Love Leads to Truth

Last Sunday the pastor at the United Methodist church I attend (Pastor Chad) was out of town for the UMC annual conference. He asked me to fill in for him.  I did - but I forgot to post a copy of the sermon here on the old blog.

Love Leads to Truth

As the co-director of the Newton Community Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s play – The Crucible – I have spent the last several weeks, the last couple of months thinking about the Puritans and the Salem witch trials of 1692.  I have also been thinking about the events that inspired Miller to write the play – the red scare, the communist menace, the House Un-American Activities Committee and the outrageous accusations of Senator Joseph McCarthy.  I’ve been thinking about truth and lies – but since we closed last weekend, you’ve missed your chance to see our production of the play, and I’m glad to be done – mostly done thinking about these things.

But before I move on altogether…

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, and the Roman prefect’s question has been alternately described through the centuries as either the sincere question of an earnest seeker of wisdom or (more frequently) as the smug, cynical question of a weary skeptic who has grown tired of competing truth claims.  But the question remains: What is truth?

What is truth and how can we know it? In an age of fact checkers and snopes.com, what is truth?  In a time when our president has made over 10,000 false or misleading statements in his time in office – so far [i]– what is truth and how can we know it? Facts are ignored. Lies are spread.  And the witticism that has been attributed to at least a dozen different individuals seems true – “A lie will go around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on.”

Before leaving his disciples, Jesus said to them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. I will ask the father, and he will send another companion who will be with your forever. This companion is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can’t receive because it neither sees him nor recognizes him. You know him because he lives with you and will be with you.” John 14:15 – 17

So we, as followers of Jesus, have this Spirit of Truth to live in us and to be with us forever and yet Christians often seem as blind to the truth as the rest of the world who neither sees nor recognizes that spirit.  In the history of the Church we have multiplied examples of Christians both telling and believing lies and falsehoods of all kinds. Even with the Spirit that will guide us in all truth (John 16:13), the Spirit who is truth (1 John 5:6), we seem as susceptible and prone to untruth as anyone else.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” So how can we recognize and agree upon the truth as Christians, as Methodists, as members of St. Luke UMC?

Lately I’ve been wondering if the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” (Exodus 20: 16) might mean something more than simply, “don’t tell lies.” I recognize of course that the 9^th commandment is specifically about false testimony in a legal setting (Freedman 139) but what if we thought of bearing false witness as that carrying around of lies and falsehoods? What it we thought of it as including those untruths that we are unwilling to release?

It can be difficult to let go of those untruths – particularly when they either flatter or embellish our opinion of ourselves or when it mocks and distorts our enemies. Our pride and our vanity can blind us to the untrue things we believe about ourselves. We are blind to the thousand justifications and excuses that we make for our own shortcomings. And we nurse and rehearse the slanders and mischaracterizations of our enemies. The things we like to believe about them may have begun as slight exaggerations or rhetorical hyperbole for effect, but we go over them again and again, like picking at a sore that just won’t heal, until it becomes infected and inflamed; they become the lies and false witnesses that we bear with us everywhere we go.

What if “thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” means that we should release these falsehoods? This would require a rigorous self-examination that we often find too difficult and unpleasant. But can the Spirit of Truth be said to inhabit us now and forever if we are clinging to and embracing those lies and calumnies? Can the spirit of truth guide us into all truth if we are bearing these false testimonies against our neighbors in our hearts?

Today, on this Pentecost Sunday –we celebrate the unity of the early church, gathered together in one accord (Acts 2:1) in the mighty wind and burning fire of the Holy Spirit. And if we want that same unity of the Spirit- the spirit of truth- we must give up our treasured falsehoods.

