Ephesians 4: 15; 2 Samuel 12, 7, 9; John 6: 26, 27

Truth Hearing

The texts today are about the truth. We talk a lot more about telling the truth than we do about hearing the truth. It occurred to me that one of our problems with talking the truth has a lot to do with our ability and willingness to hear the truth spoken to us.

Good comedians tell the truth about uncomfortable things. They hold a mirror in front of our face and make us say something that’s there, but we wish wasn’t.  Comedian Louis C.K. talks about the “mild” racism of East Coast whites who were born in the seventies.  He says:” when those people walk into a bakery which  is run by four African Americans, they will simply get this puzzled look and go:”mmmm.”  Now that’s the truth right there, but it is an uncomfortable truth, isn’t.  Part of us goes:”That’s not discrimination. “We’re just noticing something that you might not see every day.  Just like all Asian Americans are supposed to be good in math or do martial arts. But we are all prone to these reactions. It allows us to order the world in our heads. We think that in the times when you can go to Alhambra boulevard to a converted forties gas station and we can buy Korean Burritos, that all is well.  But then someone confronts us with the truth. But this kind of truth that if we can hear it will actually make us better.

Our families are very good at telling us the truth. They will remind us of our flaws and will usually be happy to tell us when we ask for input.  This works because we know they love us and that in the end they will be there for us. But if we hear too much of the critical and too little of the positive we start blocking them out.

Pastors need to hear the truth too, from their congregation.  When I came to this church there was no personnel committee charged with evaluating the pastor and other staff and even after it was established it has always been hard to get the committee to evaluate me.  What if there is some uncomfortable truth the pastor will need to receive, will he or she storm out of the room.  Don’t worry, this is very common in churches. In some churches, the only feedback pastors will get are constant affirmation until that moment when all hell breaks loose.

Countries need to hear the truth sometimes.  But those are the trickiest to deal with.  We tend to look at the best of our own countries and the worst of other countries.  Believe me, every nation has something despicable in its past, something shameful.  I think all people in the world would be better off if we faced the truth about what our nations had done. For some nations it may be further in the past, but it is rarely more than a century and a half ago.   Whenever a nation has not dealt with its past adequately, that past will raise its head eventually and often unexpectedly. Just look at Turkey and the perpetration of the Armenian genocide.

Friends, I think that deep inside you and I actually hunger to hear the truth about ourselves.  But we want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth(, …..so help us God).  What scares us is a partial truth about ourselves, a partial truth that is meant to hurt us and to put us in our place.  That’s the kind of truth we have no stomach for, but the whole picture, the good and the bad, most of us could deal with.

What can we learn from our Bible texts? From Jesus talking to the disciples we learn about we need to be unmasked sometimes.  Sometimes it is too convenient to say the right thing, when it is clear we are just covering up our real motivation. People don’t usually call us on this, because it is not worth starting a conflict over, but it is not uncommon for a child to smell it out a hundred yards away.  Jesus tells the disciples that He knows it’s about the food. Isn’t always? If not that, then the money.

This kind of truth hearing is not too traumatic, but it’s necessary for our maturing.   In 2 Samuel we see something on a totally different level.  Because of his behavior with Bathseba and Uriah her husband, David gets an earful.  He is morally taken apart. Sometimes as a person, or as a community or as a or as a nation there are different levels at which we need to hear the truth.  There are even levels on which the Bible speaks the truth to us.  There are times we need a gentle reminder, at times a firm redirection, at other times a total rethinking and fashioning of the way we think and acts.  Friends, what is the truth that you need to hear and what is the truth you are resisting?

When the Bible tells us that God is telling us that Jesus is truth, the way and the life, it isn’t just talking, it is saying something significant.  It is saying that Jesus isn’t just telling the truth, but that He is the truth. What does this mean?  Well, I think it simply means that Jesus is the truth about Who God is and what God is like.  Nowhere will we ever get closer to seeing what God is like.  But what is the importance of truth for the Christian life?  That is simple too: the truth about our lives in the widest and deepest sense exists to make us grow into the compassionate souls God wants us to be.  We will always have a long way to go, but nevertheless that is the goal. May we be ready to hear the truth. May God give us wisdom.