Last Sunday after Pentecost; Christ the King; 21 November 2021; Proper 29B (RCL); 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Psalm 132; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37.
Too bad the lectionary didn’t include the next sentence in John’s Gospel. Pilate asks, “What is truth?” That’s where we seem to be as a nation; truth is contested. The Enlightenment was supposed to fix that problem. Descartes sought a kind of truth that could be deduced from first principles, and hence would not be contested. But we have discovered recently that even the logic by which truth is deduced from those first principles (indeed, even the first principles themselves) is socially constructed and conditioned.
Pilate’s truth is indeed different from Jesus’ truth (as the song in Jesus Christ, Superstar has it). Should the history of slavery and racial issues be taught in our schools, and how? Should we invest money as a nation in the welfare of the whole, or should we leave money in the pockets of those who have it? All of these decisions, and thousands more like them, depend on a common agreement about truth.
In John’s Gospel, truth emerges from a community discourse. It is not crystalline, fixed for all time, but the Spirit will lead the community ever deeper into the truth. The Spirit will take what is God’s and reveal it to the community, and that truth will evolve as circumstances evolve. When Thomas asks Jesus to show the community the Father, Jesus replies, “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
The Way is the first predicate to the I AM statement. John imagines the Christian life as the new journey along the wilderness way, toward the Father (Go and tell my disciples that I am embarking to my God and your (plural) God, my Father and your (plural) Father). Jesus is the new tabernacle (The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us). And there is no arriving (In my Father’s house there are many stopping places — truck stops would be a good translation).
The truth, then requires effort, social effort. The truth, then, should always be under contest. But, given Jesus’ response to Pilate — you say that I am a king, for this I was born and came in to the world, to testify to the truth — should warn us that the truth toward which we journey will not be found with the kings of this world. It will be found among the crucified.
David’s last words might give us a hint what the truth looks like. David, who raped Bathsheba, and who acted the king, taking what he wanted, often by violence, this same David, says that one who rules over the people justly is like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming on the dew on the field. Notice that there are no people in this image. One who rules the people justly will be good for the earth. The people prosper when the earth prospers.
I suppose all of this raises the question of where we think we are going. Are we trying to go back to a golden age, or forward to a new future. John clearly imagines the Christian life as a journey forward, into God’s promises. The contest will be whether we can go together. That’s the minimum standard as far as John is concerned. The Spirit is an aspect of community life; we journey together, or die in the wilderness alone.