November 23, 1997
Psalm 132:1-12
John 18:33-37

". . . What is truth?"

Hardly a heartwarming Thanksgiving text! But this is what the lectionary has dished up for this Sunday, so here we go with a reading that ends with this huge question, "What is truth?"

It was a gutsy question to ask Jesus. Even if Pilate was only playing a cat-and-mouse game with his prisoner, it was a bold question to ask, because he just might have received an answer. And the kind of answer Jesus gives might change your life.

Most of us spend a lot of time, from what I can tell, not really interested in the truth of things. It takes too much energy. I would rather avoid the truth, or have the truth drop by on occasion. But, as a roommate, the truth would be unbearable. It can be so glaring, so unflattering. It can be immensely worrisome. The truth about environmental issues, for example. Which one? Take your pick. The greenhouse effect; deforestation; air and water pollution. I want to know about them, but I would rather they didn't intrude upon my day-to-day existence, determining what I eat, how often I drive my car, or how much water I use. My life is complicated enough, thank you.

Truth is easier managed when covered.

As I look around in our popular culture, I notice a lot of people working very hard to keep the truth of who they are managed and covered. It is as if we have holes that we have to hide or else people will see through us. We must, after all, keep up appearances.

One of my gaping holes is computer technology. To my prehistoric mind, computers are another reality altogether. I still marvel at lesser technological advances. For example, I can walk into Safeway and the doors open automatically. Amazing! Telephones are a daily miracle. I get goosebumps knowing I can speak to someone in Indonesia and hear them as if they were standing beside me. Remarkable! But in a world run on hard drives, it is assumed that a common pedestrian of the 1990s speaks the language of RAM, megabites and gigabites. I wouldn't know one if it bit me.

Given my deficiency in computer know-how, my brother exercises enormous patience. All my life he has supplied me with hand-me-down clothes; now my brother is supplying Janet and me with computers and modems and mice. From time to time he will come bounding into our home, bearing glad tidings of nifty hand-me-down computer stuff. He will take the time to set everything up, and in the process will ask me a question that sounds something like, "Dan, does your splean have a two-pronged splice connected to your hard drive?" I hope that if I pause long enough, he will look a little further and discover the answer himself. I look as if I am trying to remember the page in the computer handbook that would tell me about slicing a two-pronged splean to the hard drive; and right as I am about to say, "I don't know," he says first, "Yup, here it is."

You wouldn't know from looking at me that I am a technological drop-out. I seem capable. I can pump my own gas. My shoes match. I pay my bills, usually on time. Sometimes I even believe I am what I seem to be. So I am often shocked when confronted with another basic skill I don't have, or a basic fact I don't know.

I wonder if we are all this way, if we are all full of holes that we cover with a silent smile, hoping the teacher will call on someone else. I wonder how many other apparently well-dressed men are walking around with electrical tape along the hems of their pants because they never learned to sew or can't get organized enough to get to the tailor.

We're like Hollywood sets, seeming to be all fresh paint and sturdy walls-but only because we work mightily to keep the cameras away from the wobbly girders holding us together. When we become too caught by the exterior facade, we mistake the glitter for the substance. The Scots long ago came up with a word for the magical appearance of beauty where none really exists: glamor. Excessive hole covering produces glamor, and we are a glamorous society.

Sometimes, we do such a wonderful job of covering all of our holes, we successfully shut out the light of Christ. We are so much in control of our appearance, so buttoned up and boxed in, all hints of the divine get pinched off.

Spiritually, the trick is to see past the glamour, not to get woven into the web of appearances, not to be blind to the truth that is before us. One member of our congregation once asked, "What does it mean to say the Spirit of Christ is within us?" I answered as faithfully as I could, and then immediately went home and asked my wife, Janet, how she would have responded. She rested her elbows on the table and thought about it for a few seconds, and said, "The Spirit of Christ within me would enable me to see in another person what Christ sees in that person. It is to see with the eyes of God."

So often we see instead with the eyes of judgment, with the eyes of criticism. If another person fumbles and reveals one of their holes, we measure the hole and compare it with our own. We wonder how we rate in comparison, or we feel proud that we used to have that failing, but now we don't. I suspect that part of seeing with the eyes of God is to release us from being so judgmental. Even as we come to terms with our own failings and inadequacies, our efforts to keep those from others does little to prevent them from seeing us; but it does a lot to obscure our ability to see the truth of who they are. The more we hide, the less we see. Christ saw clearly because he hid nothing.

But I don't want to say that to see another with the eyes of God is reduced to acceptance. The tendency is strong in our culture that if we are not racist or ageist or sexist or discriminatory in any way then we simply accept everybody as they are. I'm OK, you're OK seems to be the prevailing philosophy of our day.

There was a news report recently about the Pope's address to the World Youth Conference. The interviewer spoke to a Catholic youth from the U.S. who attended the gathering and asked what he thought of the Pope's address. The youth stated frankly, "He's entitled to his own opinion."

In our day, everything is relative. You are entitled to your opinion, I to mine. Your culture does something one way, mine another, and anything goes. This is not all bad. Surely we recognize that this is an important and in some ways revolutionary corrective to imperialism, ethnocentrism, racism, and oppression of many forms. At least we now value difference and refrain from condemning something as inferior simply because it is different. I do not mean to slight the importance of freedom and acceptance. However, seeing one with the eyes of Christ is not merely to accept them. God's love is not less than acceptance, but it is more.

To see others with the eyes of Christ is not to see people as just OK, or to believe everybody is entitled to their own opinion, but to see something in them that Christ would love and therefore that we might love. Not something that we might adore or that might delight us, but something that we might love because we see and appreciate that there is something about that person that reveals a shimmering of God.

This is, no doubt, an immensely difficult practice. It is our life practice. It is the practice of taking the log out of our own eye. If we can't see out of the windshield it's because the windshield is dirty, not because the other person is blurry. To take the layers off our own covered holes allows us to see the wonder of others. Christ was not just human, but divine, because he could see what is divine in others.

The holes in our lives. Let them be. They are part of the truth of who we are but do not comprise the fullness of who we are. The Spirit of Christ within us gives us the capacity to see others as Christ would see that person, that somewhere in the complexity of their being, there is beauty and wonder and the light of God. This is true of others. This is true of you.

Since Colleen was born, Janet and I have witnessed this beauty many times. People, even people who rarely smile at us, approach Colleen with utter joy on their face. They radiate with open-hearted love and, in the presence of this innocent baby, momentarily drop all attempts to keep their holes covered. They will oooh and aaah and open their eyes wide and make noises with their mouth, or perhaps they will simply beam. It is not their most glamorous moment, but it is beautiful to watch; for it is a beauty that arises spontaneously. A newborn child is not only beautiful, it brings out what is beautiful in us.

Perhaps this is also how God sees us-with a radiant face beaming with spontaneous joy. Perhaps God sees us as wholly beautiful.

What is truth, Pilate? The poet wrote, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." (Keats)

Perhaps this is, after all, a heartwarming truth we can be grateful for this Thanksgiving season.

Let us give thanks for the promise that we too might see as Christ sees, and be seen as Christ sees us. Amen.