Scripture Reading: John 18: 28a, 33-40; 19: 1-9 (NRSV)

Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate's headquarters. Pilate entered the headquarters, summoned Jesus, and asked him,
Pilate: "Are you the King of the Jews?"
Jesus: "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
Pilate: "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"
Jesus: "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."
Pilate: "So you are a king?"
Jesus: "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: "What is truth?"

After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them,
Pilate: "I find no case against him. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"
Crowd: "Not this man, but Barabbas!"

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They kept coming up to him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and striking him on the face. Pilate went out again and said to the crowd,
   Pilate: "Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him."

So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.
Pilate: "Here is the man!"

When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted,
Crowd: "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
Pilate: "Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him."
Crowd: "We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”

Now when Pilate heard this he was more afraid then ever. He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus,
Pilate: “Where do you come from?

But Jesus gave him no answer.
Truth -- truth that is timeless, extending from age to age, unchangeable, fixed. I’d be hard pressed to list such truths. Could “Love is Love” (from the photo of picketers Wei posted) be one such truth?



I am a fool to attempt to preach on “What is Truth?” this morning. But never mind, I am among friends, I can be foolish.

Pontius Pilate was the Governor of the Roman province Judea. In the scene we just read, we find him in a politically difficult position, caught between a rock and a hard place. Pressure from the Roman officials to keep law and order, and on the other side, the Jewish leaders. John’s account of this scene is a classic illustration of a person caught in the middle. Mark expressed this sentiment too at the last Safehaven talk, he asked, “Some say this is what the Bible means, others say that is what the Bible means, whom am I to trust to tell the truth?”

Marks’ frustration is also Pilate’s, who finds himself in the frustrating position of not getting a straight answer, a yes or no answer, from Jesus.  To Pilate’s question, “Are you the King of the Jews?”, Jesus asks Pilate if this is his question or some other person’s question.  When Pilate asks, “What have you done?” Jesus gives a difficult to comprehend answer about his kingdom being not of this world. So Pilate continues with a variation on the same question, “So you are a king, then?”  When the other gospel writers recorded this question, the response they wrote was, “So you say.”  How frustrated Pilate must have been!

The term king was a volatile word in those days.  For the Israelites it meant a military leader, a deliverer. For the Romans it meant a competitor to the emperor, one who would usurp the power of Caesar. But Jesus (according to John) saw himself as the deliverer and liberator, not by power of force or might, but by the power of truth.  He defined his purpose (according to John) as one who would testify to the truth.  Pilate, probably schooled to believe that kings ruled by might not truth, looked at this young Jewish “king” in chains before him, and was moved to ask, “What is truth?”

Pilate may be the best known person to have asked this now famous question, “What is truth?” but there are times when each one of us asks that very same question. Asking the question is the start of admitting that we do not know.  If anyone did not know, and was not at peace at not knowing, it was Pilate. Pilate came in and went out. He stood up. He sat down.  He asked questions and had questions asked of him. It was so hand-wringing for him that eventually he thought that if he washed his hands maybe he would feel better, relieved and rid of responsibility.

Actually, we all know that Pilate’s conclusion was that Jesus was innocent. Yet even though he was Governor, he doesn’t use his authority to act on his own evidence and intuition. Luke reports that Pilate even sent Jesus to Herod. And Herod sent him back presumably because he also found no case against him. So we have two male witnesses testifying to Jesus’ innocence!  But the religious leaders were still unwilling to let Jesus go (according to John). So Pilate in his concern for crowd control and to avoid any trouble, tries one more line – as was his custom each Passover to release a prisoner – he offers the crowd to choose between Jesus Barabbas or Jesus the Messiah, Barabbas being a known bandit and thug. The Jewish leaders chose the bandit who might well rob & kill again, over one whom they felt threatened their authority and high positions.

The last lifeline Pilate extends is to have Jesus beaten and mocked in front of the religious leaders. Perhaps, he thought, if he humiliated Jesus, the leaders would be satisfied. But their anger and fear of Jesus had become so intense that they would not be satisfied with anything less than Jesus’ death.

