Good Friday
…To this end was I born, and for this reason I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone of that is of the truth hears my voice.
So, Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
What is truth?
Last Saturday morning after the great storm we walked around in our yard. We were spared from the storm so it did not look much different from the day before. Green, the grass beginning to grow, some of the late blooming daffodils still beautiful, apple blossoms on some of the trees, some of the roses with buds ready to bloom. But there was something different, something new, something out of place… If one looked carefully, Here and there on the ground yellow splotches, some orange, even some white…Then it came to me. Insulation. Pieces of insulation taken by the storm from homes wrecked, homes destroyed be Friday’s storm.
It spoke of the great harm, the great hurt caused by these terrible storms.
Maybe it could also speak of our times. There are great storms afoot in our times. Almost everything looks sort of the same. Yet there are signs that times have changed maybe in ways we can’t understand. We know some things have changed. We drive around, the building, the neighborhoods look pretty much the same…Yet when we stop at major intersections there are sad people clamoring for a handout. And now they seem to be at all the major intersections. You used to not see that.
People seem different now. Values seem different now. Some things, some values that used to seem important…not so much now. Things that we used to take for granted.
And today we hear the question, “What is truth?”
But someone quickly adds, “What truth? My truth, your truth, just whose “truth” are we talking about?
And if “truth” is just not one of those weasel words we hear a lot …words that politicians and the evangelists on the way too early morning TV programs like to use…, what is it?
Or where is it? Where do we find it? Who has it?
Maybe it’s in the media. Maybe if we just listened, or participated, we can find it in the media, on the internet…from the ones we can trust to tell us about new things, new trends, new ways to think…
Maybe it’s in the ideologies that have finally come into their own…
Maybe it’s in the charismatic leaders who have all the answers…
Maybe it’s in the books we should be reading…
Maybe it’s in the cool music we should be listening to, the words that really have it…
Where is it?
Who has it?
But then again, maybe these are not really new questions, questions that have just come to us. We are not the only ones who have lived through times of uncertainty, unease, violence and violent disagreement…
As it happened two men who lived in a small town were having a discussion about these sorts of questions. In a nearby city, they had encountered someone who they thought might have some of the answers…Someone who seemed to have a goodness, rightness, even loving-kindness about Him. – But then they were disappointed – very disappointed.
And then walking on the road to their town they encountered a stranger…
Richard Robertson