Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center
Feast of Gregory of Nazianzus, January 2, 2020
May God’s Word be spoken. May God’s Word be heard. May that point us to the living Word, who is Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
When you are in the ordination process, you are required to write your bishop a letter at least four times a year on what are known as the Ember Days. They were an opportunity to update my bishop on what was going on in my life- spiritually, academically, etc. While I had friends and classmates who only occasionally received replies from their bishops, my bishop was always very good at writing me back and sharing her wisdom with me. I remember in one particular exchange, I wrote her about discovering so many connections between what I was learning in my classes. She replied that is how we know the Holy Spirit is leading us to Truth.
I come back to that idea and phrase often. The idea that Truth is not understood in isolation. We understand Truth as it connects with what we already know, and we understand it best in community. I think this is really important. We cannot be sure of Truth just in our own heads. We need community - we need the questions and insights of others to fully understand what is true. I think this bears out in our own experiences. I think most of us are capable of rationalizing quite a lot of things. We can be good at convincing ourselves what we would like to believe or what we would like to be true. It is only when we share our internal process with someone whose wisdom we trust and respect that we realize that it might be possible that we are fooling ourselves or just that we are missing a key aspect or insight. Think of the ways that our minds are enlightened or new connections are made as we learn from family, dear friends, teachers, colleagues . . . sometimes even our own children!
We gain a fuller understanding of ourselves and of the world around us through relationship and conversation. While some of us are independent and driven, convinced we can learn “on our own” through a discipline of reading and research. Even then we are not really learning alone, we are learning from experts in whatever field we might be studying. It is through that engagement with others, whether they be long dead theologians or thinkers or dear companions with whom we have the privilege of in person conversations, we learn the Truth more fully because we learn from each other and together.
These days, when you can find information on the internet to agree with almost any idea or point of view, it can feel hard to know what the Truth is. Certainly it can not be said that something is true because we read it somewhere. We need to be more discerning and engaged than that. Here are some discernment criteria or questions that I find helpful. I hope they are helpful to you as well.
Does this new piece of information fit with what I know already? Does it add to, enhance, deepen my knowledge?
Does this information fit with my understanding of who God is? Does it fit with who Jesus is and what it means to walk in the Way of Love, as we have understood from our Scriptures?
Does this information build up God’s kingdom? Does it enable me and those around me to have the abundant life to which Jesus calls each and everyone of us?
The Truth that Jesus was talking about, the Truth that will set us free is not simply just new information that is based in reality. It is far richer and more nuanced than that. The Truth is that which enriches and deepens our lives and our understanding. Now, of course, you may be wondering what this all means for the reality of evil in the world. Certainly there are terrible things (violence, hatred, etc) that are all too real. People die. People are irrevocably harmed by these facts. Evil is real. There is no disputing that. But the reality of evil in the world is not the Truth. It does not set us free. It does not build up God’s kingdom or our own lives. In fact, I think one of the most helpful definitions of evil (thanks to St. Augustine) is that it is the privation (or complete absence) of good.
Evil is a force in the world that can do real damage, but it can never win out. That is the fundamental Truth we hear over and over again from our Scriptures, from our own learning and from our own experiences and relationships. The Truth is that God’s Love is more powerful than anything on earth, than anything we can do to each other. God’s love, God’s Truth always, always has the last word. And indeed, trusting in God will set us free. AMEN.
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