What is Truth?

     John 18: 33-37

 

 

          November 13, 2015. Just nine days ago.  It was Friday night in Paris. In the soccer stadium, eighty thousand people were watching France play world champion Germany. Along the Champs Elise, people were attending a concert, sitting outside in cafes, enjoying a pleasant evening. In less than an hour, multiple attacks at several different sites had taken the lives of 128 innocents across the city. Armed terrorists executed people in the name of ISIS. In the last couple days, ISIS released a propaganda video clearly threatening New York City and Washington, DC, as prime targets. The video featured images of bombs and suicide bombers getting ready for an attack. ISIS does these things in the name of jihad, the Islamic command to maintain its religion through all struggles and against all resistance. For ISIS, the truth is that all secular life, all man made laws, threaten the purity of their religion. It is a narrow reading of the Koran, a reading with which mainstream Muslims disagree.

           This past Friday, November 20, 2015, armed assailants, members of an Islamic militant group with strong links to al Qaeda, attacked the Radisson Hotel in the capital of Mali, a small West African nation, and 21 more people were killed. al Qaeda is another militant religious group that believes that Western influence has eroded the religion of Islam. It has pledged itself to the purification and preservation of Islam by the destruction of other religions and secular influences. This is the religious truth of al Qaeda.

          In the book of John, Jesus is paraded before Pilate to be examined about his religious and political beliefs.  Pilate, the Roman procurator, asks Jesus if he is King of the Jews. This is a political question. If Jesus affirms the claim, he is guilty of treason, an offense punishable by death. For Pilate, it is not a trick question. He is ascertaining the credibility of a threat to the Roman government.

           Both Pilate and Jesus know the facts. The Jewish leaders are headhunting, and Jesus is no criminal. The trouble is that because of several past acts by Pilate for which he was reported to Caesar, his job security is in jeopardy. So while the Jewish leaders are headhunting, Pilate realizes it could his head that they end up with. Pilate and Jesus verbally spar with one another, Pilate hoping for an opening, Jesus using the moment to fulfill God’s will for him. It is Pilate rather than Jesus who is in jeopardy, Pilate rather than Jesus on trial.

          Jesus answers Pilate’s question about kingship. Ignoring the question without dodging it, Jesus says that there is a purpose for which he was born, a reason for which he has come into the world. That purpose is “to bear witness to the truth.” Jesus makes another comment; that those who are of the truth listen to his voice. Now Pilate is more than a little uncomfortable. The light of the world is confronting Pilate and he must decide between light and darkness. Pilate’s answer reflects his disillusionment. He will not allow himself to be confronted. “What is truth?” asks Pilate. What is truth?

          What is truth? The question was not just for Pilate. The question is for you and me. The question is the subject of books. Philosophers and theologians have debated the question for hundreds of years.

         What is truth? In pursuit of its self-anointed truth, al-Qaeda envisions a complete break from all foreign influence, the creation of a worldwide order in which there is only one religion.  The truth for al-Qaeda is that if you don’t believe in its way of doing things, you are the infidel and the enemy.

          What is truth? If you are a member of  ISIS, your truth is the pursuit of an Islamic state; that any other existence of authority over Muslims worldwide is heresy, that all who do not believe in the group’s interpretation of the Koran will be killed. The truth for ISIS is that if you are not part of it, you should be destroyed.

          We should fear these terrorist groups. We should realize that no matter how misinformed or misled or just plain wrong they are, they believe what they preach. No matter what we may think of their beliefs or how much we should condemn their methods, we cannot help but acknowledge their commitment. They strap bombs to their waists and wade into their assigned missions, knowing full well they will never return. They are not politicians or economists or statesmen. They are soldiers of their beliefs.

          The story of Jesus and Pilate offers no such re-enforcement. The only belief system we can see in Pilate is that of self-preservation. Three times, Pilate found no guilt in Jesus. Three times he tried to hand Jesus back to his own people. But in the end, the mob and the religious leaders had Pilate’s number. He gave in to the truth of the moment rather than acknowledge the truth of the ages.

          In his quest to keep his job, to preserve the status quo, Pilate cared only for his personal truth, and that was to get along with the Jews. His way of life depended upon keeping a peaceful trade corridor between Syria and Egypt and that corridor went through Palestine. If the Jews erupted in civil disobedience, the trade was interrupted. But Pilate was not by himself. In a later scene in Chapter 19, Pilate said to the Jews; “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered: “We have no king but Caesar.” The very religious leadership that accused Jesus of blasphemy stood in front of Pilate in broad daylight and declared: We have no king but Caesar. No wonder the Pilates of the world mutter out loud: What is truth!

