Truth.
“What is truth?” That is the famous cynical question from Pontius Pilate just after Jesus indicates that everyone on the side of truth listens to him.
Truth.
The idea of “the truth” has fascinated me much of my life. What is truth?
My first serious venture into the question of truth fell upon me when I was in fifth grade. I loved playing outdoors in the woods. Most of that time playing was spent having light saber battles in the woods with my brothers, as if we were on the Planet on Endor, fighting the storm troopers of the Republic. If you do not know about Start Wars, then that means nothing to you.
That is OK, the only thing you have to understand is that there were moments, in between the galactic battles, when I would just sit and enjoy the beauty of nature around me. And, while sitting, breathing in the smells of the wind and feeling the breeze on my face, I noticed a remarkable truth: squirrels talk! Well, not exactly talk, as if I had stumbled into a live action Disney cartoon, but squirrels actually communicate.
I watched the squirrels as they hid their treasured acorns away in the trees. Right after doing that, the little creatures would make a very distinct chirp while facing fiercely out into the world…as fierce as a squirrel can be anyway.
But, here is the thing, the sound was the same each time. And you could hear a reply in the distance each time. They were talking!
“What were they talking about?” I wondered.
Though I usually do not go around telling people that squirrels started me on a path of philosophical inquiry; they actually did!
There was this truth…this whole world that was going on out there that I did not understand or know about. I had just discovered it and I yearned to learn more. I yearned to learn the truth.
That sent me on a path where I learned a lot about nature, but that was not enough. I still yearned for more truth.
I ventured into the world of art the day I realized that paintings are more than an extremely time consuming and expensive way to do a photograph.
I learned that there was meaning in the art. There is meaning in the way the people face each other. There is meaning in the colors chosen and the shapes taken. There is meaning in the emotion that is evoked through the colors.
Yes, because of that, there is meaning even in the splattered and smeared colors of modern art that lead those without an artistic eye simply to say, “My granddaughter can do better than that.”
But, as deeply moved as I was with art, and I really was, it did not given me the answers to the truth. Rather, it only did what all good art does; pointed beyond itself to a higher truth and created a yearning to reach for more.
I still yearned to know the truth.
Some of that art pointed me to the world religions. I was fascinated by humanity’s attempts to understand and commune with truths that were higher than we could possibly imagine.
Buddhism especially struck a chord in this Lutheran boy’s heart. The very idea of quieting the mind, to simply become one with reality…one with God, if there is a God, one with the source of all compassion was so appealing to me. The truth seemed so close to my grasp that I could virtually taste it.
There was the day that I mixed my Buddhist meditation with my love of nature, just knowing in my heart that I would finally become one with the truth.
The only thing I have to say about that experience is that one should search for the truth in a place with fewer misquotes. I became one with nature and reality alright. I was a big hunk of immovable, juicy steak in a world of mosquitoes who were convinced that they had found the meaning to all life.
Needless to say, I still yearned to grasp the truth.
There is a reason for all of this self-referential story-telling, of course. It is about the truth, and where that search led me. It is about where the search leads you.
There were other forays into truth of course, which included learning a deep respect for science and understanding the depths of human psychology. Though I am happy that I wandered through all of these truths in life, I find great value in all of them, I never found the truth.
At least, not until I discovered what was in plain sight my whole Christian life. Unfortunately, like an idiot, I had not seen it; just like the time a beautiful classmate came up to me and said, “There’s this boy that I really, really like, that I talk to every day, that I am talking to even now that I really want to date,” I never saw it.
Maybe, I never saw it because, like the truth of the girl who yearned for me, The Truth…in capital letters…is not about a philosophy or a feeling or a law of nature or law of the universe that can be grasped, held, and fully understood. The truth is more about a relationship.
You will understand what I mean when I tell you the words that blew me away one Sunday morning.
That is right, my epiphany concerning the truth came to me during a boring church service. There truly was nothing great about this service. The hymns were all those unfamiliar ones where the notes reach higher than the seats of the angels. The pastor’s monotone voice was simply captivating…I mean…you really have to practice hard to be that uninteresting. It is an art I tell you.
But, despite all of that, I still heard these few words and they rocked my world right there in the pew. Here they are:
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”
My breath was taken away. For all of these years I had searched for the truth as if it were something that I could grasp and understand and hold and own even. But, I realized in that moment that the truth is not something, it is someone.
Jesus is the truth. If you want to understand God...if you want to understand the heart of all eternity...you need look no further than Jesus.
Wow.
We always joked in Sunday School that the correct answer is always Jesus, but I never realized that the answer actually is Jesus. You want to know about the truth? Look at Jesus!
Naturally, my yearning turned to wanting to know everything I could about Jesus. And this is where the John 16:12-15 comes in.
You thought I would never get to that did you?
Obviously, we cannot see Jesus today. He is gone, ascended to God the Father.
That would seem to be a problem, to find out that the truth used to be right here on the first floor, but oh, “Just before you got here he ascended up to the 118th floor. And, just so you are aware, the elevator is broken.”
Ahhh!
We almost had the truth! He could have been right in our hands!
It is like a season finale cliffhanger, only having to do with actual, important, eternal things.
But, all is not lost. The spirit of truth…the Spirit of Jesus...the Spirit of God...has been left behind. The Spirit is here. The Spirit will lead us just as Jesus would have led us. The Spirit will love us just as Jesus would have loved us. The Spirit will do all of these things, because the Spirit is one with Jesus.
It is the Spirit that creates a yearning in us to search the scriptures to learn more about Jesus. And, when we do, we will see what The Truth cares about and who The Truth cares about.
The Spirit will open our closed eyes to our neighbors. The Spirit will fill us with a forgiving love that is almost impossible to grasp.
The Spirit is here.
Jesus is here.
God the Father is here.
The truth is here, right now, among us.
I have to admit, I do not have a complete grasp of The Truth. I do not understand Jesus fully. But, that is no big deal, because just like I do not understand my wife fully, I still have a relationship that is important and life changing.
Now that I know who the truth is, I know that the truth has a firm grasp on me. That gives me a yearning to know the truth more and more.
I pray today that the Spirit fills you with that same yearning, because I want to do this exploration of The Truth...this relationship with Jesus...together.
Jesus would have wanted it that way.
No, let me rephrase that, Jesus wants it that way.
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