An Assault on Truth

A sermon on Ephesians 4:25-5:2.

There’s something very bad going on in our country right now. Actually there are lots of bad things going on right now, people out of work, people out of their homes, people who have had their life savings either stolen or decimated by medical bills or the crashing market. These are all dire experiences that surround us. We as a congregation have been very fortunate. I’m sure that there are difficulties about which I am unaware, but for most of these things, we have been passed over. People in this church have made it through rounds of layoffs and are still employed. That’s not to make light of the financial challenges many of us face at this time but for the most part, we are weathering this storm well.

The bad thing that I am most worried about is what is happening to truth. The opening of our reading from the letter to the Ephesians today says “let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor…” As important as it is to speak the truth, it is also important to allow others to do the same for as the letter to the Ephesians continues, “for we are members of one another.” The fabric of a culture is held together by truth telling. If you cannot trust what people say, things break down; relationships fray and people move away from each other and become isolated. The challenge for us is what to do when we are faced with a lack of or an assault on the truth.

This week the news has been filled with scenes of vitriolic and sometimes violent behavior as members of Congress have gone home on recess to have Town Meetings with their constituents about what is going on in Washington, but primarily about health care reform. Town Hall meetings are usually pretty sedate and boring things but what members of Congress have been met with are groups of people determined to shout down any attempt to talk about the proposed health care bills in committee and the process. There appears to be a thriving cottage industry right now dreaming up outrageous claims about what will happen if our insurance conglomerate run health care system is reformed. Some of the more outlandish claims go like this: under this proposed law, old people will be encouraged by their doctors to end their lives – the poster version of this is “ObamaCare = euthanasia” or “Obama want to kill your grandmother.” Another one is that under this plan, the government will pay people to have abortions. Another big scary story is that the government might take over Medicare and Medicaid. Think about that one. From there things just degenerate into signs like “Health Care Reform = Holocaust which are usually found next to the ones that say “Obama, Osama” and “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”

Now it’s one thing for crazy, wild things to spring up on the internet, it’s another for members of the media and elected official to be promoting this nonsense. There is a concerted effort to stoke peoples’ fears and not for the purpose of any helpful dialogue, but merely as a political game and the truth is a casualty. What has happened to our country?

Truth is an important concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition; from the legal aspect, the commandment against bearing false witness makes it clear that honesty is not just a personal virtue, it is a communal one. Speaking with authority is recognized as a sign of one who speaks the truth. Jesus’ critics often asked the source of his authority; they heard the truth in what he said, they just didn’t know from whence he had learned it. It is said that what got Jesus killed was that he spoke the truth to power. And then in the Gospel of John, he said, “I am the truth.” We therefore take truth seriously.

Standing before Pontius Pilate and answering his taunting statement, "You are a king, then!" Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. " And then Pilate asks, “what is truth?”

In the Old Testament, truth is an attribute of God and it’s actually not simple to define. There is no specific one-to-one translation for the word “truth.” Constant, permanent, faithful, reliable are all used to translate the Hebrew word. For the people of Israel, truth was a moral and relational concept, not an intellectual one. In Greek thought, truth is very intellectual; it is known as opposed to trusted or relied on. In his letters that make up much of the New Testament, Paul combines the relational and intellectual sides of truth. So we arrive at an understanding of truth as an eternal dynamic in relationship, it’s like the mortar that holds bricks together.

If an interpersonal relationship breaks down when truth has been damaged, what happens in a culture when the truth is violated? My Biblical Dictionary says that the opposite of truth is malice and evil. Using people fears by an intentional manipulation of a complicated subject comes pretty close to that for me. There is a lot of money being put into promoting some crazy ideas with little thought of how to put the genie back in the bottle if it goes too far – and it going too far. There is at least one investigation into death threats against a Congressman and more calls to “bring your guns to these Town Hall meetings” are flying around the internet. This is not about politics – this is a moral and a spiritual issue and I am concerned.

Last month, as I sat around the Communications and Media area at the recent General Convention, I heard lots of conversation about the resolutions being discussed and passed. The clearest statement about our relationship with Anglicans around the world and the church’s position on refusing to exclude people from roles in the church came out of a desire to tell the truth to our neighbors. For the last three years, the Episcopal Church, in response to outrage from elsewhere, had turned its back on some of our members. There are many who felt as though we had sold our souls, saying that “we are willing to be inauthentic, if not down-right dishonest, just to stay in communion with parts of the Anglican world who see things very differently.” It was a very uncomfortable place to be. Finally people stood up and said, “we must say to those that disagree with us that we cannot be in true communion with you if we are not true to ourselves.” The letter to the Ephesians doesn’t say, “speak the truth, only if people with agree with you.” We are trying to do this in such a way that we are also in accord with this reading when it says. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you…and forgive..”

What’s going on at Town Hall meetings and in the churches that may now leave The Episcopal Church is the same thing. Misinformation used to stoke fear. We have to be worried about how we achieve any sort of reconciliation after this storm blows itself out. This is a head and a heart thing – be gentle with those that afraid but be armed with knowledge and the truth of God’s love and acceptance for each and every one of us.