The Unauthorized Homily

By Bill Dunn

A commentary on the Scripture readings from the Sunday Lectionary

(Scripture readings for Sunday, November 26th: Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33-37)

THE KING OF TRUTH

This week is the feast of Christ the King. The gospel reading offers a portion of Jesus’ conversation with Pontius Pilate just before He was sentenced to be crucified.

Pilate was confused because people had referred to Jesus as King of the Jews. Jesus acknowledged that He was indeed a king, but explained, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”

Jesus also said, “You say 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.”

For some strange reason, the gospel reading this week ends right here. It does not include the very next verse, Pilate’s cynical question, “What is truth?”

Pilate was staring Truth itself right in the face, and yet he did not recognize it. The reason is simple: he did not believe true Truth actually existed.

He was like a lot of people today. The notion that there is such a thing as absolute truth has fallen completely out of favor in modern, sophisticated circles. The sacred scripture of secularism, “The Humanist Manifesto,” parts I and II, offers this statement: “We affirm that moral values derive their source from human experience. Ethics is autonomous and situational, needing no theological or ideological sanction.”

Truth is no longer thought to be objective; it is now subjective, nothing more than personal opinion. Everyone is entitled to his opinion, and no opinion is better than any other. If someone insists on clinging to the old way of thinking—that absolute truth really exists—he is scorned as a politically incorrect Neanderthal (and probably a right-wing, Bible-thumping fanatic to boot). If you don’t believe me, stand up in the middle of any class at Harvard or Yale, or during the editors meeting at the New York Times, and declare that certain things are ALWAYS right while other things are ALWAYS wrong. They’ll either laugh you out of the room, or call the Thought Police to drag you out in handcuffs.

Believing that truth is relative and that ethics is situational may be considered open-minded and enlightened nowadays, but it is dead wrong. Someone who understood this quite well, and who didn’t flinch when ridiculed, was Pope John Paul the Great. In 1993, he wrote an encyclical letter, “Veritatis Splendor” (The Splendor of Truth).

The Pope wrote: “No one can escape from the fundamental questions: ‘What must I do? How do I distinguish good from evil?’ The answer is only possible thanks to the splendor of the truth.”

The Pope knew, as did all the great Christian philosophers throughout history, that without a firm and unwavering truth, it is impossible to answer the most basic questions about our existence, our purpose in life, and, most importantly, our eternal destination.

This is why modern thinkers are so often gloomy and cynical. Without the truth, they are unsure of why they are here, what they should be doing, and where they are going. Not only are they gloomy and cynical, but they can be downright deadly, as evidenced by the “new morality” which sees nothing wrong with sucking the brains out of a partially born baby or giving a lethal injection to Grandpa because he’s old and feeble and his medical care costs too much.

In this week’s reading, Jesus said He came into this world to testify to the truth, and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to His voice. On the night He was betrayed He also said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

These verses contain the key to everything. Jesus was not only testifying to the concept of truth, He was telling us that He is Truth itself. When we put our faith in Jesus, all those fundamental questions about our existence are no longer mysteries. We can be sure of why we are here (because God created us in His image), what we should be doing (loving God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves—which rules out, among other things, murdering babies and old folks), and where we are going (eternal life in Heaven).

When we know that Jesus is Truth personified, when we know that our lives are gifts from God and have been given to us for a special purpose, it’s virtually impossible to be gloomy and cynical (not to mention murderous, even in the name of “choice” or “compassion”).

But before we can acknowledge Jesus as the true Truth and put our faith in Him, we must first understand that the concept of absolute truth is real. Unlike what we’ve been taught in recent decades, truth is much more than just personal opinion. It is transcendent, far above mere mortals.

Jesus is the true Truth, and that makes Him the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And that’s why we celebrate this special feast this week.

©2006