Witness To The Truth (Sermon for Reign of Christ Sunday)

Scriptures:           Daniel 7:7-14    Psalm 93    Revelation 1:1-8       John 18:33-38a

Today is Christ the King Sunday, also known as Reign of Christ Sunday.  Reign of Christ Sunday began as a feast within the Roman Catholic Church.  It is a relatively recent addition to the liturgical calendar, having been declared by Pope Pius XI in 1925.  Now, the Roman Catholic church observes many feasts that Protestant churches cheerfully ignore, but Anglican, Lutheran, and many mainline Protestant churches, including our own denomination, adopted it as well.  As the commentary on the back of the bulletin cover notes, Protestant churches may have adopted this feast as a way of protesting – because that’s what we Protestants do, we protest, it’s how we roll – as a way of protesting against totalitarian political ideologies such as fascism, as practiced in Italy, German and Spain, and Communism, as practiced in the Soviet Union and the satellite countries it dominated.   Leaders who ruled under these totalitarian political ideologies demanded allegiance at a much deeper level than voting and paying taxes – they attempted to dominate and control virtually every action and even every thought of their citizens, demanding a level of devotion of which only God is worthy.  And so, in proclaiming Christ as King, Catholic and Protestant churches declared, at the same time, that Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin weren’t.  This was a return to the insights of the early Christians, for whom saying, “Jesus is Lord” also meant that Caesar was not.

On Reign of Christ Sunday, the Gospel depicts Jesus as a king who doesn’t act much like our idea of an earthly king, using his kingly power in unkingly ways.  Two years from now, on Reign of Christ Sunday, we’ll be reading from the account in Matthew’s gospel of Jesus as ruler presiding over the nations, and dividing the people as a shepherd would divide sheep from goats, telling some that whatsoever they had done for the least of Jesus’ sisters and brothers – feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming strangers, caring for the sick, visiting those in prison – they did for Jesus, and telling others that whenever they withheld all these things from Jesus’ sisters and brothers, they withheld them from Jesus.  Next year, on Reign of Christ Sunday, we’ll be reading about the crucified Jesus telling the penitent thief, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

And today, we read part of the account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  The chief priest, Caiaphas by name, and his cronies have brought Jesus before Pilate to have him crucified – and as John tells the story, Pilate doesn’t want to be bothered. But Pilate interrogates Jesus, and as Jesus responds, we can see that they are talking past one another.  Pilate’s questions miss the point of Jesus’ ministry, and as Jesus attempts to explain himself to Pilate, Pilate never gets his arms around what Jesus is saying. It almost sounds like some Biblical version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine.  Pilate is focused on the question of power:  who’s in authority, who’s in charge, who’s in control.  So Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you king of the Jews?”  That is to say, are you leading an insurrection against Caesar, so that you would rule the Jewish people instead of Caesar?  Initially Jesus responds by saying, in essence, “Where did you ever get that idea?  Did you come up with that on your own, or did someone else tell that to you?”   And Pilate tells Jesus, “Am I a Jew? Your own people and religious leaders handed you over to me.” – so Pilate is telling Jesus that others had told him that Jesus was setting himself up as a king.  Jesus responds that his kingdom is not from this world, that he’s not a king in any earthly sense, or else his followers would be fighting to defend him.  So Pilate asks him again, “So you’re a king?”  Jesus responded, “’King’ is your word.  The reason I was born, the reason I came into this world, is to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”  And then Pilate says, “What is truth?” – we don’t necessarily know from the text whether this was a sincere question, or a flip, cynical response to trivialize what Jesus said was his life’s mission.

So Pilate is focused on power, - on who has authority over him, and on his own authority over others, which he is very careful to protect.  Later on in the conversation, Pilate comes across sounding like Cartman in South Park saying, “Respect my authoritah”, as he reminds Jesus that he has life and death power over Jesus – and Jesus responds that he has no real power at all except what was given him from above, basically calling Pilate a puppet.

Pilate is focused on power – but Jesus is focused on truth.  He tells Pilate that the reason for his existence is to testify to the truth.  And Pilate responds, “What is truth?” Again, we can’t necessarily tell from the text whether Pilate is being serious or cynical…for whatever it’s worth,I lean toward reading his words as a flip, cynical, callous response, trivializing what Jesus called his life mission.  In any case, Pilate doesn’t make any effort to learn about what Jesus calls truth.

As we read this passage, we may do well to ask, “Who’s on trial?” and “Who’s in charge?”.  On a formal level, of course, Pilate is in charge, and Jesus is on trial.  But as we let this text sink into us, we see that Pilate is intimidated by the religious authorities who bring Jesus before them, who tell him that if he releases Jesus, he’s no friend of Caesar.  Pilate sees clearly that there’s no just charge against Jesus, but exactly because of his desire to hold onto power, he ultimately finds himself powerless to release Jesus.  Ultimately it turns out to be Pilate whose character is on trial, and in refusing to act on the truth of Jesus’ innocence, in ultimately condemning Jesus to death, he also condemns  his own character.

