First Reading: Acts 6:1-9; 7:2a, 51-60
1Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. 2And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. 3Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. 4But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” 5And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. 6These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them. 7And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. 8And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people. 9Then some of those who belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen.
2a And Stephen said:
51“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. 52Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered, 53you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it.” 54Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. 55But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” 57But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him. 58Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. 59And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 60And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Psalm 146
1Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 2Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them. 3When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. 4Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! whose hope is in the Lord their God; 5Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; who keeps his promise forever; 6Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. 7The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; 8The Lord loves the righteous; the Lord cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked. 9The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. Hallelujah!
Second Reading: 1 Peter 2:2-10
2Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — 3if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” 7So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” 8and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 9But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Gospel: John 14:1-14
1{Jesus said,} “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4And you know the way to where I am going.” 5Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 8Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves. 12Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. 13Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”
Jesus is Truth
Someone made a list of five things the average man will never say: 1. We haven’t been to the mall in ages, let’s go shopping and I’ll even hold your purse. 2. Forget Monday Night Football honey, let’s watch Golden Girls instead. 3. You say your mother’s coming to stay with us again? That’s fantastic! 4. Do these jeans come in lavender? And finally, 5: I think we’re lost. I’d better pull over and ask for directions.
You, like me, I’m sure, have had the experience of being lost in a strange town—it’s an anxious time, even for those who don’t mind asking for directions. Often, the streets are poorly marked and rare is the town that provides adequate directional signs back to the main highway or the Interstate. Thankfully, Jesus was more thoughtful than that. In today’s gospel we find the sixth of Jesus’ “I Am” statements: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” In previous passages we’ve heard Jesus tell us that He is, our Bread–our source of Living Water–our Light–our Door–our Shepherd–and the Resurrection and the Life. And as His disciples, it’s important for us to remember that He made these claims not only to us, but also to the world around us. Thus, we’re called to share these promises with the world.
Today we once again have the opportunity to explore this reassuring claim of Jesus, that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Last week we talked about how Jesus is the only way to the Father. How He is the door to the sheepfold, the One who stands in the breach between life and death, and how we, through Him, go in and out and find good pasture. And when we really comprehend Jesus’ declaration, it gives us the peace of knowing that we are loved, we are cared for, and that He provides all that we need.
Last week we also talked about how life, true life, abundant life, is found only in Jesus. And because all life is precious, you and I are called to not only enjoy the abundant life that comes in Christ, but to share that abundant life with others. We do this not only through our personal witness, but also as we support agencies like Crisis Pregnancy Center and Holy Angels. So today, I’d like to take some time to consider the middle part of Jesus’ promise, that He is Truth.
Now before I go any further, I want to reiterate what I told the kids a few moments ago. The problem we often have is that we look for the thing we call the truth. The problem in looking for truth as a thing is that we have no foundation upon which to judge truth. However, and if you don’t hear anything else I say this morning, please remember this. Jesus revealed to us the secret, He is Truth, we find truth in Him alone. If we want to know truth, we look to God and His word. This is the problem the world runs into today, they are looking for truth as a thing. We as Christians look to the person who is Truth.
Anytime we try to look for the truth apart from Jesus, we’ll find that worldly truth, is not only oftentimes hard to recognize, it’s also hard to find these days. Between the internet that’s filled with biased podcasts, Social influencers, websites filled with deliberately placed misinformation, conspiracy theory sites, and news outlets that are constantly presenting their slant on the news, all of this coupled with our own biases, it’s hard to weed through all the information we’re exposed to and find the truth. But I don’t think getting to the truth is a new phenomenon. What was it that Pilate asked Jesus, “what is truth” (John 18:38). That was Pilate’s problem, he asked the wrong question: instead of asking what is truth, he needed to be asking Who is the truth?
