HOW DO YOU KNOW ?
2 Corinthians 3:12-18, Luke 9:28-43
Welcome to the Armstrong family kitchen. Millie Armstrong is making the traditional Armstrong family haggis--it wouldn't be Easter without the haggis, though now in America it's not terribly popular with the grandkids--and that ancient and unmistakable smell seems to create a dull haze in their circa 1962 kitchen. Her face looks flushed, almost the color of the red bloodstain on the wooden cutting board left from chopping up the liver and kidney and suet. She puts the stuffed sheep's stomach into the pot, ready for the long simmer, and then rests a moment on the Victorian love seat in the corner. The back door opens, and Colin and Robert walk in.
Colin, her grandson home for Easter break from Rutgers, just found Jesus. Those were his words when he told his mother, "I found Jesus, Mom." He apparently found him while he had been passed out on an old couch in his dormitory hallway, after a Beta Phi Zeta party, and in a grain alcohol-induced haze, a pretty young girl named Sabrina came and sat down with him, and with her sweet voice talked about Jesus.
Since that time, he has become, in the words of his brother Robert, "a religious fanatic." Robert is older than Colin, and having graduated from Rutgers before him, now works as a paralegal in a non-profit providing legal assistance to the undocumented. He makes extra money teaching Yoga part-time.
They enter the kitchen, wince at the haggis smell. They are talking about homosexuality.
"It is not wrong," says Robert, taking off his coat. "Hi Gramma," he says, shooting a quick glance at Millie. "Look, and even if it were a sin...an abomination, as you say, isn't eating shellfish 'an abomination?' Doesn't it say that in your Bible?"
"A sin is a sin, and the Bible says it's a sin, Bobby." Robert hated being called Bobby, which is what people called him as a kid.
"Well, you eat shellfish, don't you?"
"Yeah, but that's different. Look, you can't get around the fact that the Bible says it's wrong; according to God and God's word, it's wrong."
"God and God's word; listen to you. Who brainwashed you? How do you know that's true? There are so many stupid things in the Bible. How do you know that the Bible is true, instead of the Koran or the Tibetan Book of the Dead? I mean, how presumptuous--to think just because you picked up that book, now you are the fount of all truth."
"You know, I feel sorry for you, Robert."
Millie stares up at them silently from the loveseat. She notices Colin's fist tightening, the blue vein on Robert's neck bulging. They are oblivious to the doorbell sounding down the hallway. Millie slowly rises to answer it.
As she walks down the hallway, Colin's and Robert's voices fade away; the last thing she hears Colin say is something about being saved, when Millie opens the front door. She finds a young man with oily hair and cut up jeans standing in front of her. As she stands in the cold March air, she hears this young man tell her a story, about needing bus fare to get to Philadelphia, how he has two kids there and wants to go home for Easter. There was something vacant in his eyes as he spoke, almost in a monotone, and Millie listened and nodded, looking at him through her thick glasses. "Yes," she said, "I see." She prayed for a moment.
After the man stopped talking, she said, "I don't have any money for you, but why don't you come in for some tea?" She coaxed him into the parlor, where they sat, and talked. And Millie, in the midst of the conversation, as the young man talked and combed his greasy hair over to the side with his fingers, saw a strange light--it wasn't emanating from Main Street outside, but as they sat on the vinyl-covered furniture and looked down at the paisley rug, and just talked, Millie saw light somehow, some strange light emanating from the middle of that parlor, as they could hear the voices of the two boys in the kitchen, still yelling at one another about the truth.
Well, that's a parable for beginning our exploration this morning of this text for today--the transfiguration story. And I wrote this slice of life because I think it's a scene that probably could be unfolding in any of our kitchens at any given time. And maybe we ourselves have been in such a conversation as that. We find ourselves in some innocent enough conversation with someone, talking about the weather, which then drifts over to some other, more dangerous, subject. A subject about which we might begin to think we know...the truth. And so, that's what I'd like to talk about this morning: the truth. How do you know that your truth, your guiding star, is the right one? How did the Magi know that the star that they were following was the right star?
How do we know what is true in this era, which many now calling "the post-modern era," in which one person's truth is as good as another...and there's no criterion to judge one truth as better than the other. They're all basically the same, just pick one. And how do we know the truth in a world where people are killing one another over the truth?
The story that we read and heard this morning, the transfiguration story, is a story about truth. A story about the notion that the truth, in some sense really the Truth with a capital T, was revealed--is revealed--in this person, Jesus of Nazareth. As Christians, the understanding is that in the old covenant, the covenant of Moses, Moses bore witness to this same truth, but it was a truth that was veiled. A secondary experience of the truth, you might say. But on that mountain, in that moment, the disciples experienced--they didn't have to think about it; they didn't have to write a systematic theology about it--they experienced, in front of them, the truth revealed in this person. And I have to say, I have a kind of jealousy for those early witnesses. They had the benefit of that experience--the sound and light show on that mountain--to confirm the veracity of their religious beliefs. But we don't have the benefit of that.
So the question for this morning is, "How do we know?" You know, as we argue sometimes with one another about the truth, how do we know the truth is true? How do we judge what's truth and what's not. And of course, we can't know in the scientific sense, we should say, this kind of truth. If we gain knowledge from this kind of truth of which we speak as Christians, it's a knowledge based on faith, not on a scientific way of knowing the world. But still, I think we need to be able to test it, even if we can't test it scientifically. It's essential for us to "test the spirits, to see if they are of God," as the writer of 1 John exhorts us. So how do we do that?
