9/11's crucial questions
The Sunday Sermon

John 18:28-40

28 Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover.

37Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" 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." 38Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"

There is a scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark when Professor Jones is delivering a classroom lecture. He tells the students, "Archaeology is the search for facts, not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Professor Smith's philosophy class is down the hall."

Truth and fact are not the same thing. We need only observe the presidential race to discern that. John Kerry and allies say that the results of America's war against Iraq is mostly a failure while George Bush and allies say they are mostly success. Both sides have the same facts, but both arrive at a different "truth."

People rarely fight over facts. What they argue about is what the facts mean, what is the Truth the facts indicate.

Truth is important and so is truth's relationship to facts. Every one of us operates every day on what is known as the "correspondence theory" of truth. For example, when doctors make diagnoses, they correspond symptoms and test results to disorders, ailments or diseases. So do mechanics when determining what makes the pinging noise under the hood of your car. In either case the decision about health or auto repairs relies on a necessary correspondence between certain facts and certain conclusions that are true, or at least most likely true.

But corresponding facts to truths means that some conclusions must be false. Falsehoods don't correspond to facts. But two other claims about what is truth alive and well in Western civilization today say there is no such thing as falsehood. One is relativism, the notion that something can be "true for you" and another thing "true for me." We can each have our own personal Truth regardless of facts.

But relativism is tolerable only for trivial matters. You may love cauliflower and I despise it. "Cauliflower tastes good," is true for you and its opposite, ""Cauliflower tastes bad," is true for me. And we're both right. But it doesn't matter.

However, when we think that the stakes of truth are significant, we all drop all pretense of relativism. If one doctor tells Horace he has heart disease and another says he doesn't, Horace doesn't conclude they are both right.

Some people think that the truth of a statement is related to whether it "works." So a religion may be true for Horace if he sees some benefit to it, but false for Edna if she sees none. The danger of thinking truth being whatever works is that the perceived benefit might really be bad. "Cigarettes are good" works in the sense that many smokers report a soothing or relaxing sensation when they smoke, but the fact remains that cigarettes are toxic.

Joseph Goebbels was Hitler's propaganda chief. True statements for him were those that worked to boost the Nazi cause. Surely nothing more need be said about that understanding of truth.

Christian faith and practice relies on correspondence, not relativism or utility. On the first Easter morning, the women went to the tomb and observed certain facts: the stone was rolled away, the tomb was empty, they saw Jesus alive. So they drew the obvious conclusion, "He is risen!"

Yet more than relating facts to truth is necessary. As James pointed out, even the demons know that Jesus rose from the dead, yet demons they remained. John Wesley admonished that we may affirm the truth of one, twenty or a hundred creeds and yet have no saving faith at all.

Back to Hollywood. Near the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jones and his father enter a desert cavern where reposes the Holy Grail, the cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper. They are captured there by the bad guy, a killer named Donovan, who is convinced that drinking from the cup imparts immortality in this life. The catch of getting the cup is that there are three lethal traps to pass through to reach it. Only Indiana and his father know the clues that, if properly interpreted, tell how to pass the traps.

But Indiana refuses to go after the grail. So Donovan shoots his father, who falls to the floor, bleeding profusely. "The healing power of the grail is the only thing that can save him now," Donovan growls. "It's time you asked yourself what you believe."

How do we discern what we believe, whether in religion or politics or other endeavors? What we believe is crucial. Belief, like truth, must correspond to fact. Belief is more important for our mental and spiritual health than truth. What we know to be true is what we know is, but what we believe impels what we do. All belief is founded not only on facts, but also on trust. And we seek not simply to know what is true, but what we can trust.

But there is such a thing as a moment of truth, when we have to confront what we trust and are compelled to decide how deeply we hold our beliefs.

Standing before Jesus, Pilate said to him, "Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?" Such a bald statement of power would certainly have been a moment of truth for me. Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above." It was not a diplomatic statement but a naked challenge to Pilate's power and authority. No one, Christian or not, can doubt that Jesus believed completely what he had claimed about himself and trusted that God would deliver.

