Sermon: Spirit of Truth
|
EHCC Home |
Sermon: Spirit of Truth Text: John 14:15-21 Date: May 1, 2005 Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
I am theoretically the teacher of the weekly Bible study, but I’m all the time learning stuff (which, incidentally, is a great reason to teach Sunday school). Our Seasons of the Spirit curriculum last week had us doing an exercise with the gospel lesson in which we were to underline three words or phrases in the two-paragraph text that seemed most important. All of us chose a different combination of words. I honed in on the phrase “Spirit of truth;” it really leaped out at me, as if those words had been printed in chartreuse. I think I know why. It has to do with what I’d been reading a few days earlier. You know how Heraclitus said, “You can’t step in the same river twice”? His observation about life being in flux applies as well to reading the Bible—I am convinced that you can’t read the same Bible twice because your life experience affects what you hear and see there so much. I had been listening to a book on tape that laid out a convincing case for how often governments lie to their people. The book was primarily, though not exclusively, about the United States and contained reminders of a century of lies that have brought us to where we are today. It was informative but somewhat depressing to hear the myriad untruths fed to the citizens by leaders of every political stripe. I had also read recently a syndicated column by William Raspberry who wrote about what he views as the damage a particular cable news network has done to the whole field of journalism. Then network—Fox news—has a tagline of “Fair and Balanced” but has a definite slant to its reporting. Raspberry says the problem is that Fox wants the public to believe that theirs is just another set of biases, no worse or better than biases on any other presentation of news. The writer calls it the Foxidation process, and says for it to work, “it isn't necessary to convince Americans that the verbal ruffians who give FNC its crackle have a corner on the truth — only that all of us in the news business are grinding our partisan axes all the time and that none of us deserves to be taken as serious seekers of truth.”[1] I am quoting this column because his opinion reminded me again of how we are continually surrounded by prevarication and lies, a cultural milieu that undermines our confidence that there is any truth to seek. With book and article in my head, and an infomercial or two making spectacular claims for questionable products (Lose 50 pounds in two weeks without diet or exercise!!) thrown in, I was drawn to the phrase “Spirit of Truth.” “Drawn to” is too mild an expression—I was thirsty for it, starved for it, longing for it to be revealed, the Spirit of Truth. Yes, Lord, send it, send it now, we’re floundering in a quicksand of lies and half-truths and veneers of truth covering falsehood. We are so surrounded with falsehood and competing versions of truth in this era that we may have come to doubt whether there can be truth at all, or whether truth can be discovered. Gertrude Stein once said that “the trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.” Our vast experience with lies and the battleground over truth’s territory may have led us to be tentative seekers of truth, harboring a secret fear that where truth lies, there isn’t any there there. That fear raps on the door to my heart, so it is with eagerness I hear the Holy Spirit Jesus is promising will continue his work named as the Spirit of truth. The gospel of John has a profound interest in truth. Here is a selection of verses in John that reference truth: And the Word became flesh and dwelt
among us, full of grace and truth; . . . For the law was given through
Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Pilate said to him, "So you are
a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this
I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to
the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice." Pilate
said to him, "What is truth?" Jesus said to him, "I am the
way, and the truth, and the life." He who does what is true, comes to
the light. And I will pray the Father, and he
will give you . . .the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,
because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells
with you, and will be in you. When the Spirit of truth comes, he
will guide you into all the truth. Jesus then said to the Jews 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." Theologian Paul Tillich gathered up these verses in 1955 and wrote a fabulous exposition on truth that I was sorely tempted to simply read to you this morning because it was so much wiser than anything I could think of to say. I decided that was a little too lazy, but I do want to share some of what he wrote with you, and urge you to read the full article, “What is Truth?”, chapter 8 of The New Being, at Religion Online. Tillich speaks of “the despair of truth” as “a permanent threat” to humankind. The despair of truth is the sinking suspicion that I have already mentioned, that there is no truth or that truth cannot be discovered. All thinking people flirt with the despair of truth from time to time. Tillich says that Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” hints at this despair. Yet it is a good question in the overall scheme of things, because to ask it shows that even in the midst of doubt the passion for truth is alive. Tillich even suggests that if you can’t follow Jesus, you ought to go with Pilate, because to ask the question at least avoids two serious temptations humans with which humans wrestle in regard to truth. One is the temptation to avoid the burden of asking for the truth that matters by complacently claiming the complete truth of what one already believes, which has been handed down by the Mother Church or the Father Land. However, the claim to have the truth wrapped up does not lead to freedom—remember the verse, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”? Tillich writes, There is no freedom where there is ignorant and fanatical rejection of foreign ideas and ways of life. There is not freedom but demonic bondage where one’s own truth is called the ultimate truth. For this is an attempt to be like God, an attempt which is made in the name of God.