The Truth Matters

Then Jesus said to those who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

One shouldn’t have to say this, but given Donald Trump’s statements during his first few weeks in office, it is a claim that needs to be stated: Truth matters.

The Bible makes many claims, but it is hard to find something more fundamental than this. Truth matters. It makes a difference. Falsehood leads to ruin and truth leads to life. 

In John’s narrative of the crucifixion, he describes the encounter between Jesus and Pilate centering on the nature and meaning of truth as it relates to Jesus’ ministry and mission. Before sentencing Jesus to death, Pilate interrogates him about the claim that he is the king of the Jews. He asks him a question in the form of a statement. “So,” says Pilate, “You are a king?” 

Jesus throws it back at him with a blend of irony and sarcasm, “You say that I am a king.” 

And then he explains his mission: “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.” 

Although John does not say anything about how quickly Pilate responded, one imagines a pause. Possibly a very long pause.

And finally Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?”

Or in our present context, “What is a lie?”

Each of our previous four presidents has been accused of lying. George H. W. Bush “lied” that there would be “no new taxes.” Bill Clinton “lied” when he said he “did not have sex with that woman.” George W. Bush “lied” when he said that Saddam Hussein has “weapons of mass destruction.” And Barack Obama “lied” when he promised that under the Affordable Care Act, “you can keep your doctor.”

The first and fourth are political promises made based on assumptions about the future. Calling them “lies” is a stretch. When the meteorologist on TV tells me that I won’t need an umbrella, and then it rains, that’s not a lie. It’s a mistake, maybe, but it’s not a lie.

According to Web MD, 80% of young adults don’t count oral sex as having sex. From their perspective Clinton was not lying. If George Bush knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction and intentionally deceived the country, then he lied. But are we sure that he knew?

The situation with Donald Trump is very different. He seems to lie all the time about matters great and small. 

We could start with Barack Obama’s birth certificate and end with his comments earlier this week at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Addressing the troops at MacDill, Mr. Trump explained his concern about the danger of terrorist attacks, first by citing a series of recent events and then by criticizing the media coverage of terrorism:

"It's gotten to a point where it's not even reported, and in many cases the very, very dishonest press doesn't even want to report it."

From Mr. Trump’s perspective, journalists are not just mistaken or even lazy or indifferent to national security. They are not just dishonest or even very dishonest. They are “very, very dishonest.”

And then, with a sinister ambiguity, he told the troops that the media "have their reasons, and you understand that.”

It is impossible to imagine any previous president standing in front of his troops at the Central Command headquarters and telling them that the United States press is universally and intentionally dishonest. 

The truth matters. And it matters even more when you are the Commander in Chief.

There is deep irony in choosing Steve Bannon, a major architect of Breitbart news, as a senior adviser and even including him in the National Security Council, and then complaining about bias in the media. 

That irony would be much more entertaining if there were not so much at stake. We are in dangerous territory. We cannot have a free country without a free press. Delegitimizing the press threatens the foundations of our democracy.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

Three Simple Mistakes That Preachers Make

"I give you a new commandment that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." 
John 13:34

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” 
Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
John 6:35, 41-42

On Sunday we went to church. I like to go to church when I am on vacation because it gives me a chance to just sit and listen. I am not responsible for anything. It is Sabbath time in a way that the Sundays when I am preaching cannot be Sabbath time.

The guest preacher was very earnest and he spoke well. He had an engaging manner and a ready smile. Mostly he just repeated Bible stories in colloquial language, but he did it effectively.

The sermon seemed to have three main points:

1. All God asks of us is that we believe.
2. You don’t have to DO anything.
3. It is not about this world.

All three points are very fairly common in traditional Christian preaching, and all three are wrong. 

Part of it was not his fault. At this point in the Lectionary cycle we are deeply mired in John’s Gospel and the stories seem to be on a repeating loop about the bread of life. After a while, even the best preachers will either run out of things to say or get lost in the weeds. This is one of the reasons that at the United Methodist Church in East Greenwich we have departed from the Lectionary and are doing a series on “Faith in Film.”

There was a time in my life when John’s Gospel was my favorite. But that was long ago and far away.

Parts of John are amazing. Few passages in the Bible can compare to John’s prologue in terms of theological and philosophical depth. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That verse alone has launched a thousand sermons. And poems. And philosophical reflections. To borrow a phrase from a rabbi, that verse has infinity within it.