Moments of truth that force us to confront what we believe often come from encounters with evil. These encounters are decisive because they demand decision without delay. Consider, though, that such immediacy is also found in matters of the heart, matters of love, where we also often think delay or indecision are unacceptable. In a young man or woman's life there so often is a time when he or she realizes that the beloved one must be claimed as one's own, else the beloved will be gone, perhaps forever. It is a crisis moment of hope, faith, fear and desire.

It is also a moment of risk, for to bare one's soul is to go spiritually naked. Whether confronting evil or love, the crisis moment forces the issue: What do we believe? Whom do we trust? What shall we do? What shall we risk? What do we fear? What do we love?

These are questions I have pondered in the years since three airliners were flown into buildings in two cities and another crashed to earth in Pennsylvania. More than three thousand people died, so many more injured, thousands also left in mourning.

We are not generic, lumpen people. We are American people who faced a crisis moment of evil then, and continue to be gnawed by it now as combat continues in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What do we believe, we Americans? Do we really believe that the truth is self evident that all persons are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are properly instituted to secure these rights, as our Declaration of Independence says? Do we say that this declaration corresponds to facts about the nature of God and God's purposes in creation, or shall we say that divinely-commanded freedom is true for us, but divinely-sanctioned tyranny is true for others? Shall we say that democracy works for us, but dictatorship works for others?

Do we trust that this American experiment will endure and indeed expand? Are we agreed not to vanish into the black hole of history as a dark cloak of theocratic fascism spreads, claiming Allah's authority to enslave women and children, oppress men and murder all who will not submit?

Only when we can answer these questions with significant unity can we answer what shall we do and what shall we risk. We already know what we fear: a dirty bomb, a biological attack, increasing terrorist chaos across the world, years of combat and dead soldiers in far countries. But I would submit that these fears, as serious as they are, should not be our greatest fears as Americans.

Our greatest fear should be that as a people we will decide that this crisis of decision is no crisis at all. Franklin Roosevelt said there is nothing to fear but fear itself, but I say that today there is nothing to fear but thinking this crisis does not matter, that it will pass and the storm will be still on its own. Islamist terrorists have said they want kill at least four million Americans, but more than that they want to destroy the American idea - that a just ordering of both religious and political life requires the people to be sovereign. Our idea of religious freedom is to think and let think and to favor no religion over another in law. But our enemies have made it clear that all must submit to Allah as they define Allah. Osama bin Laden has stated explicitly and publicly that he envisions only two possible futures for the United States: we either become a fully Islamic country ruled solely by Islamic law, or we die.

Yet even apathy to the American idea is not my own greatest fear. Revelation chapter two records the words of Christ as revealed to John:

1 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: . . . 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate the wicked, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. 4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” (Rev 2:1a-4)

Even in the continuing crisis, I wonder sometimes whether we American Christians will treat our religion as a mere commodity, to be swapped in or out of our lives according to what suits us at the time. Have we adopted religious relativism, where niceness and tolerance is prized more than truth and faithfulness? Could it be that Christ holds something against us, in spite of our good works, because we have forgotten that he is meant to be our first love?

John 21 records Jesus and his disciples one morning not long before Jesus died.

15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs." 16 A second time he said to him, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep." 17 He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" And he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep. 18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go." 19 ... And after this he said to him, "Follow me."

My greatest fear is that we will not feed or tend Christ's sheep, and that when he leads we will not follow. I think that is why Jesus asked Peter three times whether he loved him. He was setting Peter up for a crisis moment of love when Peter would have to confront what he believed about Jesus and his love for him.

Love requires commitment. The Bible is full of stories of people who play hide and seek with God’s calling. Their faith falters, their obedience is short-lived, their worship wanes, and their commitment must be tested and reestablished again and again. The stories of Elijah withdrawing to a lonely cave, Jeremiah refusing to preach, Jonah sailing away to Tarshish, and Peter worshiping then denying Jesus are stories of men who resisted God’s claim upon them. Intimacy with God and with each other costs; it costs us our time and our energies. A willingness to be present, to remain, to be accountable, to see things through, to come out from hiding are necessary to serve God.

Let us pray both as citizens of America and of the Kingdom of God that we will hold fast to what is true and good. May we have courage, resolution, commitment and wisdom in our steps as a nation, but especially as ones to whom Christ has said, "Follow me."

by Donald Sensing, 9/12/2004 07:39:57 AM. Permalink |