That Truth Thing

“That Truth Thing”

John 1:10-18

First Presbyterian Church

The Reverend Donald E. Ray

January 3, 2010

Epiphany Sunday

How many here this morning remember the game show, Truth or Consequences? Those who remember it know you need to acknowledge it truthfully, or you could face the consequences. For those who don’t remember the show; it aired on television from 1950 to 1975 with a few incidental spin-off attempts into the 70’s. Contestants were asked trivia questions and if they failed to give the “truth,” they faced the “consequences” - usually a funny and embarrassing stunt. Often, the questions were about something in the contestant’s own life, and the consequences included being reunited with long-lost family or friends who knew the truth.

Truth or consequences describes a pretty accurate image of truth. Truth is defined simply as being in accord with particular facts or reality, with a standard accepted as actual. Truth is that unbending reality of what has been, what is. We live with our actions and words on any given day measured by that image of truth. The game show was funny because contestants could be caught not being all together honest in their answers. When the facts were presented, witnesses from their past called, the embarrassing truth was revealed.

We laughed because it was all innocent fun. But to be caught outside that accord with the facts of acceptable reality is not fun. The truth about our lives, when it reveals we fall outside the standards can be devastating. Truth hurts. Christianity suffers with a truth syndrome. We have to live with that voice that says, “If it’s in the Bible, it’s true” and if we aren’t living by that defined truth, if we don’t affirm that creed as our faith, if we don’t believe, then our life is a lie. Truth hurts when it is a weapon of power and control.

This year in the church’s cycle of Gospel reading, the prologue to John’s Gospel is inserted for Epiphany. We may miss for a moment the wise men in royal pomp bringing their kingly gifts. I would not for a moment take the beauty and wonder of those stories out of Christmas. The Star Child,” the choir’s anthem later, revisits that image. But Wednesday of this week is designated Epiphany - a revelation of divine; in the Wise Men story, to the world at large.

John defines that epiphany: The law indeed was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17) There contrasted is the old truth - Moses and the law against which one had to live, and grace and truth in the Christ which John invests his Gospel illuminating. Written probably near the beginning of the second century in the Ephesus community, this Gospel was at the cutting edge of the movement that came to be called Christian. Ties with Judaism had been severed. John does not see this community as post Jewish. Events other Gospels link with the Passover, John writes of as preceding it. The Word - the Word that became flesh was before it all. John makes no attempt to validate Jesus, linking his birth or his message or his actions with the messianic expectations. In other words, he makes no effort to validate the truth of history.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Of the twenty-nine uses of the word “truth” in the Gospels (RSV translation), twenty-six of them appear in John. I reread the Gospel with that in mind. It was not a journey to the mountain, to the wise one who would reveal the meaning of life. There is a lot of “come and see - come and be” in John’s Gospel. Truth is deliberately identified with Jesus, whom John clearly identifies as the Christ. “I and the Father are one,” he quotes Jesus as saying. Truth is in living with Jesus, the Christ. Truth, not the validation of the historical realities, is the discovery of God in life and life in God.

John writes of Jesus meeting a woman by the well in Samaria . In a “truth or consequences” scenario, he asks her to go and bring her husband. Denying she has a husband, she is caught in the facts - she has had five husbands and is now living with a man not her husband. She was caught. Today we would probably laugh. But against Moses’ law, she could have been stoned. John opens his Gospel epiphany: grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Grace eases the embarrassment and devastation of being caught in a truth trap. The woman returns to the city and calls her neighbors, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” (John 4:29)

In John’s Gospel, the Greek notion of truth is evident. Aletheia, meaning the veil that lies over reality, is taken away and we see reality unveiled as it really is. “I am… “says Jesus frequently in John’s writing. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. (John 14:6) I am the removal of the veil that keeps one from visioning God.

“I am. . .”would appear arrogant except for the context John affords. If you knew who I am, I would give you water of life. I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd. I am the door that guards the fold. You call me Teacher and Lord - you are right, but I wash your feet. You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. (John 18:37)

Pilate asks, “What is truth.” Truth is the unveiling of reality, the clearing of our perception of life. Truth is our journey in God. Truth is rarely, if ever simple. Marcus Aurelius was likely right: everything we hear is opinion, everything we see is perception. For truth not to be absolute, not fixed in fact and reality, is scary. That truth be relative we fear as a slippery slope to no certainty, no objectivity, no foundation. Eugene Peterson translates today’s text: We got the basics from Moses, and then this exuberant giving and receiving, this endless knowing and understanding - all this came through Jesus, the (Christ). (John 1:17 MSG)

Sailors on the open sea, with no landmarks to give them reference point for their location or the direction they should go, learned to follow the stars. Wise Men, astrologers, with kingly gifts, the story says, saw a star and it pointed to a kingdom of love and light and truth that led them to a new vision of reality.

Many of the second century followers of the Christ had their roots in Jewish religion and tradition. Where did they go now that those ties were severed. John offers the epiphany, the unveiling of reality that they may see the way of life in God, Jesus as the Word in life, but the Word, God, love in the core of life. Truth, not the lock on authority, exclusivity, control but the door that opens life in God to all on the journey. John tells no story of wise men following a star. John’s Gospel offers us the star.

Said the night wind to the little lamb

Do you see what I see

Way up in the sky little lamb

Do you see what I see

A star, a star,

Dancing in the night

It is not enough that truth is in accord with fact and reality we believe we know. Truth is the taking away of the veil that lies over reality that our vision of life may unfold for us and all.

Amen.

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