          When Jesus stood in front of Pilate, he did so as living truth and he bore witness to its existence. The night before, he had knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed for his followers. He said: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” We know the Word as written, God’s divinely inspired word, and also as Jesus, the Living Word of God. I think Jesus meant both in that garden. That is the truth, the living and written Word of God.  

          Jesus told Pilate that everyone who is of the truth would listen to his voice. Pilate was not one of those people. The chief priests were not those people. The mob that went along with all that wrongdoing was not those people. They were not of the truth and they could not hear the truth or see it standing right in front of them.

          What is truth? I am the truth, said Jesus. “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Jesus does not need sharia law or jihad. He does not need arms or bombs or walls or tanks or missiles. Jesus just needs us to be of the truth. Then, we can listen to his voice.

          Have you found the truth? Contrary to what many modern day philosophers may preach, it is not your truth that you should most seek, but rather the truth.

          What is the truth? For God so loved the world…that he sent us Jesus!

Cracked Pots

Isaiah 64: 1-9, 2 Corinthians 4: 1-12

 

 

Have you ever seen a potter at work? He fashions the clay, first kneading it until it gains the right consistency. Next, he must center it. The clay must be of even thickness. If one side is too strong, it will overcome the weaker side. Then, the potter begins the patient and gentle process of opening the clay. He is shaping it in its preliminary form. It barely resembles the final product. When it is shaped the way he created it to be, it is time for the object to dry. This is another slow process during which it cures, until it is ready for glazing to achieve the luster and look the potter intended. Last, it is fired--subjected to great heat for a prolonged period of time until finally, it is ready for use. If you leave out any of those steps or if you cheat on them, then you have something inferior and it will not last. The new creation takes its place in the world and goes to work as a piece of art or a vessel, whatever the artist conceived for that piece of clay. It’s amazing to watch what can happen to a slab of clay in the hands of an expert. 

Let me welcome Kirk Argo to the platform with me. As you can see, Kirk is a potter and he is going to do his work while we talk about pottering and clay. Of course, we aren’t really talking about clay at all. We’re talking about God and we’re using Kirk and his clay as a parable. You may remember that a parable is a story told in some way familiar to the audience in order to explain something difficult in a way that can be more easily understood. Jesus spoke in parables. That way, people understood him more easily.

In the latter chapters of Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet calls out to God to come back to his exiled people.  In Isaiah 64, Isaiah is tired and he wants God to make his presence known. When God comes down, nations tremble and mountains quake. Yes, Isaiah wants God to shake things up. He wants God to take over again and rule his chosen people. Isaiah uses the metaphor of the potter and the clay in much the same way that Jesus used parables.  Isaiah says: But God, you are our Father. Please look upon us again. Don’t forget us. “We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah meant it for his people, but the same idea applies to individuals.

My life is like that lump of clay. God has a vision of what he wants me to be. He made me in his image, but he made me unique, one of a kind. He started out by kneading me, just like the clay that Kirk is working now. He has subjected me to different situations, different life events, getting the right mix so that I could hear him, see him in the world around me. He brought me lots of experiences, good and bad: Sunday school, boy scouts, a father’s alcoholism, mental illness, college. Military, big cities, jobs. Law school, marriage, starting a business, children. Divorce, betrayal, a new start, a good marriage, seminary, church. Just a few nouns to represent my life. Your life has its own nouns and they describe you in your own unique way.

I finally began to notice a pattern. Through every passage—and that’s what they were—passages. I thought of them at the time as accomplishments or failures, but they were passages. Anyway, through every passage, I looked around and there was God. Have you had similar experiences in life? It isn’t easy, this thing called life. But it’s so much harder when you try to go it alone. I know now that God was kneading me, centering me for the shape he designed for me.

After all that kneading, I think God had me where I could see him. Like the clay, I was centered enough to be able to be worked with. Maybe that’s when I really saw Christ for the first time. I had acknowledged his presence for a very long time, but there came a point when I was ready to be worked.

Through the messiness and up and downs of life, God was at work in me. He was opening me just like Kirk is opening his work of clay. The Holy Spirit finally had room to abide in me. I began to understand that my life was not my own. It was more than words; it was an awakening.

I’m thinking about the story of Joseph. Betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, betrayed again by Potiphar’s wife and thrown into prison. But on the other side of all that betrayal, stood the Master Potter. God was crafting Joseph into the deliverer of Egypt. Joseph’s brothers come to him expecting the worst, and Joseph says “Do not fear. You meant it for evil but God meant it for good” [Gen. 50: 19]. Can you think of times in your life when you knew something was different, when you were open to the Holy Spirit in a way that you had not been before, when all those valleys in life began to make sense in the light of God’s walk with you, his presence in your life?