Before Jesus left his disciples he gave them a promise that another Comforter would come for them – but he prefaced that promise with a condition and a command. “If you love me you will keep my commandments. I will ask the Father and he will send you another companion.” But what commandment?  A few sentences before this he said to them, “I give you a new commandment: love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other.” (John 13: 34-35)

Love leads to truth, or it at least opens us up to be able to receive it. If we will love each other – and even love our enemies – we will not want to believe all the horrible, untrue things we’ve been told, and that we tell ourselves. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7)

“Teach us to utter living words of truth which all may hear
the language all may understand when love speaks loud and clear
till every age and race and clime shall blend their creeds in one
and earth shall form one family by whom thy will is done.”

O Spirit of the Living God, Thou Light and Fire Divine- by Henry Hallam Tweed

Freedman, David Noel.  The Nine Commandments: Uncovering the Hidden Pattern of Crime and Punishment in the Hebrew Bible. Doubleday. New York, NY. 2000.

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[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/29/president-trump-has-made-more-than-false-or-misleading-claims/?noredirect=on

A Blessing for Pentecost Sunday

Come vociferous wind,
come rushing into us;
bring burning tongues
of sacred flame
that we might speak
the holy name.

May we burn-and burn bright.May we speak-and speak true.

May God’s spirit, holy and just

fill you, fill me, fill us
with the power to do what is right,
move us to motion,
and carry us up in the divine wind
that makes all things new.

And, as we have gathered here,
united in one Lord and one Savior,
may we go out now, scattered to our separate ways,
let us go in one Spirit,
united in the language of love.

Biblical Haiku: Acts 2: 1 – 4

what howling wind
could fan such flames as these
we burn and speak

The Baptism of Jesus

…at the moment Jesus was coming up out of the water
he saw heaven being torn apart…        Mark 1: 10

A jagged gash in the sublunary world
heaven and earth ripped wide

A flood bleeding through the ragged wound

Judean cliffs of ancient stone
crumple and collapse upon
the panicked crowd gathered at the water’s edge

Great armored locusts
with claws and silver fangs
swarm in the billowing dust

A lion with blood-matted mane
leaps into the sky
and swallows the sun

There is no light
darkness comes
the final night

Then

An exhalation
sweeping wings descend
a dove – a voice

“You are my son
my only son
my beloved”

Jesus rises from the Jordan

wipes the water from his face
and sees the world

I Went to See the Holy Man

“Acquire a peaceful spirit and thousands around you will be saved.” -Saint Seraphim of Sarov

I went to see the holy man
in his isolation;
I went to hear him at his prayers,
seeking consolation,
but the forest was full of bears.

I went to see the holy man
in deep contemplation;
I wanted that peaceful spirit
that saves a generation,
and the silence that comes with it.

Biblical Limericks: When Did the Spirit Come?

Luke says the Spirit came at Pent’cost,
though his telling can’t fully exhaust
the gospel mystery
for in John’s history
it was Easter day, but that’s oft lost.

John 20: 22 / Acts 2: 1 - 2

Biblical Haiku: John 3: 8

winds blow as they please
listen for them, but from where?
the spirit, too

Personal Names for the Trinity

We have a personal name for God the Father – though our Jewish brothers and sisters decline to use it, and though we can only make an educated guess as to what it might actually be:  Jehovah it probably is not- but Yahweh (based on the Tetragramaton, YHWH) is probably close.

We have a personal name for God the Son – Jesus or Yeshua – because he shall save his people.

But when we come to God the Spirit we have no personal name. We use a title “the Holy Spirit” to refer to this third person of the triune Godhead.  But that is so impersonal.  It sounds remote.  Estranged.   Makes the spirit sound like a thing, an it…

So I propose that we use the name Sophia – Greek for Wisdom.  Sophia is the Wise Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God who was there to measure out creation, who calls to anyone who will listen.

Yahweh, Jesus, Sophia…

What do you think?

The Day of the Lord

Scattered from the tower
in the midst of the city that we conspired to build,
splintered and fragmented
by languages we could not and would not share,
we lived our separate lives
anxiously watching for that terrible day
when the sun would turn black
and the sky would dissolve.

