“The Truth About Jesus”Dr. D. Jay Losher

19 April 2019 + Gaithersburg Presbyterian ChurchJohn 18:33-38a = Pilate: “What is truth?”

n one of the most dramatic scenes in Scripture, we see Jesus

on trial for his life, wrongly accused of sedition against Rome. The false indictment comes from the Jerusalem leaders: the priests, the royal court and the Temple elite. In this mockery of justice, Pilate, the brutal Roman governor, questions Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answers with a question. Why would he do that?

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[Click on the icon to play the embedded video:1 ]

“What? How? Why? So?” Good questions, big questions, the real questions, the eternal questions. We should all be so inquisitive. We should all be so enquiring. Yet never, never should we ask questions

in the sarcastic way Pilate did, the inquisitor at the trial of Jesus.

n this courtroom scene, where justice is turned upside down, Pilate

asks Jesus if he is a revolutionary: “Are you the King of the Jews?” meaning “Have you come to overthrow Herod, Rome’s puppet in this backwater country?”

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Jesus at first answers a question with a question. But after parrying back and forth, Jesus responds:

“My kingdom is not from this world … my kingdom is not from here.”

With that Jesus is saying he is not a revolutionary, at least not one in the parochial way Pilate defines it. Jesus is indeed a revolutionary of a totally different kind. Jesus rules over a realm, and represents a truth, that is incomprehensible to Pilate and the world ~ a realm to revolutionize, restore, revitalize and redeem ~ everything.

Pilate must be really dense. On Jesus saying his kingdom is not of this world, Pilate thought he had caught Jesus confessing guilt: “So you are a king?”

“Jesus answer[s], ‘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. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’”

Dripping with disdain Pilate flippantly asks “what is truth?” As if he knows the answer ~ as if it is easy ~ as if he even discerns the path to finding truth ~ as if he would recognize truth if it hit him in the face.

any there are who could guide Pilate to the truth if his

question were in fact sincere. Rabbi Pinhas of Koretz, a medieval cleric and Hasidic master, was known for his obsession for the truth:

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“’I broke all my bones while working on myself to attain truth,’ he said. ‘This lasted twenty-one years: seven years to discover what truth is; another seven years to expel falsehood from my

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being; and the last seven years to receive truth and live it.’ Respect for truth was so profound among his friends and followers that they dared not repeat his comments for fear of misquoting him. His heir, Rebbe Raphael of Barshad, was once stopped in the street by a man who asked him: ‘Aren’t you Reb Raphael of Barshad’ ~ ‘Yes . . . I think so,’ replied the Rebbe. … On [one occasion Rebbe Pinhas] said: ‘If all [humans] would speak the truth, there would be no further need to bring the Messiah; [the Messiah] would be here already. Just as the Messiah brings truth, truth brings the Messiah.”2

“Truth brings the Messiah!” What a concept! ven in that kangaroo court of corrupt justice,

where Pilate rhetorically asks “What is truth?” ~ in an irony of galactic proportions, standing right there front and center was

in actual fact, really real unrecognized slapping Pilate in the face ~ truth and the Messiah all rolled up in one. Jesus was standing right there ~ the real deal; the true Messiah, not just for Jerusalem, not just for Israel, but for all the universe; a revolutionary for everything, and every person.

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The truth is that the true Messiah is standing right in front of us, to guide us. The real Anointed

One of God is beside us, to support us. God’s beloved is behind us, to encourage us; and below us, to lift us up; and above us, to draw us into God’s realm.

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foil for sceptics and agnostics of every age, Pilate asks Jesus that false question, dripping with

sarcasm and immersed in resigned cynicism. Ringing down through the ages, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” ~ a question that can only be answered by the wisest, the truest, the most sincere ~ those who hunger and thirst for righteousness ~ who seek God in spirit and in truth. Only these can answer that question.

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The irony is ~ the cosmic turnabout is ~ that right in front of Pilate, staring him right in the face ~ scourged, tortured and humbled almost beyond recognition ~ was, is

the one, the right one, the only one who actually has the authority to answer that question. And Jesus’ profound answer rings down through the ages: silence. In the face of such hate, such oppression, such powerlessness, such injustice and barefaced evil: Jesus “never said a mumblin’ word.”

Maybe Pilate would have gotten a real answer if he had taken that Rabbi’s advice in our clip at the beginning: if he had asked a question and then answered it. If he had had an inquisitive mind. In addition to “What is truth?” if he had asked: “Who? What? Why? So?” If he had interrogated the leaders of Judea to discover their false accusations and lack of evidence.

In the end, Pilate literally washed his hands of his own false verdict when he could find no guilt in Jesus.

rederick Buechner has said: F

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“The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.”3 That’s right. The Gospel was a trial before it was

vindication. It was conviction before acquittal. It was excruciating execution before resurrection ~ bad news before good news. As much as we would like it otherwise, we cannot comprehend fully the one without the other. That is just the way it is.

The trial of Jesus was indeed a show trial of sorts, a trial to show forth God’s purpose ~ to broadcast the truth about Jesus: that Jesus rules over a realm, and represents a truth, that is incomprehensible to the world.

The false indictments of sedition and revolution against Jesus come from the Jerusalem leaders, the priests, the royals, the

moneychangers and hangers-on at the Temple, the prophets in the royal court ~ those who felt quite rightly that Jesus’ truths called their own claims to power and their own livelihoods into question.

Jesus, not a member of the prophets’ union, the priests’ union, nor the kings’ union, yet Jesus was as a matter of fact the true prophet of God, the true and only high priest, and the true and legitimate sovereign not just of Israel and Judea but of the entire of God’s creation.

That was, that is, that will be the truth about Jesus.

n the words of the Book of Revelation: I

“Jesus is the faithful witness,” the only one who testifies to the real truth, the “firstborn of the dead,” the “ruler of the kings of the earth,” and the one who “made us a kingdom of priests.”4

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All the Scriptures bare faithful witness to the truth about Jesus:

“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD. Hosanna in the highest.” “To make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” “The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” “The light shining in the darkness.” “Whose kingdom shall have no end. And Christ shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah. Amen.”

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1 edited from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkyzMWxK67U 2 Elie Wiesel, Four Hasidic Masters, pp. 20-213 Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale, p. 7 4 Revelation 1:4-8