Truth

Preached: 2 April 2021 (Good Friday)

Readings: Isaiah 52v13-53v12; John 18v1-19v37

​Introduction

Well, that was a couple of looong readings! But it’s appropriate on Good Friday that we get the whole story, and we pretty much have. I probably have less time than those readings took, so I can just concentrate on one small aspect of them. As you listened to them, I wonder what stood out for you? Perhaps take some time over the holiday weekend to look deeper at that. For me, it was Pilate's question “What is truth?”, so I'm going to offer some thoughts on that this morning.

“What is truth?”

So, “what is truth?”. Let’s start with the simple truths first and work towards the more complicated ones.

Tell the truth

When we say to very young children “just tell the truth”, we are usually asking them to give an account of their actions that will incriminate them. Children will often say what they believe the parent or adult wants to hear. “I was a good girl, I didn’t eat the cake.” the little girl said to the researcher, but the icing around her mouth told another story altogether. Each child had been left alone in a room and told not to touch the cakes and sweets. Some found temptation impossible to resist, most of those that succumbed told some sort of lie.

Adults too

This is simply asking someone to relay an accurate, complete and pure record of some events that have taken place. We ask adults in court to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. But who takes any notice of that declaration any more! Or do I just watch too much crime drama?

In the reading

We find this type of evidential truth in our reading, when John writes in 19:35 “The man who saw it (the sudden flow of blood and water) has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.”

John’s telling of his truth has a purpose – ‘so you may believe’, just as this type of truth told in a court has a purpose – to get justice for someone.

Simple Truths

These are simple truths, if we want to get to more wider truths, we will have to look elsewhere.

​Science

Perhaps science has the answer, after all describing the world we live in ought to be pretty straight forward, didn’t it?

Well, it turns out that this is not the case. Scientists have a concept known as ‘lies to children’ to explain science to either children or non-scientists to give them just enough to gain an understanding and encourage them to look deeper.

Electricity

Let me give you an example. You can think of an electric current like water flowing through a pipe. The idea works well enough to explain volts and amps at a basic level, but when you begin to look at what’s happening to the electrons in the wire, the story is completely different – an electric current is not like water in a pipe at all.

Professor Kathy Sykes, of the University of Bristol said '...science is not about truth, but is about trying to get closer to the truth. This is important because, too often, people look to scientists as having the "truth". What we have is wrapped in uncertainties, caveats, and simplifications.'

Other types of truth

So, science doesn’t really help us to get to the indisputable facts that easily. Perhaps we should be wary of bringing science into the discussion at all, there is no evidence that Pilate was specially interested in the natural world. Anyway, there are other truths that we need to think about.

Definition

One definition of truth, with a capital T, is an “ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience”. This is getting closer to what Pilate was asking, I suspect.

Psychology Today

The Psychology Today website tells us: “Truth is a property not so much of thoughts and ideas, but more properly of beliefs and assertions. But to believe or assert something is not enough to make it true, or else the claim that ‘to believe something makes it true’ would be just as true as the claim that ‘to believe something does not make it true.’”

​Answering Pilates question

This begins to bring us closer to providing an answer for Pilate, because his question is in response to Jesus’ claims to be a king, but in a kingdom not of this world. Here’s what Jesus said, from 18:37

“You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Did Pilate really listen? We’ll probably never know. But we can see from his reaction that he does have an understanding of truth. He’s still prepared to tell the Jews that there is no basis for a charge against Jesus. Next, he makes a politically expedient decision and hands Jesus over to be flogged. One more step and he has given up on the truth that Jesus has not committed a crime worthy of crucifixion, or any other punishment.

Value of truth?

Perhaps the question Pilate should have asked is “What is the value of truth?” because for now at least, ignoring the higher truth and sticking with the truth that he’s in a difficult situation and need to preserve the peace, and with it his career is more important to him.

He is in essence behaving just like a small girl who failed to resist a cake.

An Answer?

So, can we provide an answer? The Psychology Today website article starts with the sentence, “Truth tends to lead to successful action.” The apostle John, also, has other things to say about truth—8:32 “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free”

The Truth

Jesus came to proclaim the truth, and that truth sets us free from our greatest fear – death and oblivion – our own end, which we know will inevitably come.

Freedom from that fear leads to many positive outcomes. Look at the progress humanity has made since belief in Jesus became widespread.

We’ve still got a long way to go. I’ve just completed safeguarding training, so I’m more aware than ever just how far we have to go. But progress has been made.

Today

Perhaps today, we can reflect on the times when we have ignored the truth and made our selves and our reputations more important.

It’s time for us to be on the side of truth and to listen to Jesus.

Amen.

Fool for Christ

Preached: 7 March 2021

Readings: Exodus 20:1-17;1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Foolishness

We all do foolish things sometimes, locking ourselves out of the house, getting scammed by poorly written email, loosing our wallet or purse, forgetting to take change to pay for parking. They’re annoying, but they’re not intentional. They happen to us because our concentration is elsewhere – on something we perceive as more important, or nowhere, because something has distracted us. Everyone would agree that these things are just silly mistakes, and not a way of life.