Exasperated, Pilate went back to Jesus and asked, “Where do you come from?” In essence asking, “Where in the world do you come from, who in the world are you? What have you done to make these people so angry?” Jesus remains silent. Pilate remains frustrated.
So we have it. Pilate, in the presence of Jesus, became a questioning seeker asking question after question, but frustratingly for him, to no resolution. To the end he was uneasy and anxious. His last question to the Jewish leaders clearly shows his utter exasperation, “Do you want me to crucify your king?” and giving up, he finally says, “ Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it.”

The common preaching message from these verses that you will hear from common pulpits is how much we are like Pilate. So common, you’ve probably heard it before, but it may be useful to hear it again, so let me get it out of the way. 

I am like Pilate in the way I am unwilling to be honest with myself, I have a hard time taking in the hard truth of Jesus. It is a hard truth for me because I, like Pilate, am a comfortable person. The culture I share with Pilate -- the culture of the Roman, American and Singapore empires is a culture which values success, power, status, achievement. I don’t understand that a fully realized human life must also face and accept the opposite side of those values. I cannot accept failure, weakness, humility, and service as being worth anything at all. I want to be eternally youthful, successful, prosperous, and I will do anything – even claim these, kings in my life and crucify afresh, Jesus, who confronts me with difficult, disturbing questions rather than answers, questions that require me to struggle and agonise.  As Clarence said two weeks ago, if you want an easy faith, Christianity is not it. You are barking up the wrong tree. Too many of us would rather continue going in the wrong direction than face up to who we are and who God wants us to be.  Like Pilate, we look in the face of some crowd and ask, “What do you want me to do?”  What we need to do is look into the face of God and ask God, “What do YOU want me to do?”  This is the seeker’s true question. Pilate may not have asked God this question. But you can.

The second preaching message is less commonly heard from pulpits, if ever. But you’re not in a common church and I am feeling foolish enough to tackle this, so let me be honest and reveal my own struggle with John. When I read John’s gospel, I am moved to ask really what is the truth of it all?  Especially when so much of John’s words are used by conservative Christians to place my religion on a lofty pedestal, high above and far superior to all other religions.

I listen to what John tells me in Ch17:17 “Thy Word is Truth.” What a gift I have as a believer! The rest of humanity gropes in the dark for answers about the most basic questions of life, but I have them all, bound up in one book -- the Bible. I can know where mankind came from, how I got to be where I am today, and what the future holds for me. I can discover principles and laws that will tell me what is right and what is wrong. If I want to know who God is, what He is like, and what He wants from me, I can find that out in the Bible. The history of God and man is founded in the Bible stories -- they really happened, and they are recorded for me right here in the Bible! What more or where else need I go to search for truth? 

Pilate, the cynic, probably had no idea of the answer to his own question, neither did he bother to stay for an answer really. He most likely wasn’t sure there is such a thing as truth, and so it is with many of us today.  There are many truths in the Bible, but if I am honest, I must admit there are also many things that do not ring true for me today.

We often hear wild new theories about Jesus, about the Bible.  Every month or so some publisher or movie producer comes up with a blockbuster. Every month or two some scholar comes up with a new book full of new speculations about Jesus the hippie revolutionary, the Jewish peasant or the New Age guru. Some animal activists even claim Jesus was a vegetarian!  So what do we do?  We could say, what a waste of time, we know all what we need to know and there is no more that needs to be said.  We know the truth, these questioning seekers have got it all wrong, there’s nothing new to learn. Let’s stop asking these silly questions and get on with life. Yes, that’s good enough for some, is it good enough for you? 

Just because tradition tells me that the Bible says or means one thing, does not excuse me from studying it afresh in the light of the best knowledge I have about its world, its context, to see whether it is indeed so true in those times; and the best knowledge I have about my world today, and to see whether it is still indeed so. It is not a case of “I believe the Bible so there is nothing new or more to learn” but rather “I believe the Bible so I better discover all the things in it to which I may have been blind to” or “made blind by my close-mindedness, dogmatism or stubborness”. 

I must not be afraid of truth. What is the truth of Jesus? I want to exhaust all the truth he has to teach, I want to go deeper than I have before, into the message of Jesus, what manner of man he was, and then come back to state again, or maybe even re-state the gospel message.  When I recited the great creeds in my youth, their meaning comes no where close to the deeper, more challenging hold they have on me today.  But this takes time.  Trying to discover the truth of the Bible requires time, effort and study – like so below --

Look at the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in this chart.