As the potter works, he realizes his creation is not right. It is missing something. It is not what he envisioned. The potter slaps his hand right into the midst of his creation, and it collapses in a heap. He starts again, this time perhaps with a little more consistency in the mix.  Sometimes, even when the vision is right, even when the touch is perfect, the pot warps and he has to start all over again. Sometimes he just doesn’t like what he sees and he destroys it to start anew. Over and over, the potter works his magic until at last, the almost finished product lies before him, ready for glazing and firing.

Ever feel like you try and try, and the more you try, the worse off you are. Ever feel like you know what to do and where to go and how you are to live your life, only to be slapped right back to where you started. Maybe it’s just God working you on his master wheel, getting you to just the right consistency, just the right mix. The apostle Paul gave it a name. He called it sanctification, the process of reaching for God, the act of pressing on, of falling short and falling down, but always and continually reaching to be more Christian, more filled with the Holy Spirit; the process of letting go and letting God.

Each of us is the work of the Master Potter. Paul teaches the Corinthians, and us, that though we are no more than jars of clay ourselves to be thrown about, cracked and splintered, nevertheless we are God’s treasures. Each of us is unique, created by God for a special purpose. We are afflicted, but not crushed, perplexed but not to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed. We are the work of his hand. Paul says that it is precisely because of our fragile state that we can show that surpassing power belongs to God and not us.

As our bodies and minds are worked and re-worked, we become a new creation, but not without the work. Like the clay, we must be open to Christ, shaped by the Holy Spirit, glazed by the creative power of God and fired in the sanctifying heat of life in all its adversities and triumphs. No steps can be omitted. No shortcuts can be taken. The process takes time if the result is to be a new creation. Where once we were cracked pots of no use or value, now we become treasures of the Master. Our lives are fashioned in the hands of the potter, and in the end we are hardened for service and glazed for immortality in the light of God

When God in the Trinity decided to build a bridge to us, he sent his Son to build it. The Master Potter made a way to reconcile himself to his creation. The Potter had cast himself upon the wheel. Jesus took his place as an earthen vessel in obedience to God.  The next three decades would harden and cure him into the human vessel for whom all of us find our model. He was tested, opened, shaped and fired. Jesus was tested more severely than any Christian has or ever will be. He would live to be glazed in the shadow of a cruel cross, but even that was meant for good.

We live in a world fashioned by God Almighty. The great I AM. Nothing is hopeless where God is concerned. When I think of where I’ve been, of all I’ve lived to see, I’m thankful. I’m thankful to be a cracked pot. I want to be a metaphor for Christ. I look at how God is shaping each and every one of us and I pray for the ministry that Paul brought to the Corinthians, that we might, each in our own, God-crafted way, be “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” [2 Cor. 4: 1]. May God continue to work on us. If I can be a vessel whom God is opening and shaping, then I want to be a cracked pot. I hope you do too. He is the potter and we are the clay.

Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me,
Mold me, fill me,
Spirit of the living God,
Fall afresh on me.

                             Daniel Iverson, 1926

Finding God’s Blessing Wherever It Lies

Ruth 1:1-5, 4:13-17

 

 

          My wife went to the grocery store to get more meat for supper. Extra people were dropping in and we didn’t have quite enough – food, that is. We had plenty of people. Cindy called me and asked me to bring her purse. She had forgotten it. I took her purse to her and ran into some friends from my old church.  Susan and Steve. They are brother and sister. Both single, they hang out a lot with each other these days. It was odd to see a brother and sister in their forties spending so much time together. Odd but nice. They care and respect each other.

          The book of Ruth tells a similar story. Naomi has lost first her husband and later, her two grown sons. She is Jewish, though she and her husband had moved to Moab long ago. Now she is widowed and left with her two widowed daughters in law. She has no means of support and she finds herself a long way from help. She decides to go home to the land of Judah. At least there, she will have some male kin who might feel the inclination to help her out. A widow, a foreigner, over three thousand years ago, had little to nothing to look forward to without men in her life.

          Steve and Susan’s parents were my friends. They were older than me, but very vital, him a banker, her a nurse. They were strong Christians and they were strong with their connection to family. Cindy and I helped start a small group ministry in our home church and Joanne, their mother, gathered up half the people in her neighborhood for a not so small group that met in her home regularly. She bought extra copies of Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life and gave them out to the patients at the doctor’s office. She and Dan were poster children for how to be friends with their adult children.

