There are few parts of scripture more intriguing and more compelling than John 18:38 … the words are not even those of Jesus … and it is not an answer but a question: “what is truth?”
That famous question from the Roman Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, to a Jewish peasant, Jesus of Nazareth, stares us in the face every year on Good Friday. The fact that it seemingly is left unanswered remains a challenge … to all of us. What, indeed, is truth … of what does it consist? Are there only rival and competing truths – your truth and my truth – but nothing that is universal or eternal? Does the truth matter? Can we ever know that we have found it and are we capable mentally, emotionally and spiritually to cope with its demands?
At his trial (if it can be called that), Jesus doesn’t seem very interested in defining truth. This isn’t the moment for a philosophical debate or an argument about the meaning of words. At any event, he has already addressed this question. In the 14th chapter of St John’s Gospel, when Thomas asks that he might see the Father (meaning God), Jesus says: “I am the way to God: the truth, and the life.” He told his disciples that he came into the world to testify to the truth, and that those who belong to the truth listen to him, but He never gives a philosophical definition of the truth other than to say it embodies light rather than darkness and brings liberation and freedom. Lies are bondage. Know the truth, and it will set you free.
Jesus seems less interested in defining the truth and much more interested in showing us the essence of truth … and what it looks like to live truthfully. He depicts the truth as a living thing (linked to personal honesty and spiritual vision), and to see ourselves as belonging to truth and as bearers of truth. Being human and living in 2022 means, of course, we have multiple truth claims vying for our attention … when they are not being imposed upon us. There is a divide: the truth of the world, the way it is, and the truth of God’s realm — the way God dreams the world to be, the way we believe it can be. Those multiple claims are at the centre of Pilate’s question, ‘What is truth?’ Perhaps he is asking: which truth do you mean? The truth of power, position and pride or some other … that he fears might challenge the privilege and pleasure that marks his own version of the truth.
Jesus doesn’t respond in words to Pilate’s question at that moment. Instead, over the next three days, he reveals the answer with his dying, death, and resurrection. Good Friday reveals a deep truth about the way the world is right now. Not the world that God created and pronounced good … but the world that we have created which is marred by war, terrorism, poverty, malnutrition, addiction and abuse. The world we have made out of fear and greed … out of shame and bitterness … out of our desperate need to boost our self-image or hide our inner wounds. In our desperation and anxiety, we try to make it someone else’s fault; we cast blame and cry out for the blood of someone else, an innocent, someone we don’t know but still dislike, or a politician or media proprietor.
We blame others for destroying the world we inhabit; or conversely, we declare that the suffering are themselves to blame for their own plight. But Good Friday reveals the worst in humankind. Reveals the truth about the hideous things of which men and women are capable when they are afraid or selfish and take the place of God. Good Friday calls for an expression of human shame – that things are not right and we know they are not right, and some response is required of us.
Good Friday also reveals, of course, an even deeper truth about who God is … and how God responds to our predicament. The truth that Jesus shows with his words and works is a profound challenge to the world we have damaged and disfigured. The truth that Jesus shows us is that no matter how benign or beneficial we might think our economic systems and power structures are; they are all fallen … because we are all fallen individually, and together. Our world is infected with injustice – moral, financial, legal and social. Jesus demonstrated with his death the truth about this infectious injustice by becoming a victim of its self-justification and self-righteousness. He shows the almost endless human capacity to find words to excuse injustice and practice cruelty. In every facet of his being, Jesus shows us God’s “NO” to the dominant systems of this world and the malignant forces that undergird them, and God’s “YES” to primacy of love, faith and hope as the foremost forces that will truly define human fulfilment.
These are truths that we can see when we kneel at the foot of the cross, and have eyes to see and ears to hear the revelation that is before us. Pilate is given a chance to see these truths as well. He is the local representative of the dominant system of temporal authority. In this conversation with Jesus he has an opportunity to hear and see and be transformed … and there are elements of the Gospel story that indicate he saw in Jesus something more than a troublemaker. And yet, Pilate can only see the world in terms of earthly rulers and physical force – riches and power – and turns away from the revelation of ultimate and eternal truth who is standing before him. Once the crowd reasserts their commitment to the status quo, loudly affirming that they have no king but Caesar, Pilate finds safety in numbers and it is business as usual. Once Jesus is condemned without evidence of a charge for which He is of course innocent, and is maliciously tortured and mercilessly nailed to a wooden cross … the crowd that was baying for blood, no longer interested in the spectacle, also turns away and go back to their everyday lives. It is bleak, very bleak.
All four Gospel accounts of Good Friday have significant and subtle differences. In John’s version there are no earthquakes, no darkness covering the earth, no temple curtains being torn in two. In John, Jesus simply dies on a cross and is placed in a tomb. The empire doesn’t strike back … so much as it just continues. There is no continuing threat to its authority. People return to their lives of either luxury or labour. The status quo remains the status quo – unabated and unchallenged.
How often do we catch a glimpse of this life-giving, world-altering truth and then resume business as usual? How tempting is it for us to turn away from the things that challenge our existence and chastise our lifestyle? To cover our eyes or ignore this truth because it might be upsetting or oblige a response. The truth is that human beings are capable of horror … and we are constantly at risk of turning away – turning away from the cross of Christ, and turning away from all the crucified people of every generation – and returning to the status quo and the hope of business as usual. It’s so very easy to close our eyes, to change the channel, turn the page, walk away telling ourselves that the reality, the truth, the trauma of the cross doesn’t really have anything to do with us. We are good people – kind, compassionate and caring. “What is truth?” But in hiding from or averting our eyes from that truth, we risk missing an opportunity for transformation that God is always holding out to us to become more Christlike.
The first act in repentance, the first move toward redemption, the first stance of transformation … is simply to not turn away. To not close our eyes to the suffering of others or our own inner anguish … to feel pain over lives cut short or endangered, to feel indignation over the injustice behind tragedy, to feel shame over the way we have blighted this planet, that we have not undone the damage and are not planning to do so because it might involve a personal cost that others might not be prepare to accept – so just in case … we won’t accept the cost either.
The message of Good Friday is that things must be put right in my life and yours; we are not yet at the Easter message which is how they will be put right. But acknowledging, accepting that something is wrong … that’s the invitation being extended to us at this service … to encounter the truth that God’s dream is greater than the world’s nightmare. The truth that God’s “yes” is more profound than the empire’s “no.” It is when we face reality—when we face the truth—when we bear witness to the suffering of Jesus and the suffering of all the crucified people around the world—that is when salvation starts and redemption begins.
It cannot be a coincidence that the first people who see Jesus on Sunday morning are the same ones who refuse to look away from His death on Friday; those who endure the whole bloody execution, who accompany His body to the tomb, and who come again to prepare His lifeless corpse for proper burial; they are the ones who are the first to experience the truth of the resurrection – a young man and a jaded woman. The truth of Jesus’ life. The truth of God’s “yes” and the endless possibilities that it unlocks.
Pilate did not realise he was playing his part perfectly in a dramatic play when he was given the line ‘what is truth?’ The cross reveals the truth. The truth of the pain and suffering that continues to exist in the world, in our nation, in our community and even in our own families, because of the inhuman demands of our unfair systems and unjust structures. Good Friday also reveals the truth that, for those who are willing to join themselves to a community that continues to look on the cross and strives to stand in solidarity with those who are hurting, who are marginalised, who are still being sacrificed – crucified – on the altar of the public interest and the common good, the cross also opens up the way of transformation and salvation. May we be given the strength to never turn away from the cross, and to live more fully into the truth: the way and the life as revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord.