The Thanksgiving Truth
DATE: November 22, 2009
SCRIPTURE: John 18:33-38
Don't be confused by our scripture lesson from John. You've not slipped into some alternate universe. You've not gotten caught up in an ecclesiastical time warp. This is the Sunday before Thanksgiving, not Good Friday. But nonetheless here it is this story of Jesus on trial before Pilate, assigned to this particular Sunday in the lectionary. Rest assured, it is there for good reason, but one you may not know about. For you see this last Sunday in the very long Pentecost season, this Sunday before the First Sunday in Advent, is called Christ the King Sunday. It is one of those Sundays in the church year that we Congregationalists don't usually pay much attention to. Like Ascension Sunday, or Transfiguration Sunday, it is important to millions of Christians around the world and right here in our own town, but not so much to us.
I suspect that is partly because of our general discomfort with the idea of a king. We are, after all, descendents of the Pilgrims and Puritans. And it those spiritual ancestors of ours who helped create democracy in this country. Those Puritan church meetings where decisions were made by vote of the membership, served as the model for New England town meetings. Indeed, the very first Westport Town Meeting was held in this very room! As Geoffrey Black, the new president of the United Church of Christ recently noted: "Democracy is part of our denominational DNA." (The Christian Century, 12-1-09, 16) Kings just aren't something with which we are very comfortable.
But here it is. Christ the King Sunday—Good Friday overtones and all. In this brief encounter with Pilate, Jesus seems to acknowledge that he is king. But not the kind of king Pilate recognizes. Not the kind of king that threatened our Puritan ancestors. Not the kind of king we rebelled against in the Revolutionary War. When Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king, Jesus responds, "My kingdom is not of this world." Some, of course, assume that Jesus means he's the king of heaven; that his kingdom is the world of the dead; that his kingdom is all about the afterlife. But that is a misunderstanding the text. Indeed a better translation of the word rendered as kingdom would be reign or kingship. When Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world he's not talking about geography—he's talking about the source of his authority. As one scholar writes: "He is referring to its origin, not its location . . . [and it] originates from God." (Gail R. O'Day, New Interpreter's Bible, IX: 817) My authority, Jesus is saying, my kingly power, my right to rule, comes from God. It's not granted me by worldly powers. I didn't inherit my office. I wasn't voted into power. I was given my authority by God. "I came into the world," he says, "to testify to the truth." (John 18:37) Pilate, even more baffled, asks, a bit sarcastically, "What is truth?" (18:38)
Aside from the sarcasm, though, it is a pretty good question. One we ask all the time. The Pilgrims understood truth differently from those in the Church of England, and so they came here to find religious freedom, to live out of their own understanding of truth. So too so many others who came to this country in the years after the founding of Plimouth Colony. Quakers, Shakers, Catholics, Methodists, Jews, and in more recent years, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, all came here so that they could live lives true to their beliefs. But can truth be so diverse? Can each of these religions be expressions of that which is right?
What is truth?
Put simply, it is that which reflects the love of God. It is that which is in alignment with the love of God. What we know to be true is always only part of the truth—it is never the whole truth, for God's love is eternal and unbounded.
I have been very taken, for many years, by a book by a Benedictine brother named David Steindl-Rast. It is titled, appropriately for this Thanksgiving season, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer. It is well worth your reading, and filled with simple, yet profound, ideas. I mention it, though, because Steindl-Rast offers up one of the best definitions of truth I have ever seen. I quote him at length: "Truth is one," he writes, "But its countless aspects can be expressed in conflicting truths. Their limitations bring them into conflict. All we can grasp of the truth is limited truths. But grasping is not the only attitude we can adopt toward truth. Instead of grasping truths, we can allow the truth to grasp us. . . .The truths we grasp are necessarily limited as our grasp is limited. But the truth to which we give ourselves is limitless and one." (217)
Truth transcends the limits of our imaginations. I can only describe one angle on it, one aspect of it. I can only identify one narrow slice of it. If my angle looks different than yours, it may seem we are in conflict. But as the Sufi mystic Rumi noted, I may be describing the trunk of an elephant, and you the tail. I may think it's a hose, and you may think it's a snake. But the reality is it's more than that. It's an elephant! We can't wrap our arms around the whole truth, but truth can wrap its arms around us!
What is truth? Ultimately, it is limitless. It is rooted in the eternal love of God. It is the eternal love of God. And that is something we can only begin to understand, and then, only in part. But it is made manifest each and every time we are willing to follow the way of, if you will, King Jesus. For when we follow his way of love and service, we demonstrate our citizenship in the kingdom of God. We demonstrate our allegiance to the truth.
Over the past eight plus years, I have had the pleasure, the honor and the privilege, of coming to know a bit more about that limitless truth, because you have been willing to share your understandings, your observations and your experiences—even as you have allowed me to share mine. In the next two months I hope to have the chance to thank each of you personally for your role in shaping my ministry here at Saugatuck. But then I will leave. And you will have new pastors. And you will be blessed by the ministries of others who will come after me. You will share your bit of glimpses of truth, as will they. And all will be enriched.
As I reflect on these thoughts in this Thanksgiving season, I can't help but think of John Robinson.
Robinson was the pastor of those brave men and women who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower. But most of his congregation stayed behind so Robinson didn't go on the journey. As those who would come to be called the Pilgrims left, he offered one last sermon, one last bit of wisdom.
"I charge you," he said as he bade them farewell, "before God and His blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded God hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word."
What is truth? It is that which God is constantly revealing, and which we are seeing, bit by bit, day by day. It is limitless. It is eternal. It is the very love of God.
Might you and I give ourselves to that love each and every day.
Amen
John H. Danner