Jesus said that he was born and came into the world to testify to the truth.  What is the truth to which Jesus came to testify?  He lived out the truth that our deepest source of identity, deeper than race or nationality, is that we are all created in God’s image, with something of God inside each of us.  He did this by demonstrating what it is to live as one made in God’s image and by responding to that of God in everyone around him.  He taught about the reign of God, and showed through his own life what it was like to live under God’s rule.  He demonstrated self-giving and self-emptying in a world of self-serving, cared for the poor and powerless in a world that cares only for the powerful.  In so doing, he showed that earthly ways of hoarding wealth and flaunting power are based on lies. He taught his followers to live by the great commandments of love of God and neighbor, and showed what that love really looks like.  He demonstrated the truth that we are all connected as he formed his followers into a kind of alternative family that transcended ties of blood.  And, yes, through his great love, Jesus overcame the power of sin and death.  He showed that through God’s forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others, we and those around us do not have to remain trapped in our moments of sin and brokenness, but can move on to renewed relationship.   And even though human sin put Jesus on the cross, Jesus continued to demonstrate a love that was stronger than death, that rises from the grave to live and love again.

Jesus came to testify to the truth.  As followers of Jesus, we are also called to be witnesses to the truth that Jesus spoke and lived.

In our day, Pilate’s cynical question, “What is truth?”, has a relevance and urgency greater than Pilate could possibly have imagined.  We live in an age and a culture in which incredible efforts are made to hide the truth.  We as a culture have exchanged truth for what comedian Steven Colbert called “truthiness”, in which we accept something that seems true or feels true even though it may well be a lie.  Alternative facts, fake news, doctored videos, conspiracy theories – to quote the old X Files tagline, “The truth is out there,” but it can be incredibly hard to find.  To quote Romans 1:25,  many in our day have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving created things and beings rather than the Creator.”  Or, to use Jeremiah’s image, “My people have committed two evils:  they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns  that can hold no water.”  Our second and third hymns this morning are obscure – I don’t remember singing them in the nearly eleven years I’ve been here, and I don’t know when they were last sung before I came here -  but I wanted to sing them because they contain some great messages.  I picked our second hymn this morning mostly for its opening line:  “O God, to whom we turn, when weary with illusion.”  Today more than ever, we live in a world of illusion, in a hall of mirrors in which everything is distorted, in a world in which we seemingly can’t even trust the evidence of our own eyes and ears as we see images and footage on news and especially on social media that are created expressly with the intent to deceive, and so we need to return again and again to God, to prayer, to scripture, and especially to Jesus, not only his death on the cross but his life, his ministry, his manner of living, to keep from being seduced by the illusions that surround us.  We must ask over and over again, “What would Jesus do?”, must seek Jesus as our moral and spiritual compass, who points us again and again to true north as those around us are navigating life with broken moral and spiritual compasses pointing only to ways of destruction.

A number of years ago, M Scott Peck wrote a book on the topic of evil called “People of the Lie.”  Peck, who was working from a psychotherapeutic framework but had become a Christian and so was informed by Scripture, defined love in terms of action, specifically, the act of extending oneself for the purpose of nurturing another person’s growth.  By contrast, he defined evil as a radical unwillingness to extend oneself for the benefit of another person, even to the point of destroying others…evil defined as a kind of radical malignant narcissism.   And, drawing on Jesus’ words in John’s gospel, Peck says that evil people hate light, goodness, and love and prefer darkness, in order to avoid seeing their own evil.  Peck defined good as that which is life giving, and evil as that which destroys life.

Jesus came to testify to the truth, to be a witness to the truth, and we are called to follow in his footsteps, to follow in the way of love.  But we cannot testify to the truth, cannot witness to the truth, if we are not coming from a place of truth ourselves. This is where many would-be reformers and activists on the left and on the right go off the rails as they set out to overcome evil in society, as they sally forth to slay dragons, without having first dealt with the dragons that live within them, with their own brokenness, without having faced the shadow side of their own souls – and so the evil within them poisons the good they attempt to bring to the world – as Nietzsche wrote, “Those who fight monsters must beware lest they become monsters.”  And so our third hymn has some great lines:  “We fight for truth? We fight for God? – poor slaves of lies and sin! He who would fight for Thee on earth must first be true within.  Then, God of truth, for whom we long, Thou who wilt hear our prayer, Do Thine own battle in our hearts and slay the falsehood there.”   We cannot use lies in the service of truth, cannot testify to truth if we ourselves are not coming from a place of integrity.

