March 21, 2008

by The Rev. Constance Jones

John, chapters 18 and 19

Pilate says to Jesus, “What is truth?”

Well. Have you taken Philosophy 101?
Wandered into a discussion of postmodern deconstructionism?
“What is truth?” is the $64,000 question.

But Pilate isn’t being wise or precocious here
as Jesus stands before him on trial.
I don’t even think he is being ironic.
I think Pilate is a man who is morally adrift.
A man whose own compass is swinging wildly.
He fears that Jesus will derail his promising political future.
He is afraid of the crowd and the leaders of the Jewish sanhedrin
He’s been warned by his wife, who’s dreamed about Jesus.
I think he’s shaken by Jesus’ magnetism and his calm while maybe even drawn to it.
Certainly he finds Jesus’ unwillingness
to conduct this contest according to Pilate’s rules profoundly threatening.
The situation is volatile and dangerous.
Where is truth in this situation? What yardstick can Pilate use to measure it?
The world is out of kilter, and he knows it.

There is a prayer at the end of today’s liturgy, at the bottom of page 282.
It dates to the middle ages.
We say, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,
we pray you to set your passion, cross, and death
between your judgment and our souls, now and in the hour of our death.”
Then we ask for grace for the living, pardon and rest for the dead,
peace for the church, and everlasting life.
But it is that image of the Cross of Christ
standing between our souls and God’s judgment
that takes my breath away.

I believe I’ve told you at least once before
about my first Holy Cross Day at Virginia Seminary.
A seminarian who was a good craftsman and maybe a structural engineer as well, installed in the chapel an enormous cross.
It stood at the crossing, went up to the vaulting of the chapel,
and stretched wide across the nave.
There was a person-sized opening in it at floor level.
The preacher that day stood in the opening for her sermon.
Then I shivered as I saw that each of us, to receive Communion,
would have to walk through the cross.

I think of standing in the cross of Christ,
and entering a whole new frame of reference,
as if you saw your neighborhood from someone else’s front porch.
To be in the cross changes everything.
While you’re still you, your knowledge of truth shifts completely.

For one thing, from the vantage point of the Cross
every one of us falls short of the glory of God.
We all disappoint both God and ourselves.
Yet at the very same time, we are free to honestly – maybe even publicly –
acknowledge our sins, because we are assured of God’s forgiveness.

The view from the Cross also allows us to see
that while money and violence appear to rule the world,
in the long run they come up as empty-handed as Pilate before Christ.
Their power to coerce evaporates, and before the throne of judgment,
they have no defense –
like Pilate, the judge who stands before the judgment of God.

In our lifetime we still live in this world,
where we are subject to pain and disappointment and confusion.
But to be in Christ allows us to be transparently honest, to speak the truth,
and to offer no answer at all to the Pilates that surround us
with their anxiety and their need to dominate.
Knowing that God meets us in every present moment,
we need construct no defenses for the future.

To stand inside the Cross may be terrifying
but it is exhilarating.
To stand absolutely in the gaze of the Father (to use a phrase of Rowan Williams¹)
is to experience a transcendent joy that transforms everything.
All we see of the world, then, we see by the eyes of God.

In a little autobiography I found on the Grace Church used book table,²
Don Miller tells a story from his student days at Reed College.
In a culture that nurtured anarchists, self-absorbed geniuses, and libertines,
Miller found himself converted to Christianity.
He and a small band of Christian friends felt like aliens and outcasts
in this sophisticated and worldly college.

Reed held a festival weekend each year
when there was so much, um, partying going on
that the college actually brought in special security and medical teams
to protect the students against hurting themselves.
In this context, Don and his friends hatched an idea.
In the middle of campus they’d build an elaborate booth,
with the words “Confession Booth”outside stenciled on it.
They’d dress like monks, and open for business.

But there was a twist.
Students who entered received a confession from the would-be monk.
Don and his friends apologized for the prodigious misdeeds of confessing Christians. They apologized for the Crusades,
for crimes against indigenous peoples because of imperialism,
for televangelists,
and also for their own sins – their failure to love,
their judgmentalism,
and for spending money on luxuries while poor people went hungry.

As you can imagine, they caused quite a stir.
Their willingness to be vulnerable, to speak the truth,
to turn the tables and offer no defense except a witness to God’s love,
was a little bit like hanging right out there on the Cross.
It changed their own view of everything in the world,
and it changed other people too.

This transformational shift in perspective can happen in an instant.
You may have a dream.
You may look at something the world believes is totally ugly
and see the beauty in it,
or a person the world discards and see them as the beloved of God.
You might walk into a terrifying situation, and have no fear.
You may confess a great wrong you did many years ago,
and discover you are already forgiven.
You might enter into a very dark place and actually open your eyes,
only to find there is a path there, and a Presence.
You might pray with a dry and parched voice,
and be drawn lavishly into the heart of God.

One of the “anthems” in this Good Friday service says,
By virtue of your cross, joy has come to the whole world.
What an apparent contradiction!
Joy comes out of execution!
To live in Christ means, praise God,
that in the midst of the sorrow and violence
and anxiety of this world – Pilate’s world –
which might flog us and beat us unmercifully,
as Jesus was beaten before he was crucified –
there is an imperishable inner reality
which is resurrection and joy and eternal life.

O God, now and at the hour of our death, we pray,
place the Cross of your blessed son between us and your judgment,
and bring us to that joy and eternal life you promise in him. Amen.

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