Sermons
"To Tell the Truth"Pastor Ken Hilston |
A few months ago, I was watching a rather small movie, "In the Land of Women." The mother finds out she has cancer and has to talk with her 9-10 year old daughter. The terribly concerned and fearful daughter asks, "does it hurt?" "Are you scared?" These are rather painful and frightening questions for a young daughter to ask, questions you really don't want to hear the wrong answer to, even if the truth hurts deeply!
The mother, trying to spare her child hurt, answers, "Most of the time I'm not scared." The daughter looks at her and wonders if it is the truth or just what sounds good for the moment. "You don't look so tough!" Clinging to their relationship and trying to make sure it will be the best it can be, the daughter confesses a few months back, she stole $20 from her purse, which all seems fairly trivial in light of cancer.
But the daughter says, "other than this, I have NO secrets from you, and you told me to always tell the truth." The mother, not catching what her daughter is trying to do, tries to soften that and says, "everyone can hold some secrets."
The daughter Page does not like that permission, a false type of forgiveness, because she replies, "no, you know now I will always tell the truth, and I know you will tell me the truth, so if you tell me, 'I'm going to be ok,' I know it is the truth. You might lie to others, but not to me. Mother, will you be OK? I have to know the truth, even if it hurts."
She is afraid of the truth, but she is more afraid of a false truth, just to make things feel good at the moment, maybe. Later, the real truth will hurt more deeply. We need to be able to trust people's word, even when the words we hear are not what we want to hear. If we cannot trust the person, and they lie to ease the pain of the moment and make it sound like things are ok, then when they tell us good news, how can we trust them? We either can trust the person, or not, whether the news is what we want or do not want to hear.
That even goes back to Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf. When his words were finally true and he was in the desperate situation, everyone still assumed he was exaggerating for the attention. You are either credible or not. Of course that is no big deal, until you really have to have people trust what you say.
Obviously the mother in the movie had to work all her life to get to a point where her daughter, in the most critical time, could believe what the mother was going to say. The mother had emphasized trust and truth, even when it would have been easier to "stretch" the truth to make things look rosier than they were. The mother had to set up her relationship so that when the crises arose, her daughter could have the trust that allowed her to ask the tough questions, whatever she felt, and expect the tough answers that were critical at that time.
Without building that trustful relationship, the mother could have said, "I'll be fine," and the daughter might have had to wonder, "is she finally telling the truth, or is this like all the other times, when I really don't know what is going on?" There are critical times when we have to be able to say, "I trust what you have to tell me!" How terrible would it be, if the mother was going to be OK, yet the daughter could not have trusted those words, worried sick her mother was dying, when she was not.
One of the keystones of the Old Testament is the first commandment, "I am the Lord your God!" Throughout the history of the faith, the Lord God worked on His covenant relationship with the people so that when life was dicey, when there appeared to be more thunderclouds than bright days, when enemies encamped around them, they could still trust, throughout all the strangeness of their wilderness journeys, "I am still, the Lord Your God, and you can count on it, because I have been faithful all along."
The Ten Commandments, really are the ten words, and here, the Lord God wants to make sure we all know, His WORD can be fully trusted, fully believed. So when He says, "when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will be with you," you can totally trust Him. What a loss, if He was there with us, but we could not trust His presence. His reaching out would somewhat be wasted on us. You can really read all of scripture through this lens: God is working with us throughout all of life, so when we really need Him, and He is there for us, we can be comforted, consoled and lifted up. All of scripture is the history of His reaching out to establish His relationship with us as totally trustworthy.
It is never enough in God's relationship with us that He just be loving and gracious. It is imperative that somehow we also can believe and trust His words, so when He does reach out to us, we can fully receive Him. And is that not like in all of our relationships, which really takes a lot of work. When we work at loving, we do it so when the critical time comes and we have to be trusted, the other person will be able to trust us. When our word to someone becomes tarnished and thin, it is hard to receive fully when the one we love, needs it the most.
Back to the movie. The husband profusely tells his wife, "we will get through this cancer together, no matter what. I will stand with you through it all." However, since she knows the husband is cheating on her, those words truly ring hollow, weak and insincere, and most of all false, even if he was no longer cheating! He lost his credibility, and when it was needed the most, it had been squandered.
