The entire 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John is a prayer that Jesus prayed, directed to God the Father, which was, according to John, overheard by the disciples. It is often referred to as the “high-priestly prayer.” We heard the heart of it just now.
In the high-priestly prayer, Jesus asks the Father to “protect [the disciples]... so that they may be one.” He asks for the unity of his followers.
Within his prayer, Jesus tells the Father that he is speaking these things aloud in the world, “so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.” His purpose is joy.
Continuing to ask the Father for protection, Jesus beseeches him to “protect them from the evil one.” He wants to shield his people from the power of darkness.
And Jesus asks that the Father will “sanctify [his followers] in the truth. Your word,” he says, “is truth.” Your word is truth. Your word is truth.
In the next chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus will be confronted by the most important question in the Bible, at least according to the Mullen Interrogative Biblical Scale (MIBS).
Recall that the second most important question on the MIBS is found early in the pages of Genesis, asked by God of Adam while God was walking through the garden in the cool of the day, and God was confused/a-bit-miffed to find that Adam and Eve were hiding from him, and he discovered that they were doing it because they were embarrassed at being naked. His heart beginning to break, God asked Adam, “Who told you that you were naked?” The second most important question in the Bible.
But I digress. For, it is in the 18th chapter of St. John’s Gospel that we find the number one question on the MIBS, coming from the lips of Pontius Pilate as he prepared to hand Jesus over to be killed.
Jesus had just said to Pilate, “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.”
And then “Pilate asked him, ‘What is truth.’” What is truth? What is truth?
Pilate did not know that Jesus had already supplied the answer to this question, while praying, in the previous chapter. Pilate had not read the Bible. Pilate couldn’t have known that an answer to the number one question in all of scripture had already been provided.
Perhaps Pilate thought, as so many people today seem to think, that he had his truth, and you have your truth, and I have my truth, and that each of our truths can be different and yet valid, and that these pronoun-modifiers make something more true, not less true, and that it’s really important to speak your truth, and, in fact, that it’s in the speaking of it that it becomes your truth or my truth, or his truth, etc. But to make this mistake is to confuse honesty with truth.
There is such a thing as an honest mistake: we make them all the time, even about ourselves. It might even be an honest mistake to confuse honesty with truth. But it’s still a mistake - in all honesty.
To be honest, it’s a bit misleading to say that Jesus provided and answer in John 17 to the question we encounter in John 18. Although it is true that Jesus did so.
When Jesus prayed to the Father, “your word is truth,” - (although it is actually far more likely, if you ask me, that what he really said is “thy word is truth”) - in any case, it’s not really a very clear answer to the question, “What is truth,” is it? It’s very hard to know precisely what Jesus means here. Is he talking about the scriptures, which we so often refer to, metaphorically as the word of God? If so, is he talking about the Hebrew scriptures that he and he companions read together, as did the scribes and the Pharisees? Could he possibly be talking about the as-yet-unwritten texts of the New Testament? This seems unlikely. St. John’s Gospel famously begins with the declaration that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And, of course, that Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. Are we meant, then, to understand that when Jesus says, “thy word is truth,” he is talking about himself? Maybe.
Way back in the 8th chapter of St. John’s’ Gospel (which Pontius Pilate had also not read), Jesus declared, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” So, he was connecting his word to the truth even before he started to pray for his disciples. But still, it’s hard to nail down, isn’t it?
It’s’ interesting, if tangential, to reflect for a moment on how wrong Adam and Eve were after they had eaten the fruit from the tree whereof God had commanded them that they should’st not eat - the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. True enough, they realized that they were wearing nothing but their birthday suits. But the conclusion they reach about this new knowledge is all wrong: that they have something to be embarrassed about. This is not true. They have nothing to be embarrassed about at all, having been made in the image and likeness of God. And this was no honest mistake: their embarrassment comes, not really from the insights they gain by eating the fruit, but by believing the serpent, whose sole intent was to corrupt them, that they had something to be embarrassed about. Hence, God’s question: Who told you that you were naked?
Presented with the knowledge that they are nude as a baboon’s bottom, they are distracted from the truth, which would have been easier to hold onto under the shade of the tree of life, that stood in the midst of the garden, the fruit of which was not off limits. But instead, they end up believing something that is quite un-true. So, it turns out you can have knowledge, and still not know the truth.
Pontius Pilate seems to have understood how elusive the truth could be. And so, he just gave up: What is truth? St. John does not report that Pilate threw his hands up in the air, or rolled his eyes, but you just know he did. His question is rhetorical because he has already decided that he does not need to know the answer. This is not an honest mistake, either.
And perhaps it is in understanding Pilate’s failure that we can see how we might encounter the truth. For, Pilate does not even take up the search. And our efforts to get at the truth will probably more often feel like a search than a discovery. This is OK. It’s when you stop searching that you make the wrong decisions and reach the wrong conclusions.
And our search for truth, will entail a meaningful engagement with the Word of God - by which I mean a meaningful engagement with the Incarnate Word in the person of Jesus.
Our search for truth will more often consist of questions than answers. This is OK, too. (It’s partly why the MIBS exists: because the questions are so important!)
If we were to pattern ourselves and our lives on Jesus, as best we can, then we would turn early to prayer when confronting difficult questions. And if we prayed with Jesus, and asked him to pray with us, what would we find?
We would find that Jesus wants us to be one: he prays that we will be united, for he knows that our divisions are our undoing. We know that, too, but we throw our hands up in the air, and roll our eyes, as if there is nothing we can do about it.
We would find that Jesus’ purpose and intent is joy: that his joy should be in us, and that our joy should be complete. Although you would be hard pressed to find too many churches that resound with joy. Why is this?
We would find that Jesus wants to protect us from the powers of darkness. These powers assert themselves all too easily in our world in the forms of gunfire, artificial enmity, racism, endless warfare, addiction, greed, and a bottomless desire for wealth, among other things.
And we would find that Jesus wants us to be sanctified in the truth - he wants us to be be made holy. To be made holy is not the same as being right, or strong, or holier-than-anyone-else.ccTo be made holy is to be be drawn more nearly to the heart of God, and to be led more closely to the pathways of truth, as we search diligently for it.
So, if we were to pray with Jesus, we would find ourselves praying for unity, joy, protection from the dark, and holiness in the truth. What does that look like?
Last week, the New York Times ran a big story on mountaineering, that showed that many of the elite mountain climbers who had been credited with reaching the peaks of the fourteen mountains over 8,000 meters may never have actually reached the highest possible point on the mountain; they may never have reached the top. Some of them came within a few feet of the highest point on the mountain, but never actually ascended those few feet. Some came very close, but found the last bit too hard. Some were uncertain or disoriented in limited visibility and oxygen, and can’t be sure they made it precisely to the correct location. The question that’s now being asked is whether or not the claims to these achievements are “true.”
I have no opinion on the matter. But I appreciated that the story raised the possibility that “it does not always matter if the top is reached. As [one expert climber] pointed out, it is called climbing, not summiting.”*
In our search for the truth, it is useful to know that there is a summit, but that only one person can be found there. The rest of us are climbing. We are not willing to throw our hands up in the air and roll our eyes, and give up. Unity, joy, protection from evil, and the desire for holiness are our guideposts. And we carry lots of questions in our packs.
And Jesus urges us on by his prayer.
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
16 May 2021
*John Branch, “Has Anyone Really Summited the Worlds 14 Highest Mountains?” In the NY Times, 12 May, 2021