          Naomi said her goodbyes to her daughters in law. It was the only way for her to survive. But Ruth said no to the goodbye. A young widow, she felt loyal to her mother in law and promised to go with Naomi. Her words to Naomi are among the most well known in all Scripture. “Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” [Ruth 1: 16, KJV]. Another oddity. A daughter so faithful, so loyal to her mother in law that she will follow her even to a foreign country. Odd but nice. Ruth cared about and respected her mother in law.

          Ruth did follow Naomi back to Judah. She did find a kinsman redeemer named Boaz. He was man of integrity and responsibility. The love between him and Ruth certainly plays a role in the story, but it is not at center stage. Ruth’s loyalty to her mother in law, to family, her desire to find the good inside us all, made room for God to do his work. The real story is the ability of Ruth to find meaning in challenge, to find hope in the middle of trying circumstances. The real story of Ruth is to walk in faith and find the blessing where it lies.

          I visited with Steve and Susan in the grocery store. Have you ever noticed how grocery stores are a great place to connect? Something about all that produce, I guess. Anyway, Susan was in a motorized cart. She said she hasn’t walked in a year and a half. Hip problems turned into bigger hip problems. One surgery turned into more and her body has not responded the way the doctors hoped. After nine months without being able to walk, Susan has had to face that hard truth that life has changed for her. The house was sold. She could no longer keep it up, nor afford it. A move to handicapped housing followed. Another swallowing of pride. She coughed out her litany of woes and then, she started talking about the power of prayer. In a move that surprised me much more than her, I felt a sudden need to engage in prayer with Susan, and so we did. I pulled her out of line at the checkout and for a long minute, I bent down and we hugged. I hugged her very hard and I prayed. I think she did, too. Not a word was said aloud, but there was power in that prayer. I felt myself releasing to God, feeling myself weak in the thought of his power over us all.

          We got back in line and the three of us walked to the parking lot; that is, Steve and I walked, and Susan rode. They both talked about their blessings. He spends a lot of his free time with her. He calls it hanging out. With part of the money from the sale of her house, she bought an old Mustang GT. It sounds powerful. She says playfully she can ride around and flirt in it without getting out of the car. It didn’t cost much, but it gives her some pleasure. Makes sense to me. Her life is a struggle these days, and the car gives a few laughs along the way.

          Steve could have more of a social life if he didn’t spend so much time with his sister. If I know Steve and I do, that seldom occurs to him. Like Ruth with Naomi, Steve “hangs out” with Susan.

They both come from the root of a mother who lived out Proverbs 31 as though it were her favorite sweater, and a father who grew into that grace more and more with every passing year. The parents have gone on, but the signs of that parenting remain. Susan is doing like Ruth. She may walk again, but she may not. Regardless, she is finding meaning in her challenges and hope in the middle of trying circumstances. And at least for a season, her brother Steve is her Boaz, her kinsman redeemer.

          In the story of Ruth, or is it the story of Naomi, things turned around, Ruth was married, bore a son. The male line was re-established. The son she bore Boaz became the grandfather of King David. The neighborhood said he had been born to Naomi, their way of acknowledging that God answers prayer. That’s a very good way to end this story, for in the end, it’s not a story about Ruth or Naomi, not even about the son that became the product of all that faithfulness. It’s not a story about my friends Susan and Steve, or even about the trials she faces and the obedient way she holds on to her faith. But the seed of the real story lies within such experiences. The real story is not so much about our faith in family or even in God. The real story is about his faith in us.

          The story of Ruth is a story of obedience and faith. Things turned out well for Ruth and Naomi. It’s not always that way for us in this world. Sometimes the relief we seek from our misfortunes or our physical infirmities doesn’t come here on earth. God does not promise us that. What he does promise us is peace. Jesus talks to his disciples, his posse, the night of his arrest. They don’t know what to think of his behavior. They don’t really understand at the time what he means in the fourteenth chapter of John when he says to them: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” But they experience it in relationship to him through the Holy Spirit. What he does promise us is loyalty. The psalmist tells us the God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble [Psalm 46]. He tells Joshua that “I will never leave you or forsake you…that he is with us wherever we go” [Joshua 1:5].

          Wherever we go. Whatever we do. Whatever we encounter. He is there. We are not alone. I thank my friend Susan for reminding me that circumstances only test us; they do not define us. I thank my friend Steve for reminding me that hanging out with family is not a burden, but a privilege. God, give us all the wisdom to discern that you are always there, that you always have faith in us; that your blessings extend far beyond our immediate needs. Help us to see it and return it to you with our loyalty, our obedience and our love, whatever the circumstance. Help us to believe that there is power in every prayer we lift up to you, every song we sing to you, every hug we give for you in Jesus’ name. And help us too, to walk in faith…and find God’s blessing wherever it lies.