But regathered now
in the midst of the city in that dark upper room
when the fires of God burned over our heads
and the noise of a wind echoed all around;
together we realize that
the great and awful day that we feared
is a day to make us whole,
to make us well, to make us one.

Acts 2: 1 – 21

A Blessing for the Coming of the Holy Spirit

May the gracious Spirit of God,
                holy and wise,
come to you,
as your powerful friend and ally,
as your defense and counsel,
as your helper,
                paraclete.

May she come alongside you when you call,
when you feel alone,
when your troubled heart needs comforted.

May she cause you to rejoice,
reminding you of all the Lord’s blessings;
may she shine upon you.

Amen.

John 14: 23 – 29 & Psalm 67

She Came and Comforted Me

I was in 6^th grade when I had a flash of prepubescent theological insight.  My family had just moved – again - this time to Bloomington, Indiana.  Making friends wasn’t something I did quickly (and still don’t ), so I felt very much alone in a new town, in a new school, surrounded by kids that seemed to be trying very hard to be teenagers, while I still wanted to play with my G.I. Joe action figures.

This flash of understanding came to me in music class at Fairview Elementary school where  Mrs. M. played the piano to accompany our singing– I remember how her fingernails click clacked on the piano keys as she played (so very different from my mom, who played the piano, but kept her nails short…)  In this particular music class we were singing Carol King’s song “You’ve Got a Friend.”

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I'll come running to see you again

Winter, spring, summer or fall

All you have to do is call

And I'll be there

You've got a friend.

And in that song I discovered the Paraclete – at least as much of that Holy Spirit as a lonely 11 year old can understand.  She came and comforted me.  She is the one called alongside...

But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.  John 14: 16 - 27

I’m Thinking Thoughts of Lightning

The smell of dirt and ozone
in the cool of the day
when the Spirit comes to me
on waves of polarized light,

I'm thinking thoughts of lightning,
and I’m waiting for the flash,

I’m waiting for the smell of rain

in this shadowed valley

where the ruins of immortality

make parables,

parables and riddles
as rain drops make expanding
concentric ripples.

(2012)

Looking For God Across the Universe

Like Paul on the Areopagus in Athens confronting the altar dedicated to the "unknown god" I have, in recent months, been finding God in the strangest of places.  I find him in movies like Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man and Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider.  He's there peeking out at me from behind the pages of the pages of a Dean Koontz novel.  And (most surprising, to me anyway…) in John Lennon's song Across the Universe.

 I know.  I know.  I know. There was that whole "more popular than Jesus" thing that really irked a lot of people and tended to set John (and the Beatles) against God and religion, but as John attempted to explain later, "I am not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion.  I was not saying we are greater or better.  I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky.  I believe what people call God is something in all of us.  I believe that what Jesus, and Mohammed, and Buddha and all the rest said was right, it's just that the translations have gone wrong."

I don't subscribe to his opinion that Jesus, Mohammed, and the Buddha all other religious teachers had equally true messages; I firmly believe that Jesus is as he said he was- the only way- but John’s thought that "what people call God is something in all of us" really began to register – in much the same way that Paul's message on the Areopagus did: 

"Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.  For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription:  TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.  Now what you worship as something unknown, I am going to proclaim to you. (Acts 17: 22-23)"

There's something of the religious unknown, the numinous in John's writing; that while he himself may not have been aware of what it was, we can see and know that he was connecting with the mystery of God.

Across The Universe

Across The Universe first appeared as a charity single release in December of 1969, and was later released in a slightly different version on the Beatles 1970 album Let It Be.  The song was written by John Lennon (though, as with all Beatles songs written by either Lennon or McCartney, it was formally credited to Lennon-McCartney).

The song began in 1967 as John's relationship to his first wife, Cynthia Powell was falling apart.  One night he was in bed listening to her talk and talk and talk and talk.  Perhaps somewhat cruelly, the opening phrase of the song popped into his head, "Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup."  In a flash of inspiration he got up and rushed to find a pen and paper to finish writing the lyrics.  When he finished he went to sleep and forgot them.