Are not almost all the commandments set up to help give guidelines in all of our relationships, so that when we need others who are around us the most, they and their word and life can be trusted and counted on? Is that not how relationships and communities are set up to work? When we steal, commit adultery, lie, covet, hurt others, and disrespect authority, what can the community stand on in times of difficulty? When we cannot trust other's words, which really is their life, all we are left with is a chaos and deep abiding fear of everything. The more we as a society have to guess, and not know, nothing will go as it should.
In the Old Testament passage today from Isaiah, the Lord God is trying to bring news to His people who are in exile and bondage in Babylon for almost two generations. They are reaching out for answers. Some have simply given up and accepted their bondage as a life sentence, and have gone over to the side of the Babylonians, remember Bel and Nebob? Maybe the Babylonians will be OK? Why fight it?
The other people have asked the tough questions. "Has the Lord God given up on us? Is this the end of the relationship? Has what started with Abraham, the gift of a new people, now ended on the banks of the Euphrates River? Has the First commandment been revoked on God's part, and You are no longer our God?"
As they looked back, they had to ask themselves, are those past promises null and void, or simply never were true to begin with? Maybe what we thought was a loving relationship, was only on the surface, a thin veneer of a relationship that changes when circumstances change? Maybe God's word was only for awhile, and now no longer is in effect? As usual, the first assumption is that the Lord God is no longer the one holding up His end of the covenant agreement. Maybe His love for His people had grown cold and withered out? Maybe its His time for Him to be unfaithful?
After some of their anger, mistrust and confusion had been used up, they started to think of the other possibility? Like Page in the movie, they started to fess up, confess what they had done to damage the relationship, what made it hard to expect words of truth. Like Page, they could not trust that God would be faithful, when they had not.
How could you assume God's Word would be binding, if their words back to Him where not the truth? Knowing they had tampered with the relationship, they did not know where they stood, even though the Lord God still maintained His promises to them. When you've tampered with the relationship, it is hard to look the other in the eye and expect them to act as if the full relationship was in tact.
Partially to explain the 7th and 8th commandments to confirmands, I ask them, "if you've either lied or stolen from your uncle, how easy is it then to ask that uncle for help, pretending that everything is fine between you?" It is terribly hard to hold someone to their word, when you have reneged on your word. How could you expect someone else to hold up their end of the agreement, when you have violated your part of the agreement? How could you even approach them for help, knowing that behind their back, you have spoken ugly words about them to anyone who would listen to you?
The Lord God is throughout scripture looking for ways to try and re-convince His people of His love, despite what they have done. The offer of forgiveness throughout history is there to help mend the broken relationships and bring the people closer and closer to Him. He knows how hard it is for us to initiate that reconciliation, so He seems to always begin it.
In Is 55, God starts wooing his people again, courting, reaching out to them to help heal the breach. He wants to remind them of His constant love, that really has nothing to do with what we have done. The people of Israel are in Babylon because of their own mistakes and miscalculations. Because they have been unfaithful, does it mean the Lord God will follow suite and become unfaithful and desert them as well?
Even though we are not constant in our end of the agreement, the Lord God proclaims again His constancy and faithfulness with words as marvelous as you will find in scripture.
Isaiah 55:10-11 "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it" RSV
As constant and as natural as rain brings forth crops, and then as moisture goes back up again to repeat the cycle, so His Word goes out and accomplishes all that it sets out to do. His word holds steady. Instead of hitting us over the head or punishing us, His way to get us to trust Him, is by renewing His love to us. Boldly He promises, that His word will forever abide, and will always be the truth of the relationship.
Finally in John's gospel, the Lord God speaks the clearest of words to us to bring us back to Him, as Jesus is called God's Word! When He wants to express where we stand, and where He stands, He sent Jesus, His word of promise to us. When we want to know where we stand, we look at our Lord's unselfish love for us. The more we look at His servant life, the more we start to understand where we stand in His kingdom. If He who did not spare His own Son (Romans 8) loves us, we know that we can hold unto that word and trust it with dear life. And obviously for us, the more we hold unto our end of the covenant agreement, the easier it is to trust His words for and about us, even when all around us is dark.
(quote from LBW #504)- "Keep me from saying words, That later need recalling; Guard me, lest idle speech May from my lips be falling; But when, within my place, I must and ought to speak, And, by your spirit's might, To live at peace with all." AMEN