This sermon is a simple three-pointer. In the time that I have left this morning, I'm going to give three points, or three ideas, that emanate from scripture about that question, "How do we know what is truth?" These are ways we might approach testing that truth that forms the basis for our values. How do you know you've got the truth? Or maybe more Calvinistically correct, a better way of putting it would be to say, "How do you know if the truth has you?"
So here's the first test--the first test for truth: does your truth produce light? John Witherspoon, the great Presbyterian preacher who was also a signer of the Declaration, and I believe he also preached from this very pulpit, wrote what many believe expresses the soul of Calvinism. He wrote, "Truth is in order to goodness, and the great touchstone of truth, it's tendency to produce holiness...."By their fruits, ye shall know them.1" So the first test of truth is this idea that truth isn't just some intellectual concept--it produces something in our lives. "The fruit of the spirit," is the scriptural way of saying that.
Those of you who are scientists in the congregation know that in putting compounds together, in an experiment, such an experiment often creates a chemical reaction that produces energy. And you can verify that, you can test for it. I think that's a good metaphor for this test for truth. Truth, when applied to human consciousness, produces light, produces some tangible effect. And so the question is, "What kind of person does that produce? What kind of action does that produce in a human person?"
The lectionary called for only part of the story that Nolan and I read today. We figured it would be easier to listen to if there were two voices. But I think that the second part of the transfiguration story is as important as the first--the part when Jesus comes down from the mountaintop onto the plain. This truth--the most important thing about it isn't the sound and light show on the mountain, but what happens when Jesus comes down onto the plain and heals a human being. And that is the event that causes all of those around to say, to be amazed at the greatness of God. So test #1--does your truth produce light? Does it make you live bigger, and love wider? Does it produce "fruit"?
Criterion #2 in our testing for truth: does it change you, and does it challenge your own self-justifying ideas about the world? I think that's a hard one.
You know, a few years ago I was doing some study about the search for the historical Jesus, which began, really, in the 19th century. Scholars were looking not just for the Jesus of faith, but the Jesus of history, which presumably is different from the Jesus of faith--in other words, what might Jesus really have been like? Albert Schweitzer, the early 20th century theologian, in critiquing that whole business of trying to find the historical Jesus, basically says, "You know, these 19th century German and French intellectuals found Jesus, and guess what? He looks just like a 19th century European intellectual!" That's been the critique of this whole enterprise ever since, this business of trying to find the historical Jesus: "We have found the historical Jesus, and guess what? He looks just like us!"
That's the danger, in our naming truth "Truth," when it simply justifies our own worldview and agenda, and our own narrow self-righteousness. One of my theological heroes once said that if we were really to know the kind of love and forgiveness that God offers to us in its purest form, it would shatter us. Certainly it would put us back together, as well. But knowing that truth changes us--rocks the foundation of our lives. That's what the disciples experienced on that mountain, and in Jesus of Nazareth--a truth that changed them.
I find it really interesting to consider Peter's response to this revelation of Truth that he and James and John experienced on that mountaintop. What does Peter want to do? Basically he says, "It's great that we're up here, having this direct experience of the Truth...so let's build some tents, some tabernacles, for you, Jesus and Moses and Elijah." Basically he says, let's just try and literally "domesticate" this truth, build a house for it, so that we can have it there, for our own purposes, and we can slice it and dice it, and do whatever we want with it.
That is an enterprise that we should watch out for in our pursuit of truth. Does the truth ossify our minds, and our convictions that we alone are right? Another test for truth--maybe point #2B--would be to ask ourselves, "Does our living out of the truth cause us to talk to those people with whom we disagree? Who have a different notion of what the truth is?"
So, test #2--does our understanding of the truth change us, and go against the grain of self-justification?
Here's the last one, criterion #3--is your truth worth suffering and dying for? In other words: is it precious? Perhaps that's the hardest one of all. The other lesson that we learn on this mountaintop is that Jesus, the embodiment of truth, shows us what this truth is about. It's about dying. The essence of truth is self-emptying. That's the paradox for today. Jesus is talking with Moses and Elijah about his departure, his "Exodus" is the literal Greek, and how he is going to achieve this liberation, this "Exodus," is through his death.
A friend was telling me a few years ago about a corporate seminar that he was doing, where they do these ropes courses. You know, you get up there really high and you learn lessons about yourself? Maybe some of you have done this. But he was saying that one of the things they were doing with the folks on the seminar was to ask them--they were going across a wire--they said forget about the tether, the safety tether, and asked, "What is it that would get you across that wire?" Your kid, in danger? That would get me onto the wire. What would get you onto that wire, to risk yourself? That's a good question to ask.
In my office in Palo Alto, I used to have a quote on my wall. And it's a difficult quote--it challenged me every day, when I read it. It's a quote from an anonymous Catholic worker, and it goes like this: "If they come for the innocent, without crossing over your body, then cursed be your religion, and your life." Wow. That's a tough criterion. But that is a kind of truth that somehow has been revealed to you, and to me, on that mountaintop, by those witnesses who saw it way back then, and who told it to us today. One that says, "If you want to follow me, then you too have to take up a cross." Does your religion inspire you to risk yourself? To go to jail for civil disobedience, on behalf of the truth? To lose your money? Is it precious enough for that?
What's going to get you across the wire? What is truth? It's a question that's going to echo in our ears a few weeks from now, as well. Does your truth produce light? Does it produce change in you and challenge your own self-justifying notions? Is it precious, and worth sacrificing, or even dying for?
Let's test it out. Amen.
1 From the original Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America, adopted in 1789, and reaffirmed by the United Presbyterian Church in the USA in 1958.
February 18, 2007Jeff Vamos
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