John has incredible stories and character studies: “The Woman at the Well,” “The Man Born Blind,” “The Woman Taken in Adultery.” And then there is the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. It doesn’t get much deeper than Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” And you get a feeling for both Pilate and Jesus that is unique in the Gospels.

But John has some major failings that are challenging to work around. One of the prominent story lines in the New Testament is the transformation of Christianity from a sect within Judaism into a new religion. The Gospels continually define the teachings of Jesus over against the teachings of traditional Judaism and there is an emphasis on the differences which is inherently anti-Semitic. But John gives us anti-Semitism on steroids. It is understandable, once you consider the historical context. When the synoptic gospels were written (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the church was still part of the synagogue. Those writers wanted to draw a contrast, within Judaism, between Jesus and the Pharisees. Really, they were contrasting Jesus with other Pharisees, since Jesus was a Pharisee. As the church breaks away, John casts “the Jews” in the role the other gospels assign to the Pharisees, although the fact is that Jesus and his disciples, and most of the other early Christians, were all Jews.

And then there are the three points of the sermon. John isn’t really trying to make these points. They are a simplistic interpretation of his theology. It is at least partly their simplicity that makes them so popular. 

Could anything be simpler than the idea that all we need to do is believe? 

What Alfred North Whitehead said of science and natural philosophy is also true of theology, the aim “is to seek the simplest explanation of complex facts.” But then Whitehead adds the caution that, “We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest.” And he concludes, “The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity and distrust it.’”

In theology and biblical study we should always seek simplicity, but we should also recognize that a simple explanation cannot fully explain a complex reality.

The idea that all we need to do is believe, ignores the fact that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke there is almost nothing at all about belief. The invitation is simply to follow Jesus. And it also ignores the very strong emphasis in John on servanthood as the evidence that we are Jesus’ disciples. John is the one who reports Jesus saying, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-45).

Believing, as the early Christians understood it, is not the same as what modern preachers mean by it. To believe in Jesus, in the biblical sense, is to give one’s heart to Jesus. It is an existential commitment rather than an intellectual exercise. And there is nothing simple about it.

 “You don’t have to DO anything,” said the preacher. He said it more than once to emphasize the simplicity of Christian faith. This second point is a heresy as old as Christianity. In Paul’s Second Letter to the Church in Thessalonica, one of the oldest texts in the New Testament, he confronts a group who literally will not do anything. They will not work and instead are living off of the work of others. If they cannot earn God’s favor by good works, then what is the point of working? Paul has a simple solution. If they will not work, then they will not eat.

God loves us and accepts us just the way we are. It is a gift of grace. We don’t have to do anything to be loved by God. But that is not the only word. The synoptic gospels are organized around a single question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What must I do to have fellowship with God now and forever? And the answer is always the same: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” We don’t have to do those things to earn God’s love, but we do have to do those things in order to experience life the way it is meant to be lived. We don’t experience the gift of God’s grace until we choose to receive it.

Point three in the sermon was that it’s not about this world. The preacher said that the Jews in John’s Gospel were looking for a paradise on earth, but Jesus was talking about a “heavenly” kingdom. It is a popular and traditional misconception. In the Lectionary text for last Sunday and at other points, John seems to say that Jesus is focused primarily on something beyond this world. When Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king, Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not from this world,” if it were, “my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over.” But the key point in that passage is that Jesus’ kingdom, the Kingdom of God, is not like the kingdoms of this world. It is not built on violence and domination. It is built on peace and non-violence. To use Paul’s language, it is in the world but not of the world. Most specifically, it is not like the Roman Empire.

Similarly, the preacher pointed out that Jesus was talking about the bread of heaven while “the Jews” were looking for a meal. According to John’s account, Jesus did talk about the bread of heaven, but throughout the Gospels he talks a great deal more about real bread that feeds hungry people here and now.

John’s emphasis on eternal life certainly means more than just the time that we are alive on earth, but it starts now. It is not something that happens to us only after we die. Eternal life means living fully in the presence of God, now and forever. Almost two thousand years later, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about “this worldly Christianity” as he led the Confessing Church against the empire of Hitler, he was much closer to Jesus’ meaning than the popular tradition of an “other-worldly” Jesus. 

After the sermon we said the Lord’s Prayer, which gave a wonderful counterpoint:

Thy kingdom come, 
Thy will be done 
on earth 
as it is in heaven. 
Give us this day our daily bread . . .