This is my homily for last night, Good Friday. The readings are here. I am sorry I was not able to post it in time to be read here on Good Friday; but right now it is Holy Saturday, hours before the Vigil, and we are still sort of in a Good Friday mode (kind of, anyway), so I hope this spirituality won't be amiss.
“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
There are any number of reasons we tell lies. We lie because we think telling the truth will get us in trouble: that seems to be where Peter was tonight. We lie out of malice, to cause harm to another person – that seems to be the working theory of Jesus’s enemies. We lie to make problems go away – that may have been Pilate’s modus operandi.
Also, we lie because we think it will help us cut corners to get what we want. If you think people don’t lie to make money, you haven’t spent much time in the business world. If you think people don’t lie to gain power and hold onto it, you haven’t followed politics very closely. If you think people don’t lie to get a date, then you have never been on a dating app.
The fact is, we live in a world that is saturated with lies, lying and liars. Following Jesus means standing over and against this lying world. As we just heard, the corrupt rulers of this world may not countenance truth-tellers in their midst.
Welcome to discipleship.
“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
Everything Jesus says in this passion reading, at his trials and on the cross, is true. Everything Jesus says throughout the Gospels is in service to revealing the truth. Everything Jesus does is true. We can go even farther, and assert that Jesus himself *is* the truth, as well as the way and the life. If Jesus is about anything, he is about truth. And that sets him on the road to a collision with those who have a stake in our untruthful status quo – our echelon of earthly power and privilege.
One dictionary describes “truth” as “that which … is in accordance with facts or reality.” That’s clear enough: if a statement matches the facts and matches reality, then it’s true.
But there also are deeper and more profound meanings of the word “true”. For example, we might observe that an archer’s bowshot was true, meaning that it hit its intended mark. Or a singer may hit a true note, meaning that the note is not only is in tune, but also beautiful, and draws forth a little frisson of pleasure from us. Or we may refer to someone as a true friend, meaning a friend who puts our needs above her own, and sticks with us even when it is inconvenient to do so.
So “true” means, not only factually accurate, but also right and good and trustworthy. Jesus’s words, deeds, life and person all are true in all these senses. As when the singer hits that true note, when we are in the presence of the truth, it resonates somewhere within us. The truth causes our hearts to rejoice, because there is a part of us – a good part – which rejoices in the truth. That we have this part within us which is in tune with the truth: take that as a sign that God created us as good, and despite all the sin we’ve embraced, all the sin which led Jesus to the cross, we still have this residual bit of goodness in us, which rejoices in the truth.
At his trials, Jesus testified to the truth, for our sakes: so we can live in the truth. We live in the truth when we live lives that are in accordance with Jesus. When we get to know him and get to love him, and model our actions and our lives accordingly, we are living in the truth.
“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
Much of tonight’s passion account describes Jesus’s trials, in front of Annas and before Pilate. In those trials, he says nothing but what is true. But his prosecutors are so separated from living lives that are true, that Jesus’s true words trigger in them, not that frisson of pleasure, but rather rage and befuddlement. When Jesus tells Pilate, “I came into the world to testify to the truth”, Pilate responds, either cynically or in bewilderment, “What is truth?” Apparently, truth is something with which some of the rulers of this world have yet to make acquaintance.
When Pilate put that inscription, “Jesus the Nazorean, the king of the Jews” on the cross, Jesus’s enemies objected. They wanted the truth to be subordinated to their designs. That’s the sort of world in which we live, and in which Jesus wants us to testify to the truth. Jesus is a king of a different kingdom, not of this world but destined to supplant the corrupt and sinful kingdoms of this world. The rulers of this world thought that, in putting Jesus to death on the cross, they won. But they were wrong. The cross is not the deathbed of the one who failed; it is the throne of the won who is victorious.
“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
We’re called to testify to the truth, too. We do this by proclaiming what is inconveniently, perilously true, with our words and with our lives. Telling the truth can get us mocked. Telling the truth can get us fired. Telling the truth can get us canceled. In some places today, like Hong Kong, telling the truth can get us tear gassed and beaten and arrested.
This is why we were baptized, and why we follow Jesus: so that we can testify to the truth. Telling the truth ended on the cross for Jesus. It may do the same for us. We need to bear in mind: dying on the cross isn’t failure. It’s success. And that, my friends, is the truth.
Good thoughts about the necessity and importance of truth. Pilate's "What is truth?" sounds so present day.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that the Gospel of John is a bit kinder to Pilate than the historical accounts. It seems that about six years after Jesus death Pilate was recalled to Rome, because of the excessive brutality of his regime. That's saying a lot, the Romans were in general pretty tolerant of brutality. I have read that he is considered a saint in some of the Orthodox traditions; supposedly he had a conversion experience later. I have not seen any evidence confrming that.
Pilate never has seen like an unambiguous bad guy to me. He let himself be bullied by Jesus's enemies, and apparently used very worldly calculations.
DeleteIn Mark's Gospel, in the account of John the Baptist's beheading, there is a line which says something along the lines of, Herod liked to hear John talk. I've always thought that one interpretation of that is: as much as Herod and his wife had it in for John, there was something about John which Herod found compelling - that John's often-caustic preaching was reaching his heart or his conscience in some way.
I could see a similar dynamic between Pilate and Jesus: that Jesus's cryptic responses to Pilate's interrogation managed to cut through Pilate's contempt and his political calculations.
On the other hand, I could be giving both rulers too much credit!
The best explanation that I have heard of the tendency to paint a partially positive picture of Pilate and Herod is that it is a literary device. Essentially the writers are saying that Jesus and John were innocent and that at some level those who executed them knew that.
ReplyDeleteThe audience of the Gospels understood that the Romans were a military occupation (that is what empire means), and they ruled whenever possible through client rulers like Herod and the High Priest. It was a client ruler’s responsibility to be on the front line in putting down trouble makers like Jesus and John. Of course the military was there to be sure that was done. The portrayals of the death of Jesus are in line with this.
The Gospels writers, however, had some motivation to let the Empire off the hook since of course they lived under its rule, and they had some motivation to portray the Jewish religious authorities badly since they were the early church’s competition.
As I have mentioned ad nauseam, I reject atonement theology. I lean to agreeing with Richard Rohr who makes the point that the Incarnation was not Plan B, written up and decided on after "the fall" so that human beings could be forgiven their sins by Jesus' death.
ReplyDeleteI have believed for years now that Jesus came to teach us how to live. This includes teaching that standing up for the Truth, speaking Truth to power is very often very costly in what it demands of us. Even sometimes our lives. He spoke truth to power and died as a result.
A good homily.