Sermon
Search
Creekside Church
Sermon of November
26, 2006
"The
Truth Is a Person"
John
18:33-37
|
Rev.
David Bibbee
|
|
|
|
When
I read this passage I find myself wishing Jesus had done a better
job of representing himself. Having just come from an interrogation
by the high priest Caiaphas, Jesus was handed over to Pilate for questioning.
Pilate wasn't thrilled by the prospect. He could have cared less about
a case the Jewish justice system should have handled. He especially
didn't want get involved with religious matters. A man of his stature
had no need of religion. He didn't want preside over Jesus judgment,
but found himself drawn into the center of the storm.
It took Pilate
just one look to see that Jesus was no ruler. Pilate wasn't sure
of who Jesus was, but one thing was clear- he wasn't a king, at
least not the kind of king he had seen before.
Jesus may have
been better off if he had hired Johnny Cochran or F. Lee Bailey
to represent him. Pilate had all the power, not Jesus. Pilate posed
sharp questions. Jesus gave only vague replies. Pilate wanted it
straight-- "Are you the king of the Jews, or not?"
"I'm not the world's kind of king," Jesus replied. "But
you are a king," Pilate asked. "I am a witness to
the truth. It's the reason I was born. Everyone who cares about
the truth recognizes my voice."
Pilate's responded
to Jesus with a question… a question asked centuries before
Pilate that continues to be asked today. Great thinkers from Aristotle
to Einstein have taken a stab at it, and still the question persists…
"What is truth?"
I remember reading
about a man in Kentucky who owned a tenant farm. He was walking
the fields with a tenant and his four-year-old granddaughter. The
old man came from a rigid Pentecostal background, and every time
something came up in the conversation that he didn't agree with,
he said to the little girl, "We don't believe in that, do we?"
Whether it was playing cards, dancing, working on Sunday, or equal
rights, the response was the same. "We don't believe in that,
do we?"
As they came
upon the farm pond they saw that a duck had hatched her eggs and
the fuzzy little ducklings we scurrying on the ground. The little
girl sat in their midst, enchanted by what she saw. Then, is a moment
of self-consciousness she said to her grandfather, "Granddaddy,
do we bweeve in ducks?"
"What is
truth?" There was a time that we thought we knew. We didn't
question what we were told. We were insulated from different worldviews.
Then along came new discoveries that shot holes in our assumptions.
The world became a much smaller place and we discovered that people
from other cultures do not see things exactly the way we do. Suddenly,
our certainties weren't so certain. We discovered that the version
of truth we were taught was just one of many truths.
What is truth?
Today you will likely hear that truth is relative, or truth for
you doesn't have to be truth for me, or truth is evolving and not
fixed, or truth is whatever you want it to be.
Someone said
that for centuries, "there have been politicians, scientists,
theologians, philosophers, and poets to tell us what truth is. The
sound they make is like the sound of empty pails falling down the
cellar stairs."
If you want
a stable job, don't respond to want ads seeking kings or queens.
Becoming royalty sounds exciting-all the pomp and circumstance,
all of the pageantry and power, all the glory of the role. But history
tells us that on the whole, there were many more bad kings than
good ones. And even the good ones seldom ruled longer than four
years because would-be kings fought to depose them.
You get the
feeling from the encounter between Jesus and Pilate that Jesus is
not the one on the hot seat. It was Pilate, not Jesus who was being
interrogated. The only power Pilate recognized what the power given
to him by the state. The power Pilate knew was the kind where kings
called their subjects to die for their causes. He didn't know what
to do with a man whose power was given by God. He didn't know what
to do with a king who served his subjects and was about to die for
them.
Jesus said that
truth was the reason for which he was born. When Pilate asked, "What
is truth?" Jesus didn't respond. He just stood there. He didn't
need to say another word. He just stood there and showed Pilate
that truth isn't an idea clanging like a bucket down the cellar
stairs. He just stood there so that Pilate would know the truth
was a person.
Is Christ your
king? If not, are you willing to get off the throne that belongs
to him? If he is your king, be strong in the strength that lets
you face life's troubles with calm assurance. Be strong because
your king is the image of the invisible God. Be strong in the face
of the world's demands because you answer to a higher authority.
Be strong in the face of darkness because you are a child of the
light. Be strong in the face of death because a home has been prepared
for you in eternity. Be strong in the face of truths that clash
and crash into each other, because truth isn't an idea, it is a
person who said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.
Be strong, because
Jesus is our king!
All of the sermons
that have appeared in text form on our Web Site since August 1996
are available here in the On-Line version. Use the search engine
below to find the sermon you want. You may search by date, sermon
title, or content. The sermons are full-text searchable.
|
