What Is Truth?

 “Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’” (John 18:38)

 Someone chopped off the best verse!  The creators of the Revised Common Lectionary, from which our Sunday scripture readings are taken, chopped off the punch line, if you will.  For some reason they ended the gospel reading at verse 37, a critical oversight in my mind. Listen to it again, “Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth?’”

 I said “critical oversight” because I believe this particular confrontation between Pilate and Jesus places face to face two very different kinds of truth.  Like a street duel in the old west, these two truths are looking each other in the eye, facing each other down: Pilate and Jesus.  Who’s going to blink first?  When the smoke clears who will be left standing?   “What is the real truth?”

As Governor of the Province of Judea for Rome, Pilate was the consummate politician.  Pilate was adept at keeping the peace and playing to the adversarial forces and factions around him. It was just another workday for Pilate when Jesus showed up in his courtroom.  They brought before him a captured and bound man accused of claiming kingship. So Pilate asks, “Are you a king?”

In response Jesus asked, “Do you think I am a king?”  Pilate plays the situation masterfully with sarcasm and skill.  He replies, “How should I know? Am I one of your people?  After all, it was your own people who brought you here to me.” Then, finally getting to the point, he asked, “What have you done?” 

Jesus answered that that his kingdom was not of this world but rather a whole different kind of kingdom, and then he said he came into the world to “testify to the truth.”

Pilate then displays some sportsmanship. Jesus appears to be no real threat. The peace can be kept. There’s no justification for killing him. It’s an easy choice. At the end of this little interview, Pilate rhetorically shrugs and asks, “What is truth?”  He then sent Jesus off to be flogged.

Truth for Pilate was being politically clever and expedient, walking the fence, appeasing the people, keeping his job and saving his own skin. It was all a game to him - a finesse game - a power game - a survival game. The thing Pilate was ultimately concerned about was keeping the fragile peace and keeping his job. That was the only truth that Pilate knew.  That was the truth he lived by every minute of every day of his life.  Everything was seen and measured by that truth. 

 “What is truth?”  Jesus told Pilate that he had come into the world “to testify to the truth.”  Just a few chapters earlier Jesus had said to his disciples, “I am the truth.” 

 “What is truth?”  Pilate had God's Truth standing right in front of him, in his own house, in flesh and blood form, but he was so distracted in being politically expedient that he couldn’t consider the possibility of who he was; blinded by the gamesmanship that he mistook for the truth.

 “What is truth?”   You see, this is the question with which this story confronts each one of us. When you go to work in the morning, or go to school, or go to wherever and whomever you spend the hours of your days, what truth to you take with you?  It just may be that, we too like Pilate, miss, forget or ignore the real Truth when we are under the intense pressure of life situations. We may not see that the incarnate Truth of God in Jesus Christ is standing right in front of us and right beside us.  We may cave in to false truths we mistake for the real thing. 

 In the end Pilate finally caved in and gave Jesus over to the whims of the furious mob.  He did the politically expedient thing; the safe thing; caved into fear – and lost his soul – lost his humanity!  What a tragic, pathetic figure!

But that’s where we and Pilate are often all too similar. When you find yourself in the tangled situations of your everyday life what is the truth you most often opt to life by?   Do you choose what is expedient rather than do what is ultimately right; choose what is safe rather than take a risk for Christ's sake; choose out of gamesmanship rather than out of Godliness; choose out of self-interest rather than make a Christ-like choice?  

“What is truth?”   Is it forgiving when you've been hurt, or fostering a grudge?  Is it apologizing when you are wrong, or hanging onto pride?  Is it building bridges with adversaries or spiting them?  Is it having courage in the face of temptation or caving in?  Is it telling the truth or telling a lie?  Is it doing the just thing or surrendering to fear?  “What is truth?”  What is your truth?

There's a wonderful old fable, one of my favorites, about a little motherless tiger cub who was adopted and raised by a community of goats. The little tiger cub was taught to speak the goats' language, emulate the goats' ways, imitate the goats' habits, eat a goat’s food; live a goat's life. In every way the little tiger cub was taught to believe that he really was a goat and not a tiger at all!

One day down by the river, a full grown adult king tiger came wandering along, and all the goats scattered in every direction out of fear for their lives, except for this one young tiger cub! For reasons he could not explain the little tiger cub didn't run, but he stayed. The king tiger asked the young tiger cub just what he meant by this silly masquerade, but all the young tiger could do was to bleat nervously like a goat and continue to nibble away at the lush grass along the riverbank.

The king tiger then took the little tiger down next to the river by a little pool of clear backwater where he forced the little tiger to look at their two reflections in the water, side by side and then hopefully draw his own proper conclusion to his true identity. But this also failed and the little tiger went back to nibbling on the lush grass. Totally frustrated, the king tiger finally offered the little tiger his very first piece of raw, bloody meat.  At first, the young tiger, as he cautiously smelled and then licked at the meat, recoiled and winced at the strong and unfamiliar taste of it. But, drawn to it he took a little bite, and then another, and another, and as he ate more and more, the raw meat began to WARM HIS BLOOD... and HEAT HIS PASSION... and slowly but surely the TRUTH gradually became clear to him... and he finally knew the truth... and the truth set him free from his goat-hood prison... and LASHING his tail, the young tiger cub for the very first time raised his head high, and the jungle trembled and shook at the sound of his magnificent roar!

“What is truth?”   The truth is that you and I were created to live like tigers, but we settle for living like goats most of the time.  We settle for doing the expedient thing, or the safe thing, or the self-indulgent thing.  We become enslaved, and we don’t even know it.  The Bible calls that slavery sin.

“What is truth?”   The truth is that it will take an authentic King Tiger to reveal our true situation to us and show us who we were created to really be and how we were created to really live. 

“What is truth?”   The truth is it will take an authentic King Tiger to throw us a piece of bloody meat we can sink our teeth into.  So our King Tiger gave his own body broken and his own blood shed so that feasting upon it we might come to know the Truth; feasting upon it find ourselves transformed from goats into tigers; following him we might live like the tigers we were intended to be.

“What is truth?” - None other than Jesus Christ the Tiger who is standing before you today.  Do you even recognize him?  Will you follow him into the world to roar a magnificent roar of God's love?