
looking right at the truth!
The truth is a person who is living a true life.
He is looking at the truth about God – because Jesus is fully divine in John’s understanding and
God is love and Jesus fully embodies that.
And he is looking at the truth about a human life, about what a human life is for –
because Jesus is also a fully human being,
that is, everything a human being was meant to be by God.
The truth – the big T truth about God and what it means to be alive – is staring Pilate in the face.
And he can’t see it.
Maybe Pilate was living in a post-truth world, too.
Whatever was expedient for the Roman Empire was the truth.
But Jesus: Jesus is not really about expediency.
There are lots of adjectives you could use about Jesus, but expedient was not one of them.
Jesus simply claims he is about the truth.
If he is a king, if he is a sovereign, if he has a reign, it is about the reign of truth.
The truth, first of all, that God is love.
And not in some mushy, emotional, feel-y way.
God is love in that God acts lovingly because God loves this world and God loves us.
God creates this world in great beauty and
is present in it with us sustaining us every single moment, untiringly.
God enters into faithful relationship with human beings and promises never to abandon them.
God sends prophets and leaders and healers and peace-makers and justice-doers.
And God comes among us in person in Jesus and God shares with us that part of the divine self
we call the Spirit, that same loving energy that is part of the divine life.
God sticks with us through good times and bad because God is love.
This is the truth that Jesus bears witness to.
But the second aspect is just as important: the truth that humans are made for loving.
We are not made to exploit one another or exploit creation.
We are not made to lord it over one another – or to suffer being lorded over.
We are made to act lovingly.
To care for one another – to care for creation.
To live in community and together work for the well-being of all.
Like Jesus this means engaging in simple, timeless things that ensure well-being:
making sure the hungry are fed, welcoming and including all people and
valuing their gifts, forgiving one another when we inevitably screw up,
healing one another, bringing blessing to one another,
generously using the gifts we’ve been given for the welfare of our time and place.
Jesus maybe is ambivalent about being named “king,” but he is clear about having kingdom,
or, better, a reign.
That is kind of interesting, right?
His reign is not like the reign of Rome, with its ruthless brutality and its authoritarian leaders.
His reign is a reign of loving action that leads to the flourishing of creation and all peoples.
His reign is a reign to restore the world.
His reign exists to bring the God of love to all who need it through the people of love.
God reigns at Sargent and Victor because God has put you here and
God has called you and God calls you every day to be priests in God’s reign,
that is: those who bring blessing by their presence.
That is your purpose.
That is the truth.
That is the truth about God: God wants you here in order to love.
And that is the truth about yourselves: your purpose in loving is here.
At Sargent and Victor.
What does it mean for you that you are a priest in this kingdom?
What does it mean for you that you are part of the reign of truth in this time and place?
And what is it worth to you to be here?
What is it worth to be part of the truth – to be truth – in a post-truth world?
Every week you come to gather here and I assume you are coming for the truth,
the truth about God, the truth about the world, the truth about yourself.
Jesus is here to bear witness to the truth with his life.
You are here to bear witness to the truth with your life.
The question is: will you bear witness to the truth in a post-truth world?
The truth is often inconvenient, and costly – but it is still the truth.
And while truth is being put to death every day as the headlines bear out,
Jesus has shown that you cannot, in fact, kill it.
In the resurrection Jesus shows that the truths that God is love and that
we human bodies were made for loving keep on springing up
when they are supposedly left for dead.
And that is the good news!
When you try to kill the truth, it rises again. And again. And again.
You are stewards of the truth that God is love and that human lives are for loving.
You are responsible for the gifts you have been given to embody that truth.
In a post-truth world, you are responsible for this corner of land at Sargent and Victor and
to ensure that the truth – that God is love – continues to live here and reign here.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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