Can We Handle the Truth?
Feb. 11, 2007
I have been accused, from time to time, of preaching at a, shall we say, hyperintellectualized level – sermons from the lofty mountaintop of theoretical reflection. I suppose that’s a working hazard of having a doctorate in postmodern philosophy. Coming one week after a sermon in which I cited Heidegger and Sartre and Jung, oh my, I suppose I have no choice but to plead “guilty as charged.”
On the other hand, sometimes I preach “up here” because “down here” is too difficult. That is to say, to take scripture seriously – though not literally – and to apply it to our day-to-day lives raises the stakes too high. I feel, sometimes, like the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men. “You want the truth? … You can’t handle the truth.”
We – you and I – can’t handle the truth, I sometimes fear, because it asks too much of us.
You see, if we take the plain and simple truth of scripture seriously it asks us to change our entire lives.
But this morning, we have no choice, really. For to be true to the text of Luke’s gospel, we must follow Jesus and preach from the plain – from the down low of every day life. There is blessing to be found in this, to be sure; but there is also woe, as Jesus – like Jeremiah before him – makes abundantly clear.
The blessing comes in the same measure as the woe, and from the same calculation: the measure of how seriously we take scripture. This is what the psalmist teaches: ‘Happy are those whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and on God’s law they meditate day and night.”
This is the truth that will set us free, but it is also, too often, the truth that we simply cannot handle.
For example, scripture clearly demands of us that we welcome the stranger, the alien in our midst for as the Exodus people were reminded, “you shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you know the heart of an alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt (Ex. 22:21, 23:9).
Scripture clearly demands of us that we love our neighbors as ourselves.
Scripture clearly demands of us that we live in community, and suggests often that such community will only be strong and binding to the extent that we give up our ties to things and money.
Scripture clearly demands that we honor creation because the earth is the Lord’s and all that is therein (Psalm 24).
Scripture clearly demands of us that we seek peace and pursue it (Psalm 34 and 1 Peter, for example).
Scripture clearly demands of us justice and righteousness – not just at 10:00 a.m. Sunday, but all day, every day, in body, mind and spirit. As Paul put it to the church at Rome, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1).
Scripture clearly demands of us that we love God, and that we put this love at the very center of our being ahead of every other claim on our lives, even those of family and kin and loved ones.
Finally, in all of these specific demands, there is this central demand: that we trust God above all else; that we not put our trust in rulers or corporations or real estate investments or family members or weapons systems or intelligence or money or success or any of the other false gods that we raise up in our lives; but that first, last and always we trust – at radical risk to our own interests and even our own lives – that we trust God above all else.
These demands are what it means to follow Jesus – and the baseline meaning of being Christian is captured in the simple question: are we following Jesus? Before you answer that, consider for a moment what happened to those who followed him in scripture – they were reviled, excluded, defamed and hated. But, remember this as well: they were blessed.
These scriptural demands will change our lives – from broken to blessed – if we let them.
Consider the demand that we welcome the stranger in our midst. Somehow I think this means more than saying, “hello, welcome to Clarendon Presbyterian Church, please join us for coffee after worship.” That’s the beginning, to be sure, and, especially for those of you who are strangers to this community, we do mean it: please stay and join us for a while. But it also means busting out of small groups of good friends to form new relationships and widen the circle of community here and wherever else we find ourselves. To put it plainly, God doesn’t like our cliques – whether they are in church, in school, in the workplace. God calls us to create community without walls, not voluntary associations of like-minded individuals. Can we handle the truth?
Then there’s the demand that we love our neighbors as ourselves. I don’t know about any of you, but I don’t even know most of my neighbors, so I certainly can make no credible claim to loving them. To love them requires the great emotional risk of opening my life to the lives of people who may well be quite different – especially the guy who lives two doors up from us and can be reliably counted upon to post campaign signs for all the wrong candidates. Indeed, for us, in elections where we are ignorant, his signs provide guidance. If he’s for them, we’re against them! And he is the neighbor I am required to love. Can we handle the truth?
What of the demand to live in community? As it was said in Acts of the first church “the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. … There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold … and it was distributed to each as any had need.” Day by day the Lord added to their number. This scripturally mandated community welcomes everyone, without regard to distinction of creed, color, sexuality, economy. Indeed, it requires a fundamental rethinking of economy such that the measure of our lives is not what we have but what we give away.
As we consider community life here, we often fret over the congregation’s budget. If we truly measured our lives by what we give away – and took as a point of departure the Biblical tithe, or 10 percent of our incomes – the only question we would have about our budget is how to most faithfully direct mission giving. We have approximately 40 pledges in this small community – which is wonderful. If they averaged $5,000 – considerably less than 10 percent of the personal per capita income in Northern Virginia – our annual budget would have a surplus of $100,000 instead of a deficit of $20,000. It is not a question of ability; it is a question of choice and of lifestyle. I’ll be doing our income taxes soon. It will be a reality check, and it will confirm what I know: I don’t give enough to change my life in ways that reflect what I say I believe. Can we handle the truth?
Next, take the demand to honor creation, please. If we take that seriously we might just have to give up our cars and start riding bicycles. As I look around this morning, I think only Sam Foulke, among us, would look at this circumstance with a smile on his face. For those of you who don’t know Sam, he works at Spokes – best little bike shop in Northern Virginia. And even when modern life forces us into cars, the scriptural truth that creation belongs to God demands that we think with care about what we drive, and how often we drive. Alas, style and status and convenience are not Biblical criteria for such considerations. That’s why we got a hybrid when the minivan died. Now, if I can just get the bike out of the shed a bit more often … Can we handle the truth?
Perhaps if I – and millions of others – could make that environmental and lifestyle change, this next demand might come more easily, for it is surely connected. Scripture demands that we seek peace and pursue it. The peacemakers are blessed, and will be called the children of God. What of the rest of us, who tolerate endless war waged in our names, with our resources, and our passive acceptance? What shall we be called? Can we handle the truth?
The truth is, true peace will not come with the cessation of hostilities in Iraq because, as the poster that hangs in my study reminds me every day “true peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.”[1] Scripture demands that we do justice; not merely consider it, talk about it, long for it – but do it; not just now and then when it is convenient and doesn’t cost much, but always in every aspect of our living. As Obery Hendricks puts it, “justice is the divinely ordained way of relating to one another in human society.”[2] Or, as Micah put it succinctly, “what does the Lord require of you? Do justice.” Can we handle the truth?
John’s gospel assures us that the truth shall set us free. What is the nature of such liberation? Well, if we can handle the truth, it liberates us from idolatry – it frees us from so many culturally created idols and from rushing to and fro to do obeisance to such 21st-century American idols as fashion, success, celebrity, power, influence and affluence.
Sometimes the truth that scripture calls us to strikes us as difficult, and as requiring great sacrifice of comfort and security. At such point, we despair of being able to handle the truth, or simply recoil from it altogether. On the other hand, while there is risk, in all this, to be sure, there is also abundance. An abundance of joy, of hope, of love.
The faith that scripture calls us to, the trust it asks of us and invites us to share, requires risk, and it also requires us all. For we are called to sojourn together, bearing one another’s burdens, binding one another up, loving one another. It really is all that easy … and, of course, all that hard.
That joy, that hope, that love that come when we journey together toward God, lie at the heart of the experience some of us will share this Lenten season in the “journey toward enough.” For learning to live abundantly together is, I firmly believe, the heart of what it means to be Christian. It is following Jesus. It is the way and the truth and the life. And I know, I am a witness here, we can handle the truth. Thanks be to God. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
1:22 PM
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