This flash of inspiration, I believe, was a God gift, a sacred thing.  The 19^th century poet Percy Shelley wrote "A man cannot say, 'I will write poetry.'  Not even the greatest poet can say it, for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to a transitory brightness."  This 'inconstant wind' moving through John Lennon was the Holy Spirit, causing him to compose a hymn to an Unknown God (unknown to John, anyway).

Words are flying out like
endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me

The song begins with a self aware contemplation of life:  Words, the interchange of ideas, the communication of thoughts – these things slip away leaving only the underlying experience.  Words –as important and vital as they are – cannot contain or fully express the human experience.  'Pools of sorrow' and 'waves of joy' are aqueous primordial emotions.  From the very beginnings of the universe when all was dark and formless water, sorrow and joy have washed over us.

Jai guru deva om

The chorus of Across The Universe begins with the Sanskrit phrase, "Jai guru deva om."  John and the other members of the Beatles were briefly interested in eastern philosophy and Transcendental Meditation.  The use of the Hindi refrain reflects this interest. And here is where the "Unknown God" creeps in.

A breakdown of the etymology of the phrase is as follows:

Jai means "victory" or "success" or "glory" or "thank you"

A guru is a teacher or a master

A deva is a "God" or "heavenly one"

The phrase can thus be expressed:  "Glory to the heavenly teacher" or "Victory to the Divine teacher" or "Thank you heavenly Lord."

I think John, fanned to transitory brightness by the blowing of the Holy Spirit, was saying more than he knew.  He may not have known Jesus as his personal "guru" but for those of us who do, "Jai guru deva" could be a phrase used in corporate worship right along with "Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

The phrase ends with the Hindi word, "om."   Om (also written Aum or Ohm) is considered the most sacred syllable in Hinduism, symbolizing the infinite and the entire universe; the primal sound.  Phonetically and practically, "Om" is quite similar to the Christian "Amen."   It is used, like the "amen" to begin or conclude prayers.  "Amen" or "let it be (another great Beatles song…)" can be considered an "om" – a word to connect the worshiper with the will of the infinite, the creator of the universe, the all in all.  When we pray "amen" we are submitting our will and our desire; we are emptying ourselves of all egoism and selfish conceit and submitting to the will and plan of the infinite God of the universe.

Nothing's gonna’ change my world

In the beginning the world was only chaos- welter and waste- crashing waves and formless water.  But the creator God imposed order on these turbulent waters and brought forth a marvelously complex and intricately beautiful world.  For those living in Jesus, the "yes and amen" of God, the "om" of God, the world is not a frenzied welter and waste, but an unshakable kingdom. There is security and safety and rest in Christ.  Nothing's gonna change my world.

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

On and on across the universe

The second verse begins a journey.  We begin to leave behind the futile paper cup of words and begin to follow "images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes."  It's a beautiful image of the shining effulgence of God's glory dancing before us, calling us, leading us towards "limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns."  God is love.  We follow the sounds of his laughter until we find ourselves in a place where tears are wiped away and we live in the glory of God, brighter than a million suns- a place where there is no night. 

Images of broken light which
dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a
restless wind inside a letter box
they tumble blindly as
they make their way across the universe

Sounds of laughter shades of life
are ringing through my open ears
exciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which
shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe

Jai guru deva om.

 * I wrote this a few years ago, thought I might share it here on my blog.  You might also enjoy this Apocalyptic Beatles article

The Spirit of God Hovered Over the Waters

In the beginning God created heaven and earth.  Now the earth was a formless void; there was darkness over the abyss.  He drew a circle upon the surface of the deep and a divine wind hovered over the chaotic waters.  God said, "Let there be light," and there was light and God saw that the light was good.

You should listen to John Coltrane's Spiritual as you look at this picture. 


(Drawn in Photoshop.  Click the image to see it full sized. Thank you.)

Sister Sophia

Click image to view at full size.