Sermon Ideas For John 18:33-37 Part 2

Pilate may be more like us than we usually think. Perhaps he really wanted an answer to the question, "What is truth?" and could not find one that would make a difference in his judgment of Jesus.

If that was his dilemma, how much he is like us in trying to decide on "timeless truth." That would be the appropriate adjective for truth when face to face with Jesus, the Son of God. Is not this the time for an ultimate decision, one that will not change because it is rooted in our understanding of the unchanging, eternal quality of truth?

Well, if "unchanging" is the criteria of truth, then Pilate would have to condemn Jesus, because he was accused of bringing abrupt and violent change into Judea. He would not be a "true" prophet, because he questioned the Law and the tradition of the ancestors.

Yet Jesus did not appear before Pilate as a man of violence. His courage and honesty spoke for the truth of his being. So what could Pilate decide?

What can we decide? We'll be indecisive and confused if truth is only adherence to that which is unchanging. Such a view, inherited from Greek philosophers, depends on rationality without resort to revelation. Or, in the wonderful phrase of our founding documents as a nation, "these truths are self-evident."

Why do I bring in revelation? Because the truth which Jesus represented went deep into his character as God's Son. He was the truth. Now that certainly would be confusing to a Greek or Roman philosopher! Here is a man who went through all the typical changes of life from childhood to adulthood, who revealed the truth of his messiahship in stages, who compared himself to Moses and then said that he was going beyond Moses, who told his disciples that they would do greater works than he did--where's the unchanging, eternal ideal in the midst of all this movement?

The ideal in Jesus' life was dynamic rather than static truth. It was a state of being that flowed in different forms through diverse circumstances. Truth keeps emerging as a new teaching of old truth in his ministry. It is characterized by faithfulness rather than by conformity, by action more than by contemplation. His followers were to live, to do the truth.

If Pilate had taken the trouble to learn Hebrew, he would have found many words in the Law and Prophets for the truth: Sanding firm, establishing, supporting, bearing, reliable, unshakable dependable. It is a virtue that lives in historical acts.

This is why the truth as lived by Jesus would be known more by revelation than by rationality. The truth would be known in a series of actions and their interpretation by the Spirit. No precise criteria would satisfy all the faithful applications of Jesus' life to our circumstances. We would have to risk, make mistakes, try for the best we knew, even though we will not know as we are known until the Judgment Day. Our encouragement would be that of Simon Peter before the trial of his Lord. He failed to tell the truth about himself, but Jesus had told him it would happen, and yet demonstrated faith in him as one who would strengthen the brethren.

What a wonderfully liberating view of truth this can bring us in a time of growing "co-dependency," a term for those who have had no faithful relations in the past and fear that they will be rejected if they don't come up with the perfect answer to every human problem. The answer from Jesus' life is not in complete understanding of issues or a hard-headed ability to go to the absolute root of the matter, but in confidence that God's Spirit will guide us if we'll take time for head and heart to listen to each other, and then try with others for the best that we know to do in our circumstances with our limited vision. Maybe we'll have to fail or expose our prejudices before we're ready to see the truth of some moral or spiritual dilemma, but so what? We have moved toward the future with faith and humility.

Humble about what? That we're always in danger of concealment of the truth, either by ourselves or led astray by others. To the Hebrews, this was why a prophet became so essential. He/she saw through the duplicity, the vanity, the prejudice of the rulers and people of Israel... just as Jesus did. This was why he came to trial, and so will we.

Samuel Southard