Sermon for Christ the King Sunday B
Lectionary 34B Proper 29B
November 22, 2009
Texts: 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
What is truth?
This question asked by Pilate,
One verse after our Gospel reading this morning ends,
Is a classic question,
Which philosophers right up
To our current postmodern era have asked.
Is truth absolute or is it relative?
Can you depend on the truth to be unchanging?
In our postmodern world today, does truth even exist?
Can we believe anything?
I think on the news that came out this week.
Now most women I know
Have come to believe as truth
That if you get a mammogram every year
You will increase your chances
Of detecting cancer while it is still treatable.
We all trudge off to the hospital annually
And subject ourselves to a time of discomfort
Because we have believed the truth that it will help us.
Now this week,
Featured in TV news, newspapers and internet sources,
Is a report, presumably,
From a team of crackerjack medical researchers,
Comes the news women don’t need mammograms as frequently,
And don’t need to start them at such an early age.
Is this truth? Should we believe it? Why should we believe it?
This report superimposed on attempts to pass a national health bill,
Has led skeptics to say that this report on mammogram frequency
Is just an attempt to save money on medical costs,
And is an example of the medical rationing
We will see in a national health plan.
Does the work on National Health Care
Influence the way we hear the report on mammograms?
Do we question the report from this medical task group
Because of our fears about national health coverage,
Or our fears of dying from cancer?
And we ask, why is this group making this report now?
Why is our current medical practice being challenged,
Particularly when every one of us knows a woman
Who was diagnosed with cancer in her 40’s
The age at which we supposedly no longer need mammograms.
We question:
Who financed this group’s work?
What ax do they have to grind?
What impact will they have?
In this age, we ask “What is truth?”
Is anything constant?
Can we rely on anything?
Two thousand years ago, Pilate asked that same question,
“What is truth?”,
After cross-examining Jesus,
And hearing Jesus exclaim that his kingship was not of this world.
Was Jesus really a King?
Did Jesus’ kingship challenge Roman authority?
Was Jesus a threat to government power?
Was Pilate questioning truth,
Because he realized that he was influenced
By the testimony of the powerful religious leaders,
Or by the mob clamoring outside his door,
Or by his own worries about what Rome
Would think of his leadership skills if the mob rebelled?
Would Jesus even be on trial for threatening the power of Caesar,
If he had not threatened the theological leadership
Of the seriously religious leaders of his time?
What is truth?
In John’s Gospel, truth is associated with Jesus himself.
In fact Jesus’ words just before Pilate’s “What is truth?” question
Were, “Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.”
Pilate may have recognized the relativeness of truth
In the way that he lived and governed.
But Jesus was not ambiguous about the meaning of truth,
And where it was from.
Truth was of God
And truth from God was and is quite sure and certain.
Jesus’ words that his kingdom was not of this world,
Were hard for Pilate and the other civil and religious leaders to comprehend.
Their notions of kingship and leadership were too strongly embedded
In first century Roman culture
For them to be able to glimpse the truth-the truth that is Jesus.
Now, Pilate would have recognized the kingship of David,
The other leader we heard about in this morning’s texts.
The leader from whom Jesus was descended,
At least in his human ancestry.
David would have come in regal clothing.
David would have come with an entourage,
And David’s crew would not have let him be carried off to jail.
At least not without a fight.
David had been anointed by God,
But David’s kingdom was of this world
David was a human leader,
Led by God, but with lots of human flaws.
Jesus was also anointed by God
That is after all what Messiah means,
But Jesus was anointed to serve in the reign of God
Not as a human king, in a human reign.
Jesus’ kingship was hidden,
Revealed only in his crucifixion, death, and resurrection.
Jesus’ kingship reveals to you just what the reign of God looks like,
And what truth means to you.
But, what does it mean to you that Jesus is truth?
Jesus is God’s Word come down to us as in human form.
God’s Word revealed in Jesus is the God’s truth for you.
And what does this mean for you?
Pilate’s question of what is truth?
Is the question of our time.
We live in a time of data overload.
With lots of data, much of it conflicting,
And yet we have very little clear information
And even less which we can call truth?
We live in a time when postmodernists have called truth relative.
We live in a time when each new discovery
Has meant a challenging of some past truth
Throughout the past 1000 years,
We have seen one so-called human truth after another fall.
The discovery of the New World challenged the Flat Earth Truth
Copernicus challenged the earth as the center of the universe truth.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity challenged the truth of Newtonian physics.
What do these things do for your understanding of truth,
And how do they affect your notion of what can you rely on?
As I was pondering this question yesterday,
I read an article in the Concord monitor
About the growth of atheist organizations on college campuses.
The article labeled them Campus Crusade without Christ.
These organizations go to great lengths to challenge the existence of God.
Yet they try to mimic some of the characteristics of organized religion.
They have regular get-togethers,
Claim a sense of community
And even stage game nights and potlucks.
The prime reason for these organizations’ existence
Is to argue against the existence of God
And to argue for innate human goodness, reason and logic.
I have to wonder why anyone would spend so much energy
To argue so strongly against the existence of something
He doesn’t think exists.
It is also hard for me to comprehend
A dependence on innate human goodness, logic and reason
After seeing all the devastation that humanity has caused.
Because human logic and reason have produced such conflicting results
I have difficulty comprehending these as absolute truth,
Or something on which I want to base my life.
How about you?
On what are you willing to base your life?
In what truth can you have confidence?
If we go back to Jesus’ words spoken to Pilate,
I think we find something constant,
Something on which we can base our lives.
Jesus says: Everyone who belongs to the truth
Hears my voice.
Jesus also said earlier in this same Gospel,
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
If we belong to Jesus,
We hear Jesus’ voice
And we experience the truth of God come down to us.
Now hear God’s word of truth in Jesus for your life.
Do you need guidance?
Jesus promises “I am the good shepherd.”
Are you hungry?
Jesus promises “I am the bread of life.”
Are you wandering in the wasteland without direction?
Jesus promises “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
Are you living in darkness?
Jesus promises, “I am the light of the world”
Are you looking for new life?
Jesus promises “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Pilate’s question of “What is truth?”
Leads us to the one answer on which we can ground our lives.
Looking for truth in human capabilities, human reason,
Human logic, human interpretation or human goodness,
Often leaves you frustrated and uncertain,
When one human being or yet another human truth fails you.
Only in the constancy of the Great I AM,
The I AM who appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
Can truth be found.
The truth of the love that surpasses all understanding,
The truth of the shepherd who seeks the lost sheep,
The truth that is found at the foot of the cross.
You may not always recognize truth,
But you know in whom it can be found.
It can certainly be found in the person
Of the one who went before Pilate
And hung on the cross for you.
Amen