From our third hymn:  “Still smite, still burn, till naught is left but God’s own truth and love. Then, Lord, as morning dew come down, rest on us from above.”  May the Risen Christ reveal God’s truth and light to us, removing the sin, falsehood, and brokenness of our lives, so that we can be witnesses of God’s truth in a world of illusion.   Amen.

 

Discerning Devotion

Scriptures:              Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17    Psalm 127    Hebrews 9:24-28     Mark 12:38-44

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel, The Remains Of The Day – later made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson – is about Stevens, the head butler at Darlington Hall.  The novel is set in England, covering a period beginning in the 1930’s.   Stevens is entirely devoted to serving his employer, Lord Darlington, to the exclusion of any other concerns.  His sense of identity comes from his own dignity and professionalism as a butler; at several points throughout the novel, Stevens mentions various characteristics which for him define a great butler.  A housekeeper, Miss Kenton, would very much like to strike up a relationship with Stevens, even marry him, but Stevens feels that his duties do not allow for a relationship.   During an important conference held at Darlington Hall, Stevens’ father had a severe and ultimately fatal stroke, but Stevens carries out his butler’s duties even as his father lay dying – something on which Stevens prides himself as one of his life’s great triumphs.  Stevens knew that Lord Darlington was involved in world affairs, and felt that by carrying out his duties with utmost dignity and professionalism, he was in his own way doing his small part to shape the world.  Alas, as the novel goes on, we learn that Lord Darlington was a sympathizer and collaborator with the Nazis, a stance which would come to bring disgrace and ruin upon him.  An American eventually comes to own Darlington Hall, and Stevens does what he can to meet his new master’s demands, but in his old age,  he is beginning to make small mistakes and miss minor details.  As he says, “I gave my very best to Lord Darlington, and now I find I don’t have much left to give.”  Stevens had devoted the best years of his life, giving up marriage and children, giving up even saying goodbye to his dying father, to serving a master whose life’s work eventually came to be known as a mistake and a waste, if not an act of treason.  Stevens’ devotion to his master was total, and it was totally misplaced.

Our Gospel reading today lifts up sacrificial giving, while warning against those who would take advantage of the generosity of the faithful.  Jesus has entered Jerusalem, thrown the moneychangers out of the Temple, and has gotten into several controversies with the religious leaders.    In today’s reading he begins by warning his listeners against the teachers of the law, pointing out their love for the privilege that comes with their position – wearing flowing robes, receiving deference from the people, sitting in places of power.  While they make lengthy prayers in public, Jesus says, behind the scenes, they devour widows’ houses.   Not that they behave as literal termites, chewing into the support beams and such, but they encourage widows to give far beyond their means, leading them to lose their modest homes.

And then, as Jesus sits opposite the Temple treasury, along comes a poor widow to prove Jesus’ point.  Scholars tell us that in the Temple were thirteen receptacles, called trumpets because they were narrow at the top and flared wide at the bottom.  These receptacles or trumpets had specific purposes – the annual Temple tax, sin offerings, offerings to pay for turtledoves, wood, incense, and gold vessels used in the Temple, etc.[1]  As various coins were deposited, they would resound off the metal at the bottom, and by the sound, onlookers could tell whether the donation was large or small.  Jesus watched a number of wealthy donors make large donations, as the coins deposited made a satisfying ringing sound.  (This may be part of what Jesus had in the back of his mind when he talked of the hypocrites who sounded a trumpet when they gave alms.)  And then along came a poor widow, whose tiny donation of two lepta made a barely audible “clink-clink”.    Although the widow’s donation really was tiny – according to one source, two lepta would have been enough to buy three grapes[2] – Jesus said that she gave more than all the others with their generous gifts, because they out of their surplus, while the widow gave all she had to live on, trusting that God would provide. 

From our reading it may be hard to tell whether Jesus admired the widow’s faith, or was angered by the system that took advantage of it – and it may well have been both.   It is striking that immediately after Jesus’ words, the disciples begin oohing and aahing at the magnificence of the Temple, and Jesus says that the whole thing would soon be coming down, with not one stone left upon another.  We know from history that Jesus’ words came to pass, as the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 AD.

