Scripture
readings: 2 Timothy 1:3-14; John 17:1-5;
20-26
“What is truth?”
A mom and dad were worried about what to do with
their little boy who was telling lies. One day he ran into the house and told
his mom, “Mommy there’s a lion in our yard!” She looked out and saw a big
golden-retriever. She told her son to go up to his room and pray about the lie
he had just told. The boy came down later, and his mom asked him if he had
anything to say about his lie? The boy said, “Yes Mommy, I told God, and he
said that he thought the dog was a lion, at first, too.”
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| A Limited Range of Personal Oddments: More or Less in Temporal Order |
Jesus, when he was about to be sent to the cross,
explained part of his mission and purpose to Pontius Pilate, the Roman
governor. Jesus told Pilate that he had come to bear witness to the truth.
Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” But he didn’t stop and wait for Jesus to
answer his question. (John 18:37-38) Pilate didn’t “stay for an answer”, either
because he didn’t believe in the truth or else he didn’t want to be
inconvenienced by it.
If we read on, in the story of Jesus’ trial, we would
find that the governor was really only interested in his own survival, and in
his own success. He served himself, not the truth.
Or you might say that Pontius Pilate, the brutal but
cowardly Roman governor, was his own truth. His truth was whatever served him,
what ever worked for him. And we find more and more people of the same opinion
in our present day.
We live in a time when fewer and fewer people believe
in an absolute truth, or in absolute standards of good and evil; right and
wrong. People are more and more likely than ever to say that, “the truth is
whatever works for you.”
We live in a world that asks, “What is truth?”
because it doesn’t really want a truth that is truly true. We live in a world;
that, more and more, doesn’t believe in the truth at all.
What if “whatever works for you” is to lie, or to
take things from work, or to cheat on your tax records, or to spread a rumor
about another person? What if “whatever works for you” is to use other people
for your own advantage, or to pretend to be someone you are not; whether it’s
on the internet or in real life?
Now during these weeks we are thinking about the
great “ends” or purposes of the Church.
First, remember what the church is. The church is the
gathering of the people of God into what the Bible calls the body of Christ.
God wants a gathering of his people.
He wants a gathering because, in the world as it is,
we see the opposite of gathering. We see a scattering. In the brokenness of our
world we see division. We see conflict. Sin has made a crack in everything, and
between every human, and even on the inside of every human, and God wants to
bring the pieces together and mend them better than any glue on earth can do.
God wants a group of people who belong to each other;
and who know that they belong to each other; who know that they need to work
together. And one of the purposes of our belonging to each other and working
together is that this is the way to “preserve the truth”. The preservation of
the truth is a great cause that we serve in our life together: in our
partnership, in our unity, in our worshiping, praying, learning, working, and
carrying out the mission of Christ together.
We want to be found by each other and by the whole
world to be people who are true and who can be relied upon, in big things and
in the so-called little things. This is because we are witnesses, in this
world, of a God who is true and who can be relied upon. The world we live in
needs to know that there is a great and wonderful and transforming truth that
it needs to known; and that this truth can be relied on; and that this truth is
to be found in God.
There is a lot of responsibility in the job of the
preservation of the truth. The preservation of the truth is like a relay race.
The church is a team in the relay race of truth.
The race has lasted thousands of years. According to
Paul the race included his forbearers, the people of Israel
But even in our own present generation, in this
congregation and all around the world, we pass the baton back and forth as we
pray for each other, and as we take our turns in serving, and as we encourage
each other.
Many people are skeptical about whether it is
possible to preserve the truth. They compare it to the parlor game where everyone
sits in a circle and one person is chosen to whisper a message to the person on
their right, and the person on the right passes the message on, in a whisper,
to the person on their right, until the message goes all around the circle.
When it goes all the way around, it becomes a completely different message.
Now, if I got the message mixed up, it would probably
be because I don’t hear as well as I used to; or because I don’t say, “What!”
But I believe that most of the messing up comes from the fact that people are
playing a game. The people in the game treat the message as a game.
But we are not playing a game. We have a message that
has been entrusted to us by God. We have not changed the message. Though some
Christians have changed it, or tried to, or never got it right in the first
place, the Church, as a whole, has never changed the message.
An example of how the message has been passed along
without changing it is in the thing we call “the creeds”. The word “creed”
comes from the Latin word (“credo”) for, “I believe.” The creeds are statements
of the truth you believe in; the truth you live by. The creeds are ancient, and
they come from people who were serious about their faith: serious about passing
it on.
The creeds and the confessions of the church have a
history that goes back to the beginnings of the church. We can say the
Apostle’s Creed (the core material of which had already become tradition by the early
second century)* and the Nicene Creed (which comes from the year 325 AD) and we
can see that the message has not changed.
A century before the Protestant Reformation, during
what we consider to be the darkest times of the church, in its knowledge of the
truth of the gospel, there was a man who lived in the lands of Germany
This is what Thomas a Kempis wrote about the center
of the truth of the gospel. He wrote: “In the cross is salvation, in the cross
is life, in the cross is protection against our enemies, in the cross is
infusion of heavenly sweetness, in the cross is strength of mind, in the cross
joy of spirit, in the cross the height of virtue, in the cross the perfection
of holiness. There is no salvation of the soul, nor hope of everlasting life,
but in the cross. Take up therefore your cross and follow Jesus, and you shall
go into life everlasting. He went before, bearing his cross, and died for you
on the cross; that you might also bear your cross and desire to die on the
cross with him.” (Second Book, Chapter 12)
This is what we believe and, when Thomas a Kempis
wrote these words they were the accepted teaching of his day. Most of the
corruption in the church of his day (that led to the Reformation) was about
power, and ambition, and money. There were many confusing things that the
church taught during that time, but the truth was still there.
