There was a poor older woman who lived by herself in a house with a big front porch, and often in the morning she could be seen on her porch praying, thanking God for the new day and such. One day a new neighbor moved in next door, a man who was a confirmed atheist, and it began to get on his nerves to hear the woman praying every morning.
Well, the atheist put up with his neighbor’s praying until one day he heard the woman on the porch say: “Dear God, you know that I am very poor, and I have run out of food in the house. I have nothing to eat. Please send me something.”
The neighbor decided he’d play a trick on the woman, so he went and got a big bag of groceries and the next day, early in the morning before the woman got out on the porch, he put the bag of groceries right by the door, and then hid around the corner to see what would happen.
After a little while the woman came out, saw the food, and started to thank God very lavishly. At that point the man stepped out from around the corner and said: “You silly person. There is no God, and God didn’t provide that food. I did. What do you think about that?”
Not missing a beat, the woman said: “God, now I know that everything said about you in the Bible is true. You are great and powerful beyond measure! You not only provided food for me—you got the devil himself to buy it and deliver it!”
I think that today we might reflect on that idea of truth, truth in the Bible and truth in our lives. In our Gospel reading we start off with the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. Luke doesn’t start with a theological discourse, as John does, or with a genealogy, like Matthew. He doesn’t leap right into the narrative like Mark, who starts with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism.
Luke starts off by emphasizing the truth of the information he is about to give, that he has investigated it, checked it out. He asks that Theophilus, and we, “realize the certainty of the teachings.”
The Greek word that Luke uses which we translate as “certainty” is “asphaleia”—from which we get a word we use all the time. You drove on it and parked on it— “asphalt.”
Luke wants us to know that what he has to tell us is solid, certain, true—something on which you can stand with assurance, like asphalt.
Of course, our faith rests on the idea that what we read about Jesus in the Bible is the truth, not something made up after the fact by his followers in order to sell a religion. In his letters Paul repeatedly emphasizes that he is telling the truth about Jesus, as do John, Matthew and Mark—about Jesus life, death and resurrection, and about His promise of eternal life for us.
If this isn’t true—if Jesus is just another good teacher— “we are of all mem most to be pitied,” as Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians.
So, is what the Gospels tell us true?
The idea of truth itself seems very much under attack these days. We live in a world of “fake news,” where someone can say one thing one day and the opposite the next without concern. Lying seems to have been raised to a high art form, and folks seem comfortable justifying that by suggesting that truth, like beauty, is somehow just in the eye of the beholder- -that your “truth” may not be my “truth”—and so that truth does not really exist at all.
We should recognize that this phenomenon is nothing new. Eighty years ago Winston Churchill complained about being the target of “false news.” You can go back to the time of Jesus’ trial, when in John’s Gospel Pilate asks Jesus if He is a king, and Jesus says: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
Pilate’s response is: “What is truth?”
There have always been people who want to deny reality when reality does not fit their purposes. But we know that reality exists, and not just in our imagination. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Gravity exists. The Allies landed on the shores of Normandy on June 6, 1944. And yes, we landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, regardless of what some silly people say.
There is such a thing as truth.
OK, some folks will concede that general point, but they will say that they can’t see how what is in the Gospels falls into the category of truth. Of course, the historical evidence that Jesus existed at the time and place that the Gospels say He did is pretty overwhelming, so folks won’t attack the fact of Jesus existence.
The attack on the Gospels—on the truth, the “asphaltness” of what Luke and the others say—tends to be one that minimizes Jesus, that makes Him a wise man, and great teacher, but nothing more. No miracles, no resurrection, nothing that sets Him apart from Buddha or Confucius, for example.
Thomas Jefferson was such a person. If you go to Monticello, Jefferson’s home, you can see his Bible, from which he has carefully cut out all the miracle stories. He just didn’t believe the truth of that aspect of Jesus, that He could work miracles, that He rose from the dead.
Now I don’t have a video of Jesus’ life which I could show you to establish that Luke is right, that the Gospel is true. And even if I did there would be people who would say the video is somehow not “true.”
But I can say that it is hard to explain the dramatic rise of Christianity from an obscure spot on the edge of the Roman Empire unless something truly divine happened. And the Gospel stories have all the hallmarks of true stories, including the occasional inconsistencies (which would have been edited out if people were really trying to make something up) and the sometimes-less-than flattering portrayal of the disciples and others.
Nor can we explain the dramatic impact Jesus has had on the lives of believers throughout history, and has today, unless the Gospel stories are true.
I think we can believe him when Luke says he’s checked it out and the stories are true.
And I think in a time of skepticism, of dishonesty, of questioning the very existence of truth, we can hold on to this: Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and those who “believe in Him, even if they die, will have eternal life.”