Of course, we can think of parallels in our own time.  We read of televangelists and megachurch pastors who are constantly soaking their viewers and congregants for love offerings and other special offerings, while living in luxury and opulence.  We may remember reading of Robert Tilton, when in 1991, an investigative report by ABC found 10,000 pounds of prayer requests thrown out without having been read, while the checks that accompanied those donations were carefully cashed.[3]  We may remember the air-conditioned doghouse and gold-plated bathroom fixtures of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker.  More recently, Louisiana televangelist Jesse Duplantis famously told his followers that he needed $54 million to buy a new jet for his ministry.  He has three others, all paid for by his followers, but told his followers his ministry would be impeded without this fourth jet.  These preachers promote a gospel of prosperity, teaching that wealth is a sign of God’s favor – which would have been news to Jesus, who once said that he had no place to lay his head, and to the disciples who left everything behind to follow Jesus - and that Christians should give expecting that God may give more abundantly back to them in return – which sounds a bit like giving to God as an investment.   It’s a perversion of the Gospel, encouraging people to give in order to manipulate God and force God’s hand.  Poor and desperate people – who struggle to eat and maintain a roof over their head, and surely don’t have jets or air-conditioned doghouses - give to these ministries hoping that God will reward their faith, but most times, somehow the promised prosperity never quite reaches them.  And beyond this, we’ve all looked at magnificent church buildings, whether at the Vatican or the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul on the Parkway, and wondered how many poor people could have been fed with the money used to pay for the construction.

But condemning greedy televangelists – and grieving their misguided followers – is like shooting fish in a barrel.  We need to look to our own house.  I’m grateful beyond words that Emanuel Church’s building is beautiful, but modest and manageable, even with our small numbers.  We do have significant repair needs – part of a front wall supported with wooden braces, wiring in need of upgrade, oil tanks in need of replacement – and maybe someday, we can add that chair lift.  And we need faithful tithers and givers – to tithe is to give a percentage of one’s income, traditionally 10% - members and friends willing to give in a disciplined way, willing to give even if it means forgoing some luxuries, willing to give even when it pinches.  And God will bless such giving, as when the widow at Zaraphath gave Elijah a small cake made from the very last bit of flour and oil she had in the house, that she planned to use for a last meal for her and her son before they starved, and we’re told that the flour and oil did not run out for many days.  God is faithful, even when his would-be servants may not be. 

But as we support Emanuel Church, it’s helpful to consider what it is we’re supporting.  When you – when I – give to Emanuel Church, in broad brushstrokes, our offerings support the upkeep, utilities, and insurance on our building, maintenance of our organ, grass cutting for our cemetery, the removal of snow and ice from our sidewalks, and stipends for Risa and myself – and most of my pay goes back into the plate.   These are the material resources that are used by the ministry here.  We also have designated giving  - change jars to support the Bridesburg council of churches food cupboard and the ministries of the Pennsylvania Southeast Conference, and smaller amounts to support our own homeless outreach.   But, to quote the words of the song by Peggy Lee, “Is that all there is?”  When we come to Emanuel Church, are we only coming to see a building, to walk through a cemetery, to hear Risa’s beautiful organ music, to hear my not always beautiful preaching?  “Is that all there is?” 

I’m hoping when we come here, we find more than a building, a cemetery, and organ music, and the memories associated with all of these.  I pray that this is a space where together we meet God and God meets us, where we meet each other and share the love that God has given us.  I pray that this is a place where lives are transformed for the better, indeed where we all find the new life in Jesus Christ.  I pray this is a space where children can grow up surrounded by the love of God and the members of the congregation.  I pray this is a space where we are fed, so that we can go forth from this place to bring God’s love to our neighbors.  I pray this is a place where, surrounded by conflict and injustice, we are inspired to work for peace and justice, as part of the calling to which God calls us.  Our Conference Minister, Rev Worley, from time to time asks churches the haunting question, “If your church closed, would anyone in your neighborhood notice.”    I do think our neighbors would notice if we closed, and perhaps mourn our passing.  Of course, I hope and pray – and work – so that we will be open for many, many years to come.

Our Old Testament story from Ruth shows another way of giving to God.  Ruth was a poor Moabite widow – descended from Israel’s ancient enemies - who pledged herself to her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, saying, “where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people will be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.”  Ruth, an alien to the people of Israel, a stranger, a refugee, literally gave herself as a living offering to Naomi and to Naomi’s God.  (We should remember this story when we read inflammatory news accounts about immigrants and refugees.)  Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz, who took kind notice of her.  And as we read today, they were married, and the Moabite Ruth became an ancestor of King David.  Ruth’s self-giving was richly blessed.  And if our financial resources are limited, we can still give of ourselves, in terms of time and talent, if not in treasure.

Then [Jesus] called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’”  My prayer is that God may multiply our sacrificial giving, the few loaves and fishes we have to offer, to feed the multitudes hungry for a word of hope, hungry for human connection, hungry for an encounter for the divine.  May it be so among us. Amen.

---

[1] https://www.bible-history.com/court-of-women/the_temple_treasury.html

[2] https://christiananswers.net/dictionary/mite.html

[3] ABC news segment:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6-gyIblb8Y