As a way of life 

Those who choose to follow Christ, though, have fallen for a foolish message, Paul says in our reading today. I don’t know how often you encounter people who are perishing, and how often you hear them express their thoughts on the message of the cross, but I can assure you that foolishness is a very mild term compared to what I read and hear. 

Foolish things we have done.

So, that set me wondering what foolish things we may have deliberately done because of the foolish message of the cross we have decided to follow. Here are some examples from me and some from the Bible. After that, we’ll have a look at some other characters who have taken foolishness to a higher level.

​So mine:

Many years ago I decided I needed saving from this life and all its horrible ways, so I put my trust in a Jew who was executed around 2000 years ago, for stirring up trouble amongst the crowds. He said He could save me from death and hell, and I believed him. He said He came to die for my sins, and I believed Him. His followers said He came back to life, and I believed them.

I believe that I am in regular communication with Him.

That has led to other foolish things – I talk to him often, I help to pay for the upkeep of his organisation, and I help that organisation make fools of others.

But, as I said, I’m really only an amateur.

​From the Bible

Here are some from the Bible. There’s King David dancing before the Lord, and making a fool of himself in the royal palace – I guess kings can do whatever they please, even if it is foolish.

There’s all those rules, how could you possibly be expected to follow all of them, do not murder, do not steal perhaps, but there are even rules about how to think.

Finally, how about remaining faithful to someone who has promised to look after you when you have contracted a horrible disease and all your children have been killed. If you don’t recognise that one, I’m talking about Job.

Let’s have a look at some historical characters now, who took this foolishness up a notch or two.

Jackie Pullinger

I’ll start with Jackie Pullinger, who, I suspect, most of you have heard of. When she was barely a young woman she decided to go to where ever God wanted her, and stuck a pin in a map, it ended up in a place called the forbidden city, part of Beijing. On arrival, she believed that she could cure the people of their heroin addiction. How foolish is that?

St. Basil

Then there’s St Basil, who lived in Red Square in Moscow in the early 1500s. He’s not to be confused with Basil the Great, who lived about a millennium earlier. This St. Basil wore no cloths, - remember how cold it gets in Moscow!!! He would regularly give any money he was given to the poor and would often disrupt the main market when he knew that the stallholders were cheating their customers. He was well known by all in Moscow, including Tsar Ivan – yes, that Ivan, who he regularly chastised for his appalling behaviour. It is said that the only person the Tsar was afraid of was Basil.

​Jacqueline de Decker

The last example of a fool I want to mention is Jacqueline de Decker. She was born in Belgium in 1913 to a wealthy family. She wanted to join Mother Teresa, but was unable to due to a chronic, debilitating illness that affected her spine. She spent her time, hardly able to move and in a specially adapted car, in Antwerp’s red-light district looking after prostitutes. She never received a diagnosis for her condition and called it GGD ‘God-Given Disease’ as a recognition that God used her through her weakness.

​Wisdom of the World

By the standards of the wisdom of the world, all these people are foolish some of them seem to be dangerously foolish, not caring for their own well-being, or putting themselves in dangerous situations.

But Paul says:

“Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”

​Fool on the Hill

We, the foolish, see differently. As the Beatles demonstrated in their song, “The Fool on the Hill”, fools have a different view. Remember the chorus:

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round

The last verse contains the lines:

“He never listens to them
He knows that they're the fool
They don't like him”

​Who is the fool?

So, who really is the fool, the wise man, the scholar, the philosophers? Because we share God’s wisdom, because we are called by Him:

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

Let’s look again at our example, fools.

Jackie Pullinger did see people healed from drug addiction, they came off their highly addictive drugs without withdrawal symptoms, and lived a new life in Christ.

Basil, the fool, was the ONLY one who could speak honestly to the Tsar, we cannot tell what effect he had, but speaking truth to power is needed in every generation, and is always a force for good.

Jacqueline de Decker spent what little ability she had looking after people who rarely got help from anywhere.

Now we can see the trait that God planted in each of them – their concern, their love for those who are the lowest of the low in society, who are ignored or even abused by the so-called wise people of the world.

​Wisdom personified

When I spoke last month, I spoke a little on wisdom personified in Proverbs 8. Verses 30 and 31 particularly spoke to me:

Then I (wisdom) was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.

I remember thinking that I don’t delight in mankind very often, our three example may not ever have expressed what they do like that, but I believe they show us what delighting in mankind really means. It means loving them. How could anyone delight in mankind and not try to relieve their sufferings?

​Good Samaritan

In the parable of the good Samaritan, the expert in the law identified the Samaritan as a neighbour to the man who was robbed. When he had done, so Jesus said, “Go and do likewise”

That is what he says to us this morning when we consider our three fools, “Go and do likewise”.