Preserving Truth

Preserving Truth (October 2, 2005)

The Great Ends of the Church - Part 4

“You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” John 18:37

In 1957 an African American woman won the women’s tennis singles title at Wimbledon and then came here to Forest Hills, to the stadium on Dartmouth street, and won the U.S. Open. Her name was Althea Gibson and in the public’s mind she immediately joined a select group of black athletes here in New York such as Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Willie Mays of the N.Y. Giants, and Sweet Water Clifton of the New York Knicks. Althea Gibson was raised in South Carolina in the days of segregation, and now here in Forest Hills she broke revolutionary new ground in a sport which had been lily white and upper crust. People knew immediately that Althea Gibson was “the real McCoy”.

Which was very appropriate because in Greek “Althea” means truth.

Aristotle was the devoted student of Plato. Aristotle once said, “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is ‘aletheia’ truth.”

We come today to the fourth of the Great Ends of the Church: the preservation of the truth. We have already considered the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind, the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God, and, last week, the maintenance of divine worship. These great Ends, we have said, are like the rudder of the ship. They keep us clear on what we are about. They help us set priorities. They keep the church from dissolving into a little club. They also keep us from being too focused on ourselves. If people remembered the Great Ends there would be less petty rivalries in churches, less silly hurt feelings, and less rancor over things that don’t really matter.

Earlier Will Schmidt read the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, from the Old Testament. They have come down to us as one of the clearest expressions of truth ever written. They are not “ten suggestions”. In the Old Testament they are the most unambiguous truth presented.

In the New Testament that central truth is Jesus Christ.

When people join the church they are asked if they turn from sin and its ways and if they turn to Jesus Christ, trust him, and endeavor with God’s help to be his disciple by obeying his Word and showing his love. In a nutshell, Jesus Christ is the truth of what we are about. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” he said.

Joseph D. Small has written: “The church is not called to protect a specific body of dogmatic formulations or to impose rigid tests of doctrinal purity. The church is called to preserve faith in the truth to which Christ bore witness, the truth that Christ is, and the Spirit of truth that abides with us. Truth is the shape of our relationship with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit.”

The Presbyterian Church offers great latitude on many things – you can be a Democrat or a Republican, you can be a vegetarian or a McDonalds fanatic, you can be pro-life or pro-choice, you can be a supporter of teaching evolution or you can be a creationist. The Church gives no “directives” on these things. There are some issues, such as our commitment to the environment – God’s creation -- and equal opportunities for minorities and for women where the Church has said that this is where we stand and if you don’t share this commitment you might be happier elsewhere, but overwhelmingly ours is a broad church which is opposed to lock-step thinking.

We are not a cult. No one asks you to leave your mind at the door when you come in. And when people join the church we don’t run through a long litany of 15 things you must believe before breakfast. But we do ask people to reject sin and to turn to Jesus Christ and endeavor with God’s help to obey his Word and show his love.

When Jesus came to Nazareth where he had been brought up he began his ministry by opening the scriptures to the prophet Isaiah: “the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Then he sat down and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” This was how he began his ministry, with the announcement of the truth of his calling. People in his hometown, of course, were astonished.

C. S. Lewis said that Jesus was never regarded simply as a moral teacher. “He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects – Hatred -- Terror – Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”

The Church has through the centuries endeavored to say He was exactly who he said he was – and to move people from “mild approval” to commitment.

Jesus’ calling was to be the suffering servant – also from Isaiah – to bring redemption through his own sacrificial life and death, to show that God is indeed love and has loved us so much he sent his only Son to die for us – and it was Christ’s intention from the beginning to open people’s spiritual eyes to the reality of God’s love and compassion, and thus to move us away from our own self-centeredness to lives of living for others and glorifying God. In Jesus Christ God’s grace had become a present reality, which is what “the acceptable year of the Lord” really means.

One of the great ends of the Church is to “preserve” this truth.

John wrote: “The law came through Moses, but grace and truth through Jesus Christ.” “You will know the truth,” said Jesus, “and the truth will set you free.” He prayed for his followers: “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.” St. Paul wrote that love does not rejoice in the wrong, but rejoices in the truth. He urged the Ephesians to “put on the belt of truth about your waist.” And the apostle John wrote: “Little children, let us love not in word and speech, but in truth and action.”

When Jesus appeared before Pilate he was asked by the governor, “What is truth?” Many have assumed that Pilate was being cynical, what did he really care what an itinerant Jewish preacher thought about truth? Francis Bacon wrote that Pilate was “jesting”. But it is quite possible that Pilate was serious. Perhaps he really wanted to know.
If so, then Pilate was like many people today who are turned off for what passes for truth in our society. The “truth”, so-called, of political promises. The “truth” of a society mad for consumerism. The “truth” that greed is good. The “truth” of the constant appeal to our own interests – at every election -- rather than the interests of others. Even religion can get into the game: “truth” as success, “truth” as power and influence.

How far these so-called truths are from the Beatitudes: “blessed are the poor in spirit”, “blessed are those who mourn”, “blessed are the meek”, “blessed are the peacemakers,” “blessed are the pure in heart”, “blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you for my sake….” Those are the truths Jesus spoke, truths which must be preserved, protected, passed down to our children and our children’s children, truths of love and joy and faith and hope, truths of the heart, truths of him who died to make us free, the truth of Jesus Christ, the Man for Others.

Across the world today millions of Christians celebrate what has come to be known as World Communion, a special Sunday uniting Christians around the table of Our Lord. That table recalls his last supper with the disciples, in which he explained clearly that he was among them as one who serves, that his broken body and poured out blood were an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, and that he was giving his disciples a new commandment – to love one another as he has loved them. He was pointing directly to the cross which would take his life and would become the ultimate expression of the truth of God’s unconditional love.

Perhaps no one has ever put the truth of Jesus Christ more succinctly than Albert Schweitzer.

“He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside; He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.”