What is Truth? An important question given the current political climate of hatred and fear.

When I was a kid, truth was the facts: 1 + 1 = 2 or the fact that there is gravity. Then I started
learning more about the world and in college began to understand that truth is relative. What is
the truth for a comfortable, Euro-American Christian, is going to be very different from the truth
of a poor African-American in the south or an immigrant from Mexico. Ones social location
matters in answering this question. As we approach Thanksgiving for example, the history of
European immigrants to this country being fed by the local Indians would be different from what
Native Americans consider the genocide and taking of their land once the Europeans
discovered American.
Gone are the days when we could pick up a history book and say this was what happened in fact.
This is the truth. We now know we need to ask the question, From whose perspective? The
vanquished or the conqueror? All histories are written by those who won, who have the power in
the end.
What is truth? Here we are, coming to the end of the liturgical year in the church, with a week
filled with carnage in Paris as well as Beirut, Baghdad, Egypt and Mali. Here we are, turning
toward Advent. How we answer the question about truth will make all the difference in who we
are as a people of faith. Ultimately, it is a question about which kingdom claims our ultimate
allegiance: the kingdom of this worldthe principalities and powers and the myth of
redemptive violenceor the kingdom of heaven (I prefer to call it the kin-dom of heaven), the
beloved community where justice and equality reign supreme.
Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria, ISIS fanatics, dead bodies, fear mongering, huge
sales of weaponsthe question What is truth? Is far from an academic question. Lives hang in
the balance. And many loud voices are calling us to heed their truth about who we are, who
they are, and why this is happening. What is truth? The question comes to us from Pontius
Pilate, Caesars man in Jerusalem, and it is a question we ask as well.
Barbaric men, given to atrocities that make the world shiver, emerge from shadows everywhere.
They violate the values we hold dear. And they proclaim an insane justice, saying they are sent
by God the Grim Reaper, whose servants they are (not just Islamic terrorists, but Jews and
Christians have their radical fringe groups as welle.g., armies of God, etctrying to hasten
the end times so Jesus will return in a cloud of glory). They despise us, they say, for all that we
see and do, and for all we do not do and neglect to see. Their words are as ugly as their deeds.
The god they serve is quite a different god from the God of the biblical literature, who is the God
of Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. But these people are serving a god of cruelty and murder,
who values revenge and triumphs in misery. Its worth noting that the victims of these tyrants
are overwhelmingly Muslim, ordinary people they deem to be infidels. Listening to CNN this
week, I was upset with the reporter who told a local Muslim that he needed to take
responsibility for the attacksthat he should have told the authorities where the perpetrator

was, as if all Muslims are part of the same community! That would be like me knowing about
Jim Jones and the mass suicides he was planning in South America because I was a Christian
living in San Francisco where the Peoples Temple was, or that I would have known Timothy
McVeigh and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City because I grew up in
Michigan where he was part of the Michigan militia!!
Jesus says to Pilate: Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. And Islam, which
honors Jesus as a prophet, does listen to his voice, in the Quran, as one of the voices it hears.
Islam does not glory in beheadings, assassinations, or bombings. Faithful Muslims honor
submission: five times a day they bow and pray to honor God. Muslims see Allah as the creator
and source of the breath of life, and any tradition within Islam that promotes the taking of life
dishonors (or insults) life's giver.
Pilate committed barbarous acts in his service to Caesar, who was considered to be divine
because of his brutal ability to fight and win wars. And many who have called themselves
Christian have followed in Pilates footsteps. But the truth to which people who listen to Jesus
belong is never this. Jesus, who walked into Jerusalem freely, endures Pilates brutality because
Jesus serves the truth he has spoken about. The truth that life cannot be stopped by brutality and
cruelty. The truth that barbarians do not own life, that it is deaths blood and gore that drips from
their hands. The truth that Paris is still the city of Light, and the city of Art, of Lovers, of
devotion to freedom, equality and humanity.
Pilate, who looks at the world to see where the power is, can only see the absence of power in
Jesus, which is why he was going to set him free. What is truth? Truth, like God, escapes
definition, and like God, truth also escapes our control. Truth is beyond human understanding,
but we get glimpses every now and then.
Glimpses like the man whose wife was killed in the attacks in Paris saying, I will not give in to
your hate, reminding me of the families of the shooting victims in South Carolina who forgave
the killer of their loved ones so soon after the tragedy. Glimpses like the Arab Spring, or the
moderate Muslims all over the globe coming together to say Not in my namedenouncing the
terrorists the way moderate Christians have a responsibility to say NO to violence and hate in
response to the refugee crisis. Did you know more people are killed by gun violence in the
Unites States than terrorist attacks throughout the world last year? Yet how many of you are
afraid of your neighbors just because they have guns?!
Our own Stated Clerk of the PCUSA, Gradye Parsons, recently wrote that we are a world
grieving. We mourn the many deaths, not only in Paris, but also in Beirut, Baghdad, and Egypt.
Any sense of security we have had is badly compromised by these horrific events and our fear of
ISIS grows with every successful execution of its violent agenda. However, we still have a
choice as to how we respond. We must choose welcome, not fear in a time such as this. Gradye
reminded us that for decades our nation has chosen hope and welcome for those fleeing war and

