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!