Matthew, Mark and Luke are known as “the synoptics” because they are similar enough to be seen together. They are similar because they have similar sources. Matthew and Luke both used Mark in their writings. Mark was believed to be the first written, around 60-70 years after the death of Jesus.

It is believed that none of the writings are eyewitness accounts. John’s however, was a very different gospel. Let’s look at John’s gospel and the story of Pilate.

Matt
27:11 Now Jesus stood before the governor; and the governor asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus said, "You say so."
27:12 But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he did not answer.
27:13 Then Pilate said to him, "Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?"
27:14 But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.

Mark
15:1 As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.
15:2 Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" He answered him, "You say so."
15:3 Then the chief priests accused him of many things.
15:4 Pilate asked him again, "Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you."
15:5 But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.

Luke
23:1 Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus  before Pilate.
23:2 They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king."
23:3 Then Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" He answered, "You say so."
23:4 Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, "I find no basis for an accusation against this man."
23:5 But they were insistent and said, "He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place."

John
18:28  Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate's headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover.  18:29  So Pilate went out to them and said, "What accusation do you bring against this man?"  18:30  They answered, "If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you."  18:31  Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and judge him according to your law." The Jews replied, "We are not permitted to put anyone to death."  18:32  (This was to fulfill what Jesus had said when he indicated the kind of death he was to die.)  18:33  Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"  18:34  Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"  18:35  Pilate 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?"  18:36  Jesus 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."  18:37  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."  18:38  Pilate asked him, "What is truth?" After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again and told them, "I find no case against him.  18:39  But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?"  18:40  They shouted in reply, "Not this man, but Barabbas!" Now Barabbas was a bandit.  19:1  Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.  19:2  And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe.  19:3  They kept coming up to him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" and striking him on the face.  19:4  Pilate went out again and said to them, "Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him."  19:5  So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, "Here is the man!"  19:6  When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, "Crucify him! Crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him."  19:7  The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God."  19:8  Now when Pilate heard this, he was more afraid than ever.  19:9  He entered his headquarters again and asked Jesus, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave him no answer.  19:10  Pilate therefore said to him, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?"  19:11  Jesus answered him, "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above; therefore the one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin."  19:12  From then on Pilate tried to release him, but the Jews cried out, "If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor."  19:13  When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha.  19:14  Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. He said to the Jews, "Here is your King!"  19:15  They cried out, "Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but the emperor."  19:16  Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

You will see that the same event comes across very differently in John. Although written after the earlier reports and close to 100 years after Jesus’ death, John gives an amazingly detailed account of the scene, very drama (as we have earlier read). And if you read further on into the crucifixion scene, a very different picture of it John paints as well. Unlike the accounts in the synoptic gospels where Jesus dies being mocked and in agony, feeling abandoned, John’s Jesus dies when he’s good and ready. His last words are to fulfil the scriptures. When that is done he gives up his spirit. There is no mockery. There is no real agony. There is almost no pain. This is certainly a different scene from the brute historical fact that Jesus would have died a slow and agonising death as he hung on the cross. The historical fact is that crucifixion is a Roman form of execution, a humiliating public execution, reserved for the lower class, bandits, slaves, subversives. If you were a Roman citizen you couldn’t be crucified, no matter what the offence. Jesus was likely viewed as a lower class subversive. 

So how do I understand John’s portrait of Jesus? How much of it is truth and how much of it John’s “weaving of a good story”? For one, I acknowledge first that he must be writing in the realm of gospel, not of history.  In fact this is very obvious the moment you begin to read John’s gospel. He starts immediately on a high lofty spiritual plane, you can’t miss it -- the Logos, the Word – God’s agent in the world, is in the beginning, and with God, and was God. Jesus is this Word. The Word that became flesh. Jesus. God’s only Son. So the next question I must ask is “Why?” Why did he write this way, when the earlier writers, those closer to Jesus’ time, did not? What were his motives? We don’t need to go far to find out because he tells us his motive right at the end of his gospel.