The Christians of that generation carried the baton
in their day, as we do in ours. The preservation of the truth means seriously
taking up our positions together as faithful relay-racers in the race of the
truth.
The truth we are carrying in this relay race includes
a number of ingredients that all belong together. We are called to preserve a
truth that is both a “pattern of teaching” and a living relationship with God
through Jesus Christ. Paul says: “What you heard from me, keep as the pattern
of sound teaching with faith and love in Jesus Christ.”
The pattern of sound teaching is the outward
statement of the message. Faith and love are the living relationship with Jesus
Christ that the message describes. Faith and love are what Christ makes
possible thorough his cross and his resurrection.
The truth is a message about a standard of life that
is called “holy”.
Holy doesn’t mean perfect. A holy life is a life that
is different and unique, because God has set your life apart for himself. He
has set your life apart to show his purpose, and to work out that purpose. That
is God’s side of your holy life. Your side of a holy life is a commitment to
live your life anchored in God’s ways and God’s purpose.
Holiness has nothing to do with perfection. It has to
do with the difference that comes from a purpose.
God’s truth is also about grace. It is the message
that says that grace makes the pursuit of a holy life possible. The message and
the teaching are about what God has done in Christ to set us apart to his
purpose.
The message is about grace; the un-earnable,
unconditional love of God in Christ; and the power of the grace of God to give
us a new life. Paul says: “Join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the
power of God who has saved us and called us to a holy life -- not because of
anything that we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace.” (2
Timothy 1:8-9)
The message is about who the Lord is. It is about the
nature of God, as he is in himself, beyond time and space. The message is also
about what God has done in our world, in human history: Paul says: “This grace
was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been
revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed
death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” (2
Tim. 1:9-10)
The truth that we are to preserve is about the power
of God to save us by coming to our help. In Christ we are given the Spirit of
God to replace our neediness with God’s abundance, our fear with God’s power,
our poverty of spirit with God’s love, our immaturity with God’s discipline. (2
Tim. 1:7)
There is a pattern of teaching, here, that we are to
preserve. Only a church can preserve this pattern of truth, because it is about
grace; and only people who are one in the Spirit, one in their experience of a
relationship of grace with God, can teach grace by example.
Only by God’s people being one can other people learn
what a God of love can do. Jesus says: “May they be brought to complete unity
to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have
loved me.” (John 17:23)
The Bible teaches us surprising things about the
truth, and how to preserve it. Part of the truth should be rules for living:
the right way to live. But if the truth was nothing more than rules for living,
then our job would be to be judges of each other, and judges of the world. And
this would put us in danger of self-righteousness. Rules for living are part of
the truth, but the truth goes far beyond that.
Part of the truth should be the correct information
of who the Lord is and what the Lord has done. But if the truth were nothing
more than this information, then our job would be to be information experts,
and we would be tempted to show how clever we were, how smart we were, and who
could argue the best or quote the most scriptures. The knowledge of who the
Lord is and what the Lord has done is part of the truth; but the truth must go
beyond that.
Preserving the truth goes beyond preserving the rules
or preserving the correct information. The truth that comes from Christ is a
relationship; a fellowship with God. Otherwise preserving the truth would turn
into just another way of trusting in ourselves.
But the truth of Christianity is about trusting God.
Truth is not a thing but a person, and that person is none other than God
himself. This is why Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John
14:6)
Paul did not write, “I know what I have believed”,
although he was very clear about what Christians were to believe. Instead, Paul
wrote: “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard
what I have entrusted to him for that day.” (2 Tim. 1:12)
Trust and faith take us out of ourselves so that we
remember who the Lord is.
When we remember that the Lord is God, it does
another great thing; because we easily get afraid when we think about the task
of preserving the truth. We feel so small and the indifference of this world
seems so big. We want to give up. We get timid, or tired, or embarrassed, or
ashamed, the way Timothy needed warnings about.
Sometimes we even get angry about preserving the
truth, as if we could do it by shaking the world by the throat. It is much
healthier for us to know that God is the real truth, and that it is not our job
to preserve God; though we may work for him and be the messengers of his truth.
God can take care of himself. God is the preserver of
his own truth. And God preserves us, all the time.
The Lord has entrusted his truth to us, because the
Lord, as we see him in Jesus, is very humble, and generous, and gracious. We
don’t deserve the honor of this calling, but this is what grace is about; and
so we are messengers of the grace of God. The truth is about grace. When we are
living day by day in the grace and power of God, then whatever we have to share
will be the truth.
And yet the whole truth is much more than any
individual can show. The whole truth is much better shared by people who are
gathered together and work together by the love of God.
More than any individual, the church itself needs the
grace of God, doesn’t it? The church is unworthy of its message, but grace is
God’s gift to the unworthy. So, with all the church’s errors, and with all its
faults, and with all its sins, it is God’s great purpose for us, together as
the church, to preserve his truth in this world.
(*Concerning the early development of the creeds, see
the works of Irenaeus and Tertullian.)
"What is Truth?"
ReplyDeleteI thought that when Jesus was asked that question and he did not answer, I thought that deliberate because by just standing there, then those looking upon HIM would see HIM as the Truth. (I know that did not happen!)
That is what I thought as a kid anyway. I hope that I am not childish but my first impressions have never left me.
most definitely something i needed to read today.
ReplyDeletethank you for enlightening me.
kind regards,
betty