Truth
Homily on Luke 1: 1-4; 4: 14-21
There was a poor older woman who lived by herself in a house with a big front porch, and often in the morning she could be seen on her porch praying, thanking God for the new day and such. One day a new neighbor moved in next door, a man who was a confirmed atheist, and it began to get on his nerves to hear the woman praying every morning.
Well, the atheist put up with his neighbor’s praying until one day he heard the woman on the porch say: “Dear God, you know that I am very poor, and I have run out of food in the house. I have nothing to eat. Please send me something.”
The neighbor decided he’d play a trick on the woman, so he went and got a big bag of groceries and the next day, early in the morning before the woman got out on the porch, he put the bag of groceries right by the door, and then hid around the corner to see what would happen.
After a little while the woman came out, saw the food, and started to thank God very lavishly. At that point the man stepped out from around the corner and said: “You silly person. There is no God, and God didn’t provide that food. I did. What do you think about that?”
Not missing a beat, the woman said: “God, now I know that everything said about you in the Bible is true. You are great and powerful beyond measure! You not only provided food for me—you got the devil himself to buy it and deliver it!”
I think that today we might reflect on that idea of truth, truth in the Bible and truth in our lives. In our Gospel reading we start off with the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. Luke doesn’t start with a theological discourse, as John does, or with a genealogy, like Matthew. He doesn’t leap right into the narrative like Mark, who starts with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism.
Luke starts off by emphasizing the truth of the information he is about to give, that he has investigated it, checked it out. He asks that Theophilus, and we, “realize the certainty of the teachings.”
The Greek word that Luke uses which we translate as “certainty” is “asphaleia”—from which we get a word we use all the time. You drove on it and parked on it— “asphalt.”
Luke wants us to know that what he has to tell us is solid, certain, true—something on which you can stand with assurance, like asphalt.
Of course, our faith rests on the idea that what we read about Jesus in the Bible is the truth, not something made up after the fact by his followers in order to sell a religion. In his letters Paul repeatedly emphasizes that he is telling the truth about Jesus, as do John, Matthew and Mark—about Jesus life, death and resurrection, and about His promise of eternal life for us.
If this isn’t true—if Jesus is just another good teacher— “we are of all mem most to be pitied,” as Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians.
So, is what the Gospels tell us true?
The idea of truth itself seems very much under attack these days. We live in a world of “fake news,” where someone can say one thing one day and the opposite the next without concern. Lying seems to have been raised to a high art form, and folks seem comfortable justifying that by suggesting that truth, like beauty, is somehow just in the eye of the beholder- -that your “truth” may not be my “truth”—and so that truth does not really exist at all.
We should recognize that this phenomenon is nothing new. Eighty years ago Winston Churchill complained about being the target of “false news.” You can go back to the time of Jesus’ trial, when in John’s Gospel Pilate asks Jesus if He is a king, and Jesus says: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
Pilate’s response is: “What is truth?”
There have always been people who want to deny reality when reality does not fit their purposes. But we know that reality exists, and not just in our imagination. The sun rises in the east, sets in the west. Gravity exists. The Allies landed on the shores of Normandy on June 6, 1944. And yes, we landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, regardless of what some silly people say.
There is such a thing as truth.
OK, some folks will concede that general point, but they will say that they can’t see how what is in the Gospels falls into the category of truth. Of course, the historical evidence that Jesus existed at the time and place that the Gospels say He did is pretty overwhelming, so folks won’t attack the fact of Jesus existence.
The attack on the Gospels—on the truth, the “asphaltness” of what Luke and the others say—tends to be one that minimizes Jesus, that makes Him a wise man, and great teacher, but nothing more. No miracles, no resurrection, nothing that sets Him apart from Buddha or Confucius, for example.
Thomas Jefferson was such a person. If you go to Monticello, Jefferson’s home, you can see his Bible, from which he has carefully cut out all the miracle stories. He just didn’t believe the truth of that aspect of Jesus, that He could work miracles, that He rose from the dead.
Now I don’t have a video of Jesus’ life which I could show you to establish that Luke is right, that the Gospel is true. And even if I did there would be people who would say the video is somehow not “true.”
But I can say that it is hard to explain the dramatic rise of Christianity from an obscure spot on the edge of the Roman Empire unless something truly divine happened. And the Gospel stories have all the hallmarks of true stories, including the occasional inconsistencies (which would have been edited out if people were really trying to make something up) and the sometimes-less-than flattering portrayal of the disciples and others.
Nor can we explain the dramatic impact Jesus has had on the lives of believers throughout history, and has today, unless the Gospel stories are true.
I think we can believe him when Luke says he’s checked it out and the stories are true.
And I think in a time of skepticism, of dishonesty, of questioning the very existence of truth, we can hold on to this: Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and those who “believe in Him, even if they die, will have eternal life.”