November 22, 2015
Christ the King Sunday

“Then Pilate entered the headquarters* again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ 36Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ 37Pilate 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.’ John 18:33 – 37

“WHEN JESUS SAYS that he has come to bear witness to the truth, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Contrary to the traditional view that his question is cynical, it is possible that he asks it with a lump in his throat. Instead of truth, Pilate has only expedience. His decision to throw Jesus to the wolves is expedient. Pilate views humankind as alone in the universe with nothing but its own courage and ingenuity to see it through. That is enough to choke up anybody. Pilate asks “What is truth?” and for years there have been politicians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, poets, and so on to tell him. The sound they make is like the sound of crickets chirping. Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question. He just stands there. Stands, and stands there.

Somebody should write a book someday about the silences in Scripture. Maybe somebody already has. “For God alone my soul waits in silence,” the psalmist says (62:1), which is the silence of waiting. Or “Be not silent, O God of my praise,” which is the silence of the God we wait for (109:1). “And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal,” says the book of Revelation, “there was silence in heaven” (8: I) – the silence of creation itself coming to an end and of a new creation about to begin. But the silence that has always most haunted me is the silence of Jesus before Pilate. Pilate asks his famous question, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), and Jesus answers him with a silence that is overwhelming in its eloquence. In case there should be any question as to what that silence meant, on another occasion Jesus put it into words for his disciple Thomas. “I,” he said, “I am the truth” (14:6).

Jesus did not say that religion was the truth, or that his own teachings were the truth, or that what people taught about him was the truth, or that the Bible was the truth, or the church, or any system of ethics or theological doctrine. There are individual truths in all of them, we hope and believe, but individual truths were not what Pilate was after, or what you and I are after either, unless I miss my guess. Truths about this or that are a dime a dozen, including religious truths. THE truth is what Pilate is after: the truth about who we are and who God is if there is a God, the truth about life, the truth about death, the truth about truth itself. That is the truth we are all of us after. It is a truth that can never be put into words because no words can contain it. It is a truth that can never be caught in any doctrine or creed including our own because it will never stay still long enough but is always moving and shifting like air. It is a truth that is always beckoning us in different ways and coming at us from different directions. And I think that is precisely why whenever Jesus tries to put that ultimate and inexpressible truth into words (instead of into silence as he did with Pilate), the form of words he uses is a form that itself moves and shifts and beckons us in different ways and comes at us from different directions. That is to say he tells stories.” (Weekly Sermon Illustration: The Truth. Submitted by Frederick Buechner, November 2015)

What is truth? This is the ultimate slippery slope. Truth is elusive, but so many people claim to know the truth. When I was on internship, my internship supervisor did not like silence in church. He believed silence was “distracting.” “If it is too silent, people will be thinking about their grocery list or “to do” list, and not thinking about Jesus”, he would tell me. I love the man, but I disagree. I think there is not enough silence in our worship experience. Silence can be profound, and it can be uncomfortable. When Jesus stood before Pilate and said nothing, I think Pilate was deep in thought, and deeper in pain. Jesus’ silence meant he accepted whatever was to come next. Jesus knew the path, remained silent about the truth, because he, Jesus was the truth.

We need more silence in our lives so we can ponder our response to some deep questions and to deeper requests. When Jesus says “Follow me!”, we need some silence to pray about our response. And when we come to the answer, we dare not remain silent, nor stay off the path. In silence we ponder our relationship with G*d, but in response to the call we say “Thanks be to G*d”.

Pastor Dave