Well, I learn that those first years following Jesus’ death, people were asking “Who is this man Jesus?” And the early preachers would go around telling the amazing story of Jesus.  By John’s generation, they were familiar with the story but were now asking “What kind of man was he? What was the meaning of Jesus?” John’s gospel represents the conclusions the Church had reached concerning Jesus many years after he died. The previous 100 years had seen the destruction of Jerusalem, Christianity had broken loose from Judaism, it move slowly from the lowly status of a Jewish sect to the dignified position of a world religion bidding for acceptance. This called for a restatement of the Christian faith.  John himself deeply moved by his beliefs, was not interested in history, but in theology. He did not set out to compile a life of Jesus, but to interpret him. There is much evidence of this – he uses extensively stories of signs, wonders and miracles to prove Jesus’ divine powers.  There are only a few parables or Jesus sayings in his gospel – but many long discussions on abstract themes about Jesus’ nature and divinity. In the synoptics Jesus is reluctant to claim his messiahship, and even tells his disciples not to speak of his deeds. In John he seems anxious to assert his supernatural status from the start and boldly proclaims his divinity. “I and the Father are One, Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”, the famous “I am” sayings, “I am the light of the world, the bread of life, the way, the truth, the life”. John suppresses stories that describe Jesus’ humanity – Jesus was never tempted, nor was he ever in desperate need, no agonised prayer at Gethsamene, no desperate cry from the cross. The synoptics portray a man, John portrays the Son of God.

So “What is Truth?”

Well it depends. Matthew has an opinion on what truth means to him, Paul his own opinion, John his, and me, mine.  And on top of that we have all kinds of truths. We have historical truth, metaphorical truth, literal truths, poetic truth, …

Look at The Nicene Creed, can you tell me what in it is historical truth?

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father; through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father [and the Son],
who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

It may be amazing to know that only 12 words of the 222 are historical fact -- he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.

I see much of John’s interpretation of Jesus metaphorically, I have to because I know that Jesus is not light (though he helps me see) nor bread (though he satisfies my hunger or yearning, and yes, I believe knowing Jesus is like being at a wedding banquet where the wine never runs out but I don’t believe even Jesus could turn water into wine. I don’t believe that if I have faith I can walk on water as Peter attempted to do, but I believe Jesus stills the storms of my life. Down through the ages, many have trusted the biblical authors’ words, accepted the various interpretations of the scriptures, and found them to be true for themselves in their own lives.  So apart from the universal truths like maybe “Love is Love”, all other truths are true if they stand the test of my own understanding & knowledge of truth in life experiences, in science, in genetics, in anthropology, in history, in all the other fields of study, and, I must feel it in my bones.  (By the way only old people can feel things in their bones ... so don’t be disappointed if you can’t!)  Some tests can be really simple, like, is this truth mean? does it discriminate? does it come from a gospel of love or of hate, of fear or of confidence?

So does this all mean truth is subjective, a case of “This is how I see it”? Perhaps so, but I think its unavoidable. We see that the Bible speaks with many voices including of course, the voice of the Holy Spirit. But all these different voices throughout biblical history, even up till today, some in harmony, some in conflict, do really speak with some common convictions. The major voices do share some primary convictions, here are 3 which scholar Marcus Borg identifies and with whom I totally agree –

1. A deep sense of the reality of the sacred. God is not only real, He is knowable, not only in statements about God but in experience -- as a Mystery beyond any language. Beyond empires, beyond kings, beyond people and religions.
   
2. There is a strong conviction that our lives are made “whole” and “right” by living in conscious relationship with this Mystery who is God. A relationship that existed from the beginning, whether we know it or not, whether we believe it or not. Our job is not simply to become conscious of it, but to become intentional about deepening it. About being faithful to the relationship. In biblical language, we are in a covenant with the sacred.
   
3. These voices are convinced that God is a God of justice and compassion. You will see these traits everywhere in the Bible – He cares about unjust systems, about oppressive regimes, about political and social justice but also about the individual, about his suffering, about her human misery, about the wounded, the marginalized.

I daresay these convictions are the truths at the core of the Bible and a life with God  -- a sacred mystery at the centre of life, with whom we are to be in relationship and who is passionate about the well-being of the whole creation.

This is also the core of the two-fold, very familiar “great commandment” – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”

This is the truth we are called to uphold. It is not complicated but it is challenging.  But as Christians, we have one who shows us it is indeed possible – Jesus. He says, “Do not be afraid”, and he reaches out his hand to us and says, “Follow me”.

So amidst all our seeking, all the many voices, all the many questions, all the many truths, we must listen for the voice that speaks to us in our time. And what we hear matters greatly.  In fact, it makes all the difference.
Amen.