Mar 16 | “The truth will make you free,” (Sermon, March 16th 2016)

Before we look at this tiny puzzle piece from the Gospel of John, we need a pair of glasses. These glasses have a special set of lenses: IRONY lenses. They inform everything we read in this Gospel – everything.

Let’s look at this little piece: “The truth will make you free.”

It’s such a rich phrase, classic John. It has grown a life quite divorced from its original context. Jesus has been speaking to a group of clueless people about who he is. These people are identified as “Jews.” This is a highly problematic term in John, implying that the Evangelist was not also Jewish. I could preach a whole sermon on the damage wrought by this term, and on past and current scholarly debates on more appropriate translations of the term. But right now the label is important, because of the response to Jesus’ pronouncement.

‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.’”

Really? I guess we’re writing off that whole Egypt thing?

Jesus doesn’t mention it. Our lenses add that extra layer – like seeing him roll his eyes. And he tells them they are slaves to sin.

Aren’t we all.

So how can truth make us free? Maybe it’s better to ask Pilate’s question: “What is truth?”

I think there are two different kinds of truth: small t truths, and Capital T Truth.

Small-t truths we discover throughout a lifetime and either disavow or ascribe to them. Many of them are so widely accepted that they become proverbs – “What goes around comes around.” “The apple never falls far from the tree” “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” The ones that aren’t true for you are true for someone else. Other small t truths are personal to you and your story, and might be difficult to put into words.

I call them small t truths not to denigrate them, but to say that their verity often depends upon personal experience, and they are not really universal.

Then there is capital T Truth, which is God, the Creator of a universe that runs on love and self-sacrifice, what Paul calls “kenosis,” or “self-emptying.”

Capital T truth is not merely a Christian truth. This is something that is present in pretty much every established religion, and, to some extent, science as well!

I believe that our capacity to produce small t truths is part of what the writers of Genesis meant when they talked about being made “in God’s image.” God makes patterns and we seek them out, drawn toward the light because it feels like home.

I only think there’s a problem when a small t truth counter to the manifestation of the holy in the world becomes louder than Capital T Truth.

That’s what happening right now, not just in the States with Donald Trump, but around the world. There is a global movement hearkening back to a more brutal, proto-fascist way of being in the world. I don’t use the term fascist lightly. Fascism is defined as “radical authoritarian nationalism,” and is characterized by constant references to humiliation, a villainous “other” who seeks to undermine the virtuous majority, and referring to “the good old days.” Our friend Donald Trump does that a lot.

The small t truths of this increasingly popular worldwide movement as I see them are as follows:

  • Once upon a time, the world was as it should be, but within the last generation it has gotten immeasurably worse.
  • This is because a group of undesirables are undermining the power base of the strong and humiliating them.
  • If the strong want to regain power and re-create the world to which they are entitled (that’s key), they must erase the undesirables by any means necessary, because diversity promotes weakness, and weakness is suspect and contagious.

Those are their small t truths.

To Christians, this should be blasphemous.

The Gospel of John is explicit. It’s not just about Jesus being the Messiah. The real message of John is that Jesus is enthroned not by violently deposing the Emperor – as the Zealots wanted him to do – but by being “lifted up” on the cross. This is why there’s no Garden of Gethsemane for John’s Jesus. John’s Jesus knows that his crown is one of thorns, his throne is a cross, and his triumph is defeat. That’s why our irony lenses are so important: that moment where the guards mock Jesus by dressing him as a king is a masterful piece of storytelling, because they don’t even realize what they’re doing. John’s a spooky, dangerous Gospel in that regard, because the Resurrection is really an epilogue to the crucifixion: It’s important, but less important than the moment of glory, where Jesus says: “It is finished.”

Friends, Lent is about divesting ourselves of small t truths that do not serve the Capital T Truth: the universe runs on love and self-sacrifice. We give things up to say to God, “I lay comfort at your feet.” We take things on to say, “True comfort is in you.”

On Palm Sunday, we’ll stand together and lift Capital T Truth up – not just in our hearts but also our bodies. We use our voices to sing it, and our hands to hold up little thrones. We tell each other the Truth through story: the enacted Passion. It will only get louder as we continue on through Holy Week and into the joyful dawn of celebrating that Truth with a word we can’t say yet.

Right now, let’s have a small celebration of this truth.

“Draw near and take the Body of your Lord, and drink the holy blood for you outpoured.”

 

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