Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
I studied
philosophy during my undergraduate work.
Philosophy, by
definition means: “the study of the
fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when
considered as an academic discipline”.
To put it differently,
philosophy’s primary question is “what is truth?”
As a student of
philosophy one of my favorite passages, and one of the most ‘philosophical’
passages in all of scripture, is the interchange between Pontius Pilate and
Jesus.
Pilate asked him, "So you are a
king?" Jesus answered, "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. Everyone who
belongs to the truth listens to my voice." Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
What is truth?
We have a crisis
of truth in our world today.
We simply do not
know what is true and what is not.
And there is no
criterion for establishing truth that is accepted by everyone in our society.
Who are the
trusted sources for truth?
Who can you
believe?
Remember when we
had trusted sources?
Walter Cronkite,
for example.
Fifty years ago,
Walter Cronkite was considered the most trusted man in America.
Of course, he was
the anchorman for the CBS Evening News, and when Cronkite said it, people
believed it.
Today it is
different.
We have no Walter
Cronkite.
Instead we live
in an information age, but none of the information we have at our disposal is
universally accepted as truth.
Everything is subjective.
We are torn
between two extremes.
At one end of the
spectrum, there is the tendency to believe anything you hear and read.
At the other end
of the spectrum, is the conviction that you cannot believe anything.
There is no
Walter Cronkite.
Instead we have a
mishmash of news sources that have not been able to separate their presentation
of the news from partisan alliances.
Conservatives
love Fox News.
Liberals love
MSNBC or CNN.
Sean Hannity or
Anderson Cooper.
Who will it be?
Neither one is
Walter Cronkite. That is, neither one
has won the trust of the nation.
Donald Trump has
coined the phrase “Fake News”.
On the one hand,
there is news out there that is in fact fake, some of it intentionally so.
But on the other
hand, just because the news reported is not favorable to the president does not
mean its “fake”.
All of this
leaves us asking Pontius Pilate’s question “what is truth?”
This crisis of
truth is part of our life as a Church as well.
Who do we trust
to speak the truth?
In our lesson
from Deuteronomy, the Lord said:
“I will
raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my
words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I
command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my
name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who speaks in the name of
other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not
commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.”
Who are the
prophets among us that are called to speak the Word of God.
Well, one answer
to that is our pastors.
As pastors, we
are held accountable to the Word of God.
Its part of the promises we make at ordination. Failure to preach and teach in accordance
with God’s Word is one of the things that can result in our being removed from
the roster of ordained pastors through the disciplinary practices of the
Church.
Can you trust me
to speak the Truth. Or any pastor?
The Lord says in
Deuteronomy that it is the responsibility of the people to heed the word that
the “prophet” is called to speak.
Further, it says
that if the “prophet” speaks any other word than the Word of God, that prophet
shall die.
We are
accountable to God’s Word. That’s the
message here.
And yet the
question remains, “what is the truth of God’s Word?”
Twenty Seven
years ago I preached on this text, saying that both pastors and congregations
were accountable to the Word of God, the pastor to speak it, and the
congregation to heed it.
One of my
parishioners was absolutely livid.
“How dare you use
the pulpit to promote your own opinion?” was the essence of her objection.
How dare you
suggest that the word you speak is God’s word.
When I tried to
clarify that my point was that we were all accountable to God’s Word, she still
objected because interpreting God’s Word is all very subjective. You can find passages within it to back up
many different positions, and to claim any sort of authority is suspect.
Of course there
is some truth to what she said.
The reason we have
so many different denominations is that each one believes that they have
interpreted the scripture truthfully, though they all disagree to one extent or
another with each other about what that truth is.
Jesus came into
the synagogue in Capernaum and taught.
They were astounded at his teaching, for he
taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.
Jesus said to Philip:
"I am the way, and the truth, and the
life.”
And in response
to Pontius Pilate he said:
For this I was born, and for this I came
into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens
to my voice."
Jesus spoke the
truth, and died on the cross because of it.
You see, we are
not the first generation that has not wanted to hear the truth, and who has
resisted it when it is spoken.
The problem is
that when Jesus speaks the truth, he not only speaks the truth about God and
God’s holiness, but also the truth about us and our sinfulness. And that we don’t want to hear.
We’d rather
believe that Jesus would come to us and tell us what we want to believe about
ourselves.
We’d like Jesus
to agree with us.
And when he doesn’t,
we don’t recognize him.
One of the
ironies of the Gospel of Mark is that Jesus is recognized for who he was by
only the centurion who crucified him and watched him die, and by the unclean
spirits who he cast out.
“What have you to do with us, Jesus of
Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of
God.”
Authority.
It belongs to
Jesus.
Even the demons
and unclean spirits recognize this and obey his word.
Do we need
another Walter Cronkite, or will Jesus do?
And if Jesus IS
the truth, who IS Jesus?
The two most
important questions we in the Church should ask ourselves are:
“What would Jesus
do?”
And “What is
Jesus saying to us?”
That seems so straight
forward, so obvious, and yet, apparently harder than it seems.
Today we will be
having our congregational meeting.
When I think back
over the course of my thirty years in the parish, I recall congregational
meeting after congregational meeting.
Some were great.
Some were horrendous. Really ugly.
It’s a mixed bag.
But there is one
congregational meeting that never occurred, which I continue to long for.
I’d love to be
part of a congregational meeting where everyone was committed to only one
thing, and that is determining what Jesus would have us do.
We will look at a
budget today, but will we ask the question:
“Is this what Jesus would do?”
To be honest,
when I and the council prepared and approved the budget we are going to present
to you, we probably spent more time asking the question “What can we afford?”
than the more important question “What would Jesus do?”
And when we
consider the future of our congregation are our decisions based on what we
are willing to do, or what Jesus would have us do?
Our congregation’s
constitution states:
All power in the Church belongs to our Lord
Jesus Christ, its head. All actions of this congregation are to be carried out
under his rule and authority.
Nice sentiment,
but do those words carry any weight?
One of the most
interesting things about our Church, and many Churches in this country, is that
we are organized on democratic principles.
We vote.
But if all power
and authority in the Church belongs to Jesus, what is needed is not a vote, but
discernment.
Once we discern
Christ’s will, there is no vote necessary.
“What is this? A new teaching—with
authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
The question for
us, always, is “will we obey him?”
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