[2] “God’s truth is marching on!” There is no innate problem with that phrase from the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” except the statement itself set to crusading music implies that we who sing know what God’s truth is and are ready to do battle for it. It’s great fun to sing that hymn, and greater fun to congratulate ourselves on knowing the mind of God—but the question “What is truth?” is what will set us free more than the claim of knowing it. The second temptation is to avoid the question of truth by simply not caring for it, by being indifferent to truth. Quoting Tillich again, “It is the way of the majority of the people today, as well as at the time of Jesus. Life, they say to themselves, is a mixture of truth, half-truth and falsehood. It is quite possible to live with his mixture, to muddle through most of the difficulties of life without asking the question of a truth that matters ultimately. There may be boundary situations, a tragic event, a deep spiritual fall, death. But as long as they are far removed, the question of truth can also stay far away. Hence, the common attitude—a little bit of Pilate’s skepticism, especially in things which it is not dangerous today to doubt, as, for instance, God and the Christ; and a little bit of…dogmatism, especially in things which one is requested to accept today, as, for instance, an economic or political way of life. In other words, some skepticism and some dogmatism, and a shrewd method of balancing them liberate one from the burden of asking the question of ultimate truth.” But those who dare to ask the ultimate question find in Jesus’ teaching in the fourth gospel a striking answer: Jesus says, “I am the truth.” Not the teachings of Jesus or the teachings about Jesus but Jesus Christ himself—“I am the truth.” The truth that liberates is the being of Christ, and participating in that Being of Christ in the world. We find the truth by doing the Christ life, by abiding in Christ and inviting Christ to abide in us. “This is the Spirit of truth,” Jesus says; “You know him because he abides with you and he will be in you.” Tillich writes, “The truth which liberates is the truth in which we participate, which is a part of us and we a part of it. True discipleship is participation. If the real, the ultimate, the divine reality which is His being becomes our being we are in the truth that matters.” This is, I realize, a bit esoteric. We may be left with a lot of questions about how we participate in the being in the world of Christ or the being in the world of the Spirit of truth. The Christ life is not an easy life to pin down and describe, especially the details of how one is to participate in discipleship in the 21st century, with all its complexity. In some ways, it is easier to say what is not the Christ life than to say what is. We rented the movie “Saved” recently which has a brilliant moment of not in it. A determined evangelical flavored Christian, Hillary Faye, is convinced her former friend is becoming corrupt; so Hillary Faye grabs her and attempts to perform an exorcism on her. The friend breaks loose and flees, accusing Hillary Faye of lacking love. Furious, Hillary Faye hurls her Bible at her, shrieking, “I am full of the love of Christ!” This not how one genuinely participates in the Christ life. If, God forbid, we caught ourselves in mid-shriek about being full of the love of Christ, we hope we would have the sense to realize that the truth is not in us at that moment. An experience of abiding in the Spirit of truth is more likely when one is engaged in one of the ministries inspired by Christ’s life—feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, offering healing prayer, wrestling with the meaning of the scriptures, breaking bread with friends and neighbors, confronting demonic powers, that sort of thing. Even when fully engaged in such activity, we may be left to wonder if we are in touch with the Spirit of truth. Maybe knowing the truth full time is just not available to us as limited beings. But experiencing truth does come to us as we seek to live the Christ life. Although truth cannot necessarily be put down in propositions, it may come to us in an arresting phrase in a book or a speech. It comes in flashes, Paul Tillich suggests, like lightning on a dark night, or like the fog growing thinner and suddenly lifting for a while. Tillich expresses it beautifully: “New darknesses, new fogs will fall upon you; but you have experienced, at least once, the truth and the freedom given by the truth…You may be grasped by the truth in an encounter with a piece of nature— its beauty and its transitoriness; or in an encounter with a human being in friendship and estrangement, in love, in difference and hate; or in an encounter with yourself in a sudden insight into the hidden strivings of your soul, in disgust and even hatred of yourself, in reconciliation with and acceptance of yourself. In these encounters you may meet the true reality—the truth which liberates from illusions and false authorities, from enslaving anxieties, desires and hostilities, from a wrong self-rejection and a wrong self-affirmation.” If this fragment of the gospel of John has one most important truth to tell, it is this: the truth that sets us free is inextricably linked to love. Tillich concludes his article on truth with this sage advice: “Therefore, distrust every claim for truth where you do not see truth united with love; and be certain that you are of the truth and that the truth has taken hold of you only when love has taken hold of you and has started to make you free from yourselves.” Our hunger and thirst for truth in a human community fraught with lies will be satisfied as we give ourselves, body and soul, to love. This is real: as we accept the love God has for us and offer that love to others, the Spirit of truth will abide in us and set us free.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Raspberry, William “Fox News Channel: journalism as battlefield” Seattle Times Editorials & Opinion: Tuesday, April 19, 2005
[2] Tillich, Paul The New Being published
in 1955 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, posted at Religion Online
|