It’s a bizarre courtroom drama we’ve just witnessed: Jesus, the rabble-rousing peasant-preacher-teacher-healer-prophet, standing bound before the imperial majesty of Rome as Pilate tries to ascertain the reality of his threat to the militarily-enforced Pax Romana. It is a threat intuited even as it is misunderstood because Pilate – as was so often the case with the disciples, as is so often the case even today with us Christians – is thinking in human terms: "Are you the king of the Jews?"

It is significant that, in the face of Pilate’s questions about Jesus’ kingship: "Are you the king of the Jews?" and then, "So you are a king?" Jesus responds by deflecting the "king" allegation and instead focuses on truth: "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world: to testify to the truth."

I’m sorry our lesson this morning ends there, for Pilate responds with a question as important to all of us today as it was in the context of that bizarre courtroom drama:

What is truth?

Unfortunately the flat words on the page don’t give us a tone of voice:

Francis Bacon editorialized on this piece of Scripture when he wrote: "’What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer."

I can only wish he HAD stayed for the answer, for it is a question that continues to hang in the air today: What is truth?

We live in a world in which there are conflicting claims on "Truth" – whether it be the challenges within our own Anglican Communion, or across the "Denominational Divide" of mainline and evangelical and fundamentalist churches, or among the diversity of the worlds’ religious traditions.

The politically correct response to "truth" has often been to relativize it: you and I can have different "truths" of the same experience, and situational ethics allows truth to shape-shift according to circumstances.

Truth, which should create an underlying unity, serving to bind the richness of our diversity, has instead become the occasion of fragmentation and division.

What can we learn from Jesus about the nature of truth?

What is this "truth" to which he was born into the world to testify?

Nowhere does Jesus identify himself – not as king, not as Messiah, not as Son of God. It is others – Peter and the disciples, on the one hand, and, on the other, the demons Jesus cast into the swine, Pilate, and, at the crucifixion, the Roman centurion and the thief on the cross – who recognize in him those identities.

What Jesus does do is to unite in his person two things: God and the kingdom of God. He is constantly articulating his God-connection: "It is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons." "…for God all things are possible…" "for I tell you, God is able from these stones…" "you call me good? No one is good but God alone…" "the teaching is from God…" "I came from God…" "the one who sent me…"

And he tells us that God loves us.

He tells us that God loves us.

God loves us.

Say it in your mind.

And Jesus testifies to the Kingdom of God as a reality within our grasp – a reality made possible by God’s love for us: the kingdom has come near; it has come to us; it belongs to us; it is ours; it is the good news; we are to proclaim it; but always, always: it is near, it has come upon us, it is among us…

Jesus describes the truth of that kingdom, for we have a role in creating it – love God, love neighbor; feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted.

It is a kingdom which vanquishes, not with the power of armies, by subjugating with the sword, but by empowering, with love.

The truth of Jesus’ kingship, if so we insist on calling it, is not Pilate’s understanding of kingship; it does not rule with force, from the top down; rather, it is a kingship that facilitates a ground swell of re-creation, with love, from the bottom up.

The kingship of Jesus in the kingdom of God is not a rule foisted upon, but a way of life freely chosen.

Jesus-as-king is the nexus point in which God and humanity come together to create the Kingdom.

So – does that help us answer Pilate’s question: what is truth?

Can we hear Jesus’ testimony to that truth, listen to his voice, and belong to it?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel has said, "A religious person is a person who holds God and Humanity in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to other, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair."

I would say that therein lies the truth – of Jesus’ kingship, and of his kingdom.

It is also our truth – the truth to which we, as Christians, belong: the mandate to hold God and humanity in one thought at one time, at all times.

It is the Truth of the Heart.

"What is truth?"

Truth is that God loves us.

Truth is that it is love that is capable of changing the world.

Truth is that God’s love empowers us, gives us the ability – and the responsibility! – to bring about the kingdom of God, to be agents of its coming, to find it among us, as we connect heart to heart with others.

God has modeled that love for us in Jesus.

And, as Frederick Buechner suggests, I believe we have glimpsed the truth of Jesus – his kingship and his kingdom – in the faces and lives of people we know who have loved him and served him.

Imagine: we have glimpsed the truth of Jesus in the faces and lives of people we know who have loved and served him!

Buechner goes on to challenge us: "let each of us name their names silently to ourselves."

Let each of us name their names silently to ourselves.

"What is truth?" Pilate asks.

"Oh, we know, Pilate!" we respond. "Stay and hear us!"

Truth is that God loves us, Pilate, and against that love, all wealth and power are but illusions.

Truth is the love against which all the might of Rome is useless and death is futile!

Truth is not in the sword, but in the heart!

Nothing can overcome that love!

Truth is the Good News of God’s love for us in Jesus whom we proclaim!

Truth is here, in this room, in these lives, for ours is the kingdom!

Amen.