Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2011
Text:
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed
Episcopal Church
“The Truth Hurts”
The truth hurts. How many times have you said those words? How many times have you said those words as the final twist of the knife after you’ve just pointed out someone else’s faults? How many times have those words been said to you, and they’ve made you so mad you just wanted to strangle the person who said them? The truth hurts, doesn’t it?
Jesus Christ came preaching the truth—the truth about God, the truth about Man (about us), and the truth about Himself, and He was crucified for it. He came showing men and women up for who they truly were, and they hated Him for it. Because the truth hurts, especially the truth about our inner most thoughts and feelings.
How would you like it if I had the ability right here right now to flash your thoughts up on a big screen TV for all the rest of us to see? How would you react to that kind of exposure? Would you hate me for doing it, or make a bee-line for the door to escape the humiliation? Maybe you’d call the bishop to try to get a new rector. Or would you sit sill in your pew and hope that such exposure would in some way release you from you burden? Because there are only these two options. There are only two possible reactions to the painful probing of the truth. Either we’ll try to separate from it, or will submit to it. Either we will try to put as much distance as we can between ourselves and the truth that hurts so bad, or we will humble ourselves before it and hope that somehow the pain will do us some good. Mankind has forever been attempting to do the former—to escape from the truth.
What happened in the Garden? As soon as Adam and Eve knew the truth about what they had done—that they had bought the great lie that they could be their own gods, and so had joined the side of the devil in his rebellion against God—they were instantly filled with shame. And they tried to cover their shame by covering their physical nakedness. But their shame went much deeper. They felt their spiritual nakedness before God. And so what did they try to do? They tried to hide themselves from His presence. They tried to separate themselves from his penetrating vision. The Scripture says that they heard the Lord coming “in the spirit of the day”—in the spirit of the Day of Judgment—and so they hid themselves among the trees. The truth hurts.
C.S. Lewis wrote a wonderful little novel called The Great Divorce. It’s about the great separation that exists between the two eternal realities: heaven and hell. And very instructive for us is Lewis’ fanciful portrayal of hell. Hell in The Great Divorce is a huge city—the Grey Town, as he calls it—a town that exists always at the hour of twilight. And the borders of the town extend for millions and millions of miles. And that’s not because of overcrowding, as you might expect As a matter of fact, the town seems to have no one in it at all. Because, you see, no one in the Grey Town wants to live anywhere near another person. They can’t stand to be in each other’s presence. And so they keep moving farther and farther away form the center of the town. And when someone moves in too close, they move again. It’s very easy, because all you have to do is think yourself a new house. But way out near the border of the town, a light-year or so away, is Napoleon’s house. And out of curiosity or sheer boredom, someone went out to see what Napoleon was up to. And peering through the windows of the mansion he saw Napoleon pacing back and forth and muttering to himself, “It was Josephine’s fault…It was the English’s fault…It was the Russian’s fault…It wasn’t my fault.” You see, Napoleon and the other people in hell can’t stand to be in each other’s presence, because the can’t stand to face the truth about themselves. And so they continue to separate.
When Jesus came into the world, He came like a light that exposed all the dark places of the world. He exposed the darkness of those who thought themselves righteous. The scribes and the Pharisees and all those who, from the outside, looked so pious and pure, couldn’t take the pain of their exposure to the Truth—the truth that confronted them right there in Person. And so their first reaction was to deny the truth, to call it a lie.
Back in verse 31 of John chapter 8, Jesus had said, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you will know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” The truth was that they were in bondage to their sins and in bondage under the Law. And the truth was that only He could set them free. But what’s their reaction? “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, “You will be made free?” You see, they don’t want to look deeply into their hearts. They want to keep the truth at a safe distance, to make it a matter of mere externals. But Jesus keeps up His painful probing and exposure with the truth. In verse 34 He says, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”
Their second reaction is to try to separate from the truth. But now they’re not content merely to run away from the truth. No, they want a much more sure and final separation—the great divorce. They want the death of the Truth. Jesus says in verse 40, “Now you want to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth. But which of you convicts Me of sin?” In other words, you hate men and want to kill me, but for what reason? Because I committed some wrong worthy of death? Because I injured anything more than your pride? Because I’ve lied to you? No! But because I’ve told you the truth, and you can’t handle the truth. You’d rather kill me than open yourself up and face the pain of exposure, that I might heal you and cover you and reconcile you to the truth.
Bother and sisters, are we not so often like the scribes and Pharisees? Are we not so often unwilling to face the painful probing of the truth about ourselves? How often are we willing to wear and outward guise of pious respectability in order to hide our inner shame? How often do we lie to ourselves about ourselves? How often do we resist coming before God with His Word in the spiritual discipline of self-examination to have our darkness exposed by His light that we might repent of what we find there? But remember what Jesus said: “You are My disciples if you continue in My word. And you will know the truth”—the truth about God, the truth about Me, and the truth about yourselves—“and the truth shall make you free.” True spiritual freedom, the freedom to cast off the things that bind us, the freedom to overcome the things that are blocking the fullness of fellowship with God and with others that we were created to have, comes not by trying to avoid the truth, but by submitting ourselves to the truth—the truth that is in Jesus.
Yes, if we open ourselves up to the Word of God, if we submit ourselves to God’s truth, it will hurt us. The writer to the Hebrews says that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, and, if we let it, it will pierce our very hearts and souls. It will show us up for who we are. It will expose our shame. But unless it does pierce us, unless we do face the pain and allow it to lay us wide open, we will never know the soothing balm of Christ’s forgiveness and healing.
Christ desires to pierce you with the sword that proceeds from His mouth—His word of truth—not to judge you, not to condemn you, not to kill you, but to make you alive. The surgeon must sometimes cut very deeply in order to restore to health. And so it is with Christ. He says, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, if anyone keeps my saying [if anyone submits to my word] he shall never see death.” Death is separation—separation from love, separation from joy, separation from others, and ultimately separation from God. And it comes to all those who try to separate themselves from the pain of the truth. But for those who face the pain, for those who allow the surgeon to cut, they will never see death, they will never experience that final separation. They will never undergo the great divorce.
We’re nearing the end of Lent. But before this Lent is over,
let us make a Lenten resolution that will continue past Lent to open our hearts
to the sword of the Spirit—the word of truth— in the spiritual discipline of
self-examination. And the truth shall set us free. +