The story is told of how the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes would walk around with a lamp, shining it in men’s faces, saying he was looking for an honest man. Diogenes felt he could never find a truthful person. And for anyone who has ever taken a few courses in philosophy, they can sympathize with Diogenes. As I mentioned last week, even the hippies of the 60’s and 70’s would sit for hours pondering the same question, what is truth?
Our own Declaration of Independence begins by saying, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Yet we, who live under the Declaration 250 years later, struggle with the statement that all those truths are self-evident to everyone. Truth, as a thing, is hard to find these days. Wasn’t it President Jimmy Carter who promised the American people he would never lie to us? And for those who remember, we can easily recall that it was President Nixon that lied to us in the Watergate scandal.
And recall the statement “read-my-lips-no-new-taxes” that President George Bush broke his promise with, along with Bill Clinton, who only four-and-one-half months into his presidency, had broken at least three major campaign promises. Today, it seems, we’ve come to expect that most politicians, including our presidents, will lie to us on a regular basis. Truth, as a thing, is indeed hard to find these days.
We struggle with truth in advertising, truth in labeling, truth in packaging, as well as truth in medicine, law, business, and even religious figures. With charlatans like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart who deceived millions, even clergy are often viewed suspiciously. Even in families, truth is hard to find.
Parents and children regularly deceive each other. Husbands and wives will deceive each other with respect to their true feelings. More than that, we often deceive ourselves. If Plato advised “know thyself” and if his teacher, Socrates, said the “unexamined life is not worth living,” many of us it seems are afraid to really examine ourselves too closely, to come to know who we really are. The truth then is hard to find partly because we may not want to find it.
And yet it was Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” He said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” The Psalmist prayed, “Send out thy light and thy truth, let them lead me” (Psalm 43:3). And in chapter 15, St. John records Jesus’ promise to send His Spirit of truth to teach and to comfort His people (vs. 26-27). Jesus promised that the Father would send the Holy Spirit who will point us to Christ, who will help us find the truth not only about ourselves and about our world around us.
The Holy Spirit helps us get at the truth by teaching us the truth about what is real and not real in our world. Satan is busy working hard to deceive us not only in subtle ways, but not so subtle ways as well. Often the devil will salt deceptions with little bits of truth in order to deceive us. And part of our problem in discerning the truth is many of us are products of the age of enlightenment. We look to ourselves to determine the truth rather than looking to God. Like our American founding fathers, we want to believe that truth is self-evident to the reasonable, rational mind. We, along with philosopher John Locke, think of truth as based on objective facts to be believed. We want to believe that we can find truth and order in the things around us.
The late Harvard mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, maintained that the whole scientific enterprise of the western world rested upon the belief that at the bottom of things, science would find order rather than chaos. It was western scientists seeking answers who dissected, investigated, explored, and probed into the depths of the atom believing order and organization would be found rather than disorder and disarray. It was Whitehead who rightly asked, “What was at the bottom of this conviction?” It is the theological concept of the Logos, the Word, or Reason, or Mind of God, which holds everything together. Why do things cohere and hold together? It’s because the Mind or Logos, or the Spirit of God, holds them together.
The early Christians, especially those represented in St. John’s gospel, believed that the Logos, or Reason, or Mind, of God became manifest in Jesus. Indeed, in his famous Prologue to his gospel, John said that in Jesus, “The Word [the Logos or Reason of God] became flesh and dwelled among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Earlier, John maintained this Word (or Logos) was with God, was God, and was God’s agent of creation. Thus, Jesus can emphatically say, “Have I been so long with you Philip, and you did not know me? If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”
So, because Jesus is the very Word, or Reason, or Mind of God, then He and the Holy Spirit can lead us to the truth about all things. And what is that truth, that ultimate reality, that Jesus and the Holy Spirit would have us know? It’s this: that God is Ultimate Reality, that God is order and not chaos, and that God is love. It is this conviction about Ultimate Reality which helps us probe the physical world as Alfred Whitehead maintained. It helps us believe that God is in control, that the world makes sense, that God has a purpose and plan for us, and that life is not futile. And God the Holy Spirit helps us get to the truth.
