John 1.1-14 14 December 2008
“FULL OF GRACE AND TRUTH”
Matthew and Luke detail the story of Jesus’ birth with colorful angels and virgins, shepherds and stars. Not so in John. In John, Jesus’ birth happens on the grand stage of God’s vast design. Here Jesus’ coming is cosmic. It predates time. His arrival is even life itself. What’s at stake here in God’s sweeping rescue project is nothing less than being and non-being, light and darkness, life and death, hope and despair. God’s Son is the centerpiece of all ages. And how did we respond?
Not very well. Although God came to us in Jesus, and the world came into being through the prospect of heaven and earth communing so creatively, we missed it. Not only was God’s loving purpose lost upon us, we rejected Jesus. How did Jesus handle most rejecting him and few embracing him? The reading ends with a gloriously pregnant phrase about the human being Jesus became. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us,” John closes, “full of grace and truth.”
What is it about that phrase “full of grace and truth” that is so richly evocative? Maybe it is because we live in such a graceless age where truth is such a scarce commodity. Maybe because we sense that all of us were destined to live out of a fullness that still escapes us. This is what theologians mean by calling Jesus fully human and fully divine. He represented our fullest human stature. And what was our loftiest, noblest, and best human stature full of? Ah, grace and truth.
That is what my sermon is about this morning, the last five words of our lesson. What might our lives look like remade after Jesus’ image, full of grace and truth?
The easiest place to start in grasping a life of grace and truth is describing what it is not. And to this end, we have Rupert Murdoch and his Fox reality television. No, I’m not kidding. Earlier this year the Fox network offered a gem of televised exploitation. It was a game show entitled The Moment of Truth. It featured con-testants who had previously answered questions while attached to a lie detector. Then, in front of a TV audience, they had to answer the same questions with the polygraph “voice” indicating whether he or she is in fact really telling us the truth.
It starts off with innocently embarrassing ones like, “Have you ever admired your-self in the mirror?” But the game pushes to shadowy questions like, “Have you waited to have children because you doubted that your wife would be your life-long partner?” The contestant answering yes to that shocked his wife. Of course, that shock is how the network gets viewers, attracts sponsors and makes money. We hardly know whether to cheer or shudder as contestants answer correctly. Some see such truth-telling as positive, as getting to the bottom of things. I offer it as contrary to what John means in describing Jesus as “full of grace and truth”.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who left a comfortable tenured posi-tion in
As Bonhoeffer was grilled and interrogated in Flossenburg, and not ratting out his fellow conspirators, he pondered what was truth and what was lie. He wrote this up in an unfinished essay. Whether Paul the Apostle, Martin Luther King, Jr., or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it is striking how much strong theology was written in prison.
Bonhoeffer traces the case of a young boy who is asked by his teacher in front of other students, “Is it true your father comes home drunk?” In fact, that boy had endured occasions when his father had arrived inebriated. But accused by his teacher before his peers, the boy insistently denied his father’s drunkenness. Bonhoeffer remarks, “One could call the child’s answer a lie; all the same this lie contains more truth—i.e. it corresponds more closely to the truth—than if the child had revealed his father’s weakness before the class.” Even more boldly, Bonhoeffer asserts, “It’s the teacher alone who is guilty of the lie in this instance.”
Why did he say that? The truth is children and adults occupy different worlds. That must be respected. The teacher missed this in grilling the boy about his fa-ther’s drinking problem. In a word, we can’t get at truth with untruthful questions.
Some imagine themselves friends of the truth by broadcasting painful secrets of others. That Fox show The Moment of Truth is of this mind. But there is no grace in such truth. I recall hearing the great Jungian analyst Marie Louise von Franz address
As we enter the mystery of life in grace and truth, we deal in shades of paradox rather than simple black and white. Again, it is easier to recognize the lack of grace and truth than to identify the positive examples. But let me try with a story.
An
Just before the curtain rose, a woman in the audience started making her presence known inappropriately. This overweight, aged woman wearing a blue-print dress, began yelling for no discernible reason, “Start the show! Start the show! I want to see Dorothy MacGuire. I love Dorothy MacGuire.” Not surpris-ingly, the people in the surrounding seats abandoned them, not wanting to be associated with this madwoman. Ushers and the house manager descended upon her, trying to reason with her. They tried to calm her, but she pulled back from them and protested, “I want to see Dorothy MacGuire! Start the show!”
You can imagine, after initial moments of shocked silence had worn off, people in the theater decided they had a maniac in their midst. Things began to get ugly. I mean, these are New Yorkers, right? They booed the old woman. They laughed derisively in her face. Someone upstairs shouted, “Throw her out now. We don’t have to listen to her.” The woman turned and faced her detractors. “All I want is to see Dorothy MacGuire. Let me do that and I’ll leave.” What did that bring but more catcalls, more contempt, more booing. The setting teetered on utter chaos.
So did the police come, get the facts, and haul off this old fool to the ringing ap-plause of this mob? No, nothing like that. Miss MacGuire herself appeared from behind the curtain. She crossed the stage to where the woman sat. With poise and kindness, the actress extended her hand to her. Quietly, the old woman took MacGuire’s hand and was led out. But as they reached the exit, MacGuire turned back to the audience, “I’d like to introduce you to a fellow human being.” With that she stilled and silenced that theater. Yes, even impudent New Yorkers.
So what do we need to know about a life full of grace and truth? How about this: the truth is bigger than factual, objective utterances to be judged right or wrong. The truth is embedded in a narrative, a web of relationships, a context. Would someone call Fox television and inform them? So as a six year old asks, “Where do babies come from?” we are not obliged to elaborate with lengthy gynecology.
How can we tell if a question is untruthful? I’m so glad you asked. A question is untruthful when it destroys relationships. I cannot tell you how many conflicted married couples I have counseled where both parties were speaking the truth, yes, or some semblance of the truth at least. But they were using it like a club over each other’s heads. Wielded as a weapon, any truth ceases to remain true. This is why Paul is so hard on the seemingly mild pastime of gossip about others. Gossip poses as getting to the bottom of things. But it seeks to tear down others. To live lives of grace and truth we must notice wherever the truth cuts and tears.
Jesus was so direct on many occasions. But he meted out truth according to the moment, the circumstance, the context. That’s where the truth lives, friends, not as abstract principle, but in the concrete exchanges of daily living. I am wary of people who say, “I had to tell her off because, well, of the principle of the thing.” I have learned to suspect myself when I mount up on that declarative high horse. Spiritually, it is entirely possible to speak factually and utterly fail to tell the truth. Do you know what I mean by that? If so, you’re close to Jesus’ grace and truth.
Yes, we must be factually accurate, that always matters. Is this the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? But the relational side is no less essential. Am I being true to this person in saying what I say and how I say it? Is it fair and helpful? Does it build up and not tear down? Beyond is it true? as Jesus’ follow-ers, we also ask, am I being true to him or her? Truth is objective and subjective. Asking both questions--one more of the head, the second more of the heart--is how we fold grace into truthfulness as we seek to become truthful, loving people.
A missionary told of how she was once describing the truthful, loving character of the Christian God to a group of her Chinese sisters. As she ramped up her holy enthusiasm, picturing this God, very honest yet also generous to the sinful and suffering, one of the Chinese sisters said to her neighbor, “Haven’t I often told you there ought to be a God like that?” Jesus will be born sooner than we know. He came so that there might be people like that. We are all candidates. Look to the God who honored us with his Son. See his grace and truth and find your own. Amen.
