Sermon: Belonging to the Truth

John 18:33-37

Belonging to the Truth

James Sledge                                                                                       November 25, 2018

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." That is how Jesus responds to Pilate’s question about whether or not he is a king. But Pilate is not much interested in truth. In the verse that follows our reading, Pilate responds, “What is truth?”

I think perhaps Pilate would fit right into our world of “alternative facts,” of “truth isn’t truth,” as Rudy Giuliani famously claimed. Pilate is a politician, and truth is often a problem for politicians. It has a nasty habit of getting in the way of plans and agendas, and so it often becomes casualty in election campaigns or political debates.

The gospel of John, more so than any other, portrays Pilate as a tragic figure, invited by Jesus into the truth but unable to enter. Pilate must scurry back and forth between the Jewish leaders outside and Jesus inside. He thinks he has power and control, but it is an illusion.

In our reading, Pilate comes inside after speaking with those leaders. He attempts to question Jesus, asking if he is King of the Jews. But rather than answer, Jesus questions him. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate does not answer, but the question seems to have stung him. “I am not a Jew, am I?” he objects.

Now I need to pause here to clarify something about this word, “Jew.” The writer of John’s gospel is a Jew who follows Jesus. He writes to a congregation of Jews who follow Jesus and worship at the synagogue. Most of the time in John’s gospel, the term Jew refers, not to people who are Jewish, but to the Jewish leadership that opposed Jesus and is threatening to kick this congregation of Jewish, Jesus followers out of the synagogue. One of the great tragedies of history was the failure of later Christians to recognize this, and then to use the gospel of John as a weapon against their Jewish neighbors.

And so when Pilate insists that he is not a Jew – in the Greek, his question is not really a question – he is insisting that he is not like those Jewish leaders who stand in the way of what God is doing, or as Jesus describes it, those who do not belong to the truth.

It’s not that Pilate doesn’t know the truth. He knows that Jesus is innocent, but there are other things that matter more to Pilate than the truth. Jerusalem was hardly a prime posting for a Roman official, and no doubt Pilate wanted things to go smoothly there. No riots during the Passover festival on his watch. If an innocent man needed to die in order for things to stay calm, so be it. Never mind the truth.

Expediency often wins out over the truth. Saudi Arabian money and strategic assistance matter more than the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi or the torture of women’s rights activists in Saudi jails. And this is not something new that began under our current president. Expediency and American foreign policy have gone hand in hand for decades.

And what of me and you? Do we belong to the truth? I know that I am supposed to love my neighbor as myself, but I live in a culture that works very hard to make me believe in scarcity. There are so many things and experiences that I must have, and if I’m really generous to neighbors in need, I may not have enough for myself. What I want, what I fear missing out on: these are the voices I’m prone to listen to rather than Jesus.

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I recently attended a week-long training seminar at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond. On one of the evenings we did something they called “cinema divina” where we watched a movie and then discussed ways it spoke to us. The movie was McFarland, USA, starring Kevin Costner. It’s loosely based on the true story of Jim White and the members of the McFarland High School cross country team he coached.

Those team members were poor Latinos, most of whom worked as agricultural pickers. They often worked in the fields from sunrise until the start of school and then returned to the fields after school. Yet they somehow managed to fit in time for the cross country team and  create a tradition of McFarland as a cross country powerhouse.

Two plots are interwoven as the movie reaches its conclusion. (The movie is several years old but if you don’t want to know how it ends, stop listening.) The first is the state championship. Can this rag tag group from one of the poorest towns in America win the California championship in a sport dominated by rich, white schools?

The second plot regards Coach White himself. His surprising success as a coach has drawn the attention of a rich, white school that has made him a lucrative offer to become their coach. It would mean a lot more money and a lot more resources. It would mean a nicer, more traditional, suburban community for his daughters to grow up in. It would be, in many ways, a fulfillment of the American dream.

Yet I cannot imagine that anyone watching that movie was rooting for Jim White to accept this new job. They would have understood if he had done so. In many ways, it would have been the sensible and, dare I say, expedient choice. But it would also have been the wrong choice, a choice that did not belong to the truth.

One of the wonderful things about movies, about literature, about the Creation stories and others in the Bible, is that they are often better at drawing us into the truth than history, or “what actually happened.” Watching McFarland, USA, the real world gave way, for a moment, to the truth. People totally captive to the American, consumerist rat race were rooting for Jim White to turn against it. And there were tears, relief, applause when he did.

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What is true for you? I’m not talking about facts or knowledge or even, perhaps, beliefs. I’m talking about what you belong to, what guides you, what you give yourself to, what you serve. There are many voices in our world that would seek to guide us, that demand we give ourselves to them and serve them. Some are loud and angry voices. Some are seductive voices of consumerism. But Jesus says that to listen to his voice is to belong to the truth.

It is in John’s gospel that Jesus, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” But the abundant life Jesus offers is not the sort promised by Madison Avenue or by America First. It is a life guided by the truth. A life like the one Jim White discovered when he remained in McFarland. A life that volunteers tirelessly at Welcome Table even if it means using some vacation time. A life that give generously, sacrificially to help others even when that means denying oneself something deeply desired. A life that finds a true calling rather than the career that pays the most. A life that refuses to surrender to cynicism but continues to hope in and work for a new and better day. A true life, a truly abundant life.

Jesus says, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." To what do you belong? Whose voice do you listen to above all others?