The Holy Spirit helps us get at the truth about our mental, spiritual and psychological reality. We can probe the depths about ourselves believing that God’s plan will prevail over chaos. But it’s precisely here that many of us get cold feet. Sometimes we’re afraid to look too deeply at ourselves fearing the result. Men and women in competitive situations rarely confide in each other fearing the confidential information will be used against them to win the competitive edge.
One man revealed in a conversation with his pastor that he rarely confides in his wife or confesses to her any of his failings or weaknesses, because during arguments she uses that very information to berate him and tear him down. Thankfully, other people have experienced the opposite. 12-Step Groups, such as AA, know that when they entrust their lives to a Higher Power and bare their souls to that Power, they sense they are beginning to get in touch not only with themselves, but with Ultimate Reality.
One young man told of a small group of men, from his church, that meets once a week to share whatever is on their minds and hearts. They must agree to hold nothing back and to tell no one else what they have heard and shared. The young man said it has been a powerful, rewarding experience, helping him and others to come to the truth about themselves and reality. Yet many of us, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, want to hide from God and from ourselves.
We are fearful and defensive; fearful of too much self-knowledge which might require change, and defensiveness of our immature or immoral behavior which, if known, might bring judgment and condemnation. But the ultimate truth, which is Jesus, the Logos, the Reason, or Word of God, reveals this: God is love and God uses His judgment not to destroy, but to purge, purify, and bring spiritual health. If we let Him, the Holy Spirit will bring us to the truth about ourselves and the world around us.
Lastly, the Holy Spirit helps us get the truths about ourselves to God. When John’s gospel speaks of the Holy Spirit, it speaks of the Comforter, or Counselor, or Advocate. The Greek word used by St. John is paraclete, which comes from a word which means “to call alongside.” A paraclete is one we call alongside us, to be with us, to be our advocate when we seem to be powerless to advocate for ourselves.
One church member told of an extended stay in a hospital. She was lamenting the poor service and considerable inattention to detail. Thankfully, she was able to contact the hospital’s patient advocate who was able to work with the staff on her behalf. If she had not been able to speak with the patient advocate, many of her needs and concerns would have been neglected.
Most of us, at times, feel we need an advocate or counselor at law. The ombudsman, in our local governments, has come into popularity to represent people who are powerless with business or bureaucracies. And many of us belong to various kinds of advocacy groups which help us in the presence of complex issues and powerful forces. The Holy Spirit is just such an advocate.
Jesus promised that God’s Spirit would be at our side to be our counselor and comforter. When we come to God in prayer, we have an advocate, because as Paul says, “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with signs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of the Father” (Romans 8:26-27). In other words, not only does the Spirit help us get at the truth about ourselves and the world around us, the Holy Spirit helps us to pray, even praying for us when needed.
So, the Spirit is a channel of God’s truth and reality to humanity, just as He is also a channel of humanity’s reality to God. The Spirit pleads our case before the Almighty, as does Jesus Himself, “who sits at the right hand of the Father, making eternal intercession for all of humanity” (Hebrews 7:25). If the world in its darkness and immorality is afraid to come to the Light, to the Truth, because its deeds are evil, we, as God’s children, have no need to be afraid. We have no need to fear the truth, because it is God Himself who reveals to us the truth through His Spirit.
Anytime we need help discerning the truth, either about the world around us or ourselves, we can, in confidence, come to God, knowing that He is truth, that He is love, and that through Jesus our sins and short comings are forgiven thus removing the blinders that sin causes allowing the truth to be revealed. And perhaps most encouraging of all, is the assurance that the Holy Spirit, along with Jesus Himself, is our paraclete, our advocate and counselor, assuring us that God is a God of truth and love. Today, we give thanks that in Christ we know the Truth and that God has given us His Holy Spirit who reveals all truths.
Amen