persecution. Since 1975, more than 3 million refugees have found safety and security within our
nations borders. Right now, 11 million Syrians cannot go to school, tend to their land, or raise
their children in the place they know as home. They cannot do these things because they
themselves have been terrorized for far too long by numerous factions, including their own
government.
Do we choose to abandon our plan to protect these Syrians because the people who have been
threatening them are now threatening the West as well? ISIS has taken lives; they have taken our
sense of security. Do we now hand over our hope and compassion to them?
What is truth? How we interpret Scripture is one way of determining what our truth isDo we
try to usher in the end of the world by provoking a nuclear war so we can see Jesus on come
back to earth on a cloud of glory? There are some people who call themselves Christians who
are trying to do just that. There are many other apocalyptic notions in taking scripture literally
whether it is the armies of God in Christianity or the promise of 40 virgins in the afterlife for
Muslims.
A few months ago, local writer Tim Martin asked Lynn and I to give him some quotes about
interpreting the Bible literallythe dangers inherent in that as it relates to terrorism.for those
of you who missed it, Tim and his girlfriend Diana joined us here at the church when we rang the
bell for Veterans Day to be in solidarity with the Veterans for Peace. (The article should be in
todays paper)
Lynn told Tim that while not all religious fundamentalists are terrorists, it is true that all terrorists
are religious fundamentalists. They believe that they have a corner on the truth and are Gods
agents of death and destruction. But that is not someone who listens to Jesus voice of truth.
Terrorism has no religion, it is pure unadulterated evil.
Congress approved a bill Nov. 19 requiring our nations top security officials to certify that
each refugee poses no threat, despite the United States already stringent immigration guidelines.
Under the guise of security, the bill severely restricts the number of Syrian refugees able to
enter the United States. Now every Republican candidate for president has come out against accepting Syrian
refugees. Cruz and Bush have said we should only accept Christian refugees,
and when Jeb Bush was asked how exactly to prove someone is a Christian, he shrugged
uncomfortably and struggled to give any specific criteria. But Stephen Colbert, (how
many of you watch his late night comedy show?) good Catholic that he is,
had a suggestion:
If you want to know if somebody is Christian, just ask them to complete this sentence: Jesus
said I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me

something to drink, I was a stranger, and you _________And if they dont say welcomed
me in, they are either a terrorist or they are running for president!
All humor aside, consider this: the number of Syrian refugees UNHCR has referred to the US
Refugees Admission Program: 23,092. The number of Syrians the Department of Homeland
Security has interviewed since 2011 is 7,014of those 2,034 have been admitted since 2011, and
the number of Syrian refugees resettled in the US that have been arrested or removed on
terrorism charges: 0
Besides, havent we learned from our own history of knee jerk reactions to fear mongering?
What about the Jewish German immigrants turned away during WWII (according to social
media, Anne Franks parents denied entrance here..) What about the Japanese Americans put in
internment camps? We have to stop the rush to judgment, we have to be an anti-dote to fear.
After the crucifixion of Jesus, the disciples hid in fear. They locked the doors but God had
another plan. Jesus appeared to them and said, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me,
so I send you (Jn 20:21). We were not meant to hide. We were meant to walk out in hope and
compassion. . Author and peace activist Wendell Berry wrote, Healing is impossible in
loneliness; it is the opposite of lonelinessto be healed we must come with all the other
creatures to the feast of Creation. The way to end terror is to prove that those who demonize us
are wrong. We are not a heartless secular culture. We must witness to the Gospel with generous
hospitality. To hide in fear is a mistake. Fear is the ammunition of terror. Hope is the best
defense.
So as we approach this Thanksgiving, we give thanks for our blessings, we hold our loved ones a
little tighter, we let love, not hate, be our guiding light
What is truth? God is love, God created humankind in Gods imageall of humankind, not just
those of us in the West. What is truth? Jesus said those who listen to him. Nothing can separate
us from the love of God. So let us live our lives as witnesses to those who live in that truth.
Listen to the voice of Jesus: the Prince of Peace.