Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis May 1, 2005

John 14:15-21

“Living the Truth”

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” What does it mean–“Jesus is the truth”? “What is truth?” Remember, that was exactly the question the Roman governor Pilate asked Jesus when Jesus told that he came into the world to testify to the truth. We know what it means to tell the truth, but what does it meant to live the truth, or to be the truth. I hear Jesus saying, if you want to go deeper than appearances, go deeper than information and facts, and align your life with ultimate reality, with what gives it all order and meaning and value, then watch me. Listen to me. Follow me. And listen deep inside yourself too, because “God will send you an Advocate or Helper, the spirit of truth. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.” The Holy Spirit who gives us the capacity to resonate to the truth and draw power from it and get our bearings from it.

That’s why I’m here in this pulpit Sunday after Sunday. I’ve tasted enough of that dimension to know that it’s the ultimate reality–it’s somehow more real than this pulpit and my body and the things we see right here in front of us. Compared to it, we are shadows. When I am touched by it, it fills me with love, peace, joy, hope, and little flashes of wisdom. And I long to know it more, and I long for you to know it more. If we lose our connection to the truth of what’s real and of ultimate importance and who we truly are, our lives become flat, dull, lonely, and pointless, no matter how many distractions and amusements we try to fill them with. But if we live the truth of who we are and why we’re here and what God wants to make of us and this world, every day is a new adventure in our mission. Every person is an opportunity to grow in our capacity to love. Every challenge is a learning opportunity. Every pocket of darkness is an invitation to shine Christ’s light.

At our confirmation retreat this Friday and yesterday, Bonnie and I tried to help awaken our youth to a bigger truth about who they are and what their life is about than they have seen so far. I shared some of the experiences of Betty Eady, who had a hemorrhage after surgery and passed to the other side for awhile. A lot of deep truth about reality was revealed to her, and after a long period of integrating it following her recovery, she was able to talk about it and write it down so she could share this spiritual dimension of reality with others. She learned that we each come into this mortal life for a reason. Our purpose for being here varies from person to person, but for each of us the challenges and hardships and heartaches of mortality give our spirits opportunities to grow and deepen that aren’t available in the limitless spiritual realm. She says,

Although our spirit bodies are full of light, truth, and love, they must battle constantly to overcome the flesh, and this strengthens them. Those who are truly developed will find a perfect harmony between their flesh and spirits, a harmony that will bless them with peace and give them the ability to help others. . . .Whatever we become here in mortality is meaningless unless it is done for the benefit of others. Our gifts and talents are given to us to help us serve. And in serving others we grow spiritually.

Above all, I was shown that love is supreme. I saw that truly without love we are nothing. We are here to help each other, to care for each other to understand, forgive, and serve one another. We are here to have love for every person born on earth. Their earthly form might be black, yellow, brown, handsome, ugly, thin, fat, wealthy, poor, intelligent, or ignorant, but we are not to judge by these appearances. Each spirit has the capacity to be filled with love and eternal energy. At the beginning, each possesses some degree of light and truth that can be more fully developed. We cannot measure these things. Only God knows people’s hearts, and only God can judge perfectly. We see only temporary strengths and weaknesses. God knows our spirits. (Betty Eady, Embraced by the Light, pp. 50-51).

I read about a 28-year-old woman who devoted her life to living that deep truth of who we all are and why we are here. Marla Ruzicka was a 28-year-old young woman who looked like a blond California girl, but she was on a mission. With little more than a backpack and a cell phone, she would head off to the most dangerous spots on the globe, determined to bring aid and comfort to the afflicted, wherever she found them. Her mission took her to many trouble spots. But it was working with the victims of war in Afghanistan and Iraq that had the biggest impact on her.

Her close friend and traveling companion, Medea Benjamin, said, “We were all stunned when we actually saw the widows that had no way to feed their families because their husbands had been killed when a bomb fell on their neighborhood by mistake. Or a little boy who picked up a cluster bomb and had his arm blown off, and nobody was helping him get a prosthetic limb. Or people whose homes had been destroyed and were living in the cold, literally just living outside.”

Our government simply saw them as “collateral damage.” But Marla saw them as human beings who were suffering, and she believed that her country had an obligation to open its eyes to them. So she went through the war zones door to door, documenting the destruction and the suffering, working to secure compensation for the civilian casualties, and trying to get the U.S. government to establish an office or agency to collect data and respond to the neglected victims of the war.

Even though she had very little money, her reach was tremendous. She worked tirelessly over the past three years with the office of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to get millions of dollars in assistance for civilian victims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tim Rieser, an aide to the senator, said: “She came here as a sort of naïve antiwar protestor, really, and became someone who was extraordinarily effective at putting politics aside _ not trying to cast blame, but rather working with everyone from U.S. military officers to the Congress and others on how to actually help people. She was out there doing something that all of us knew was really needed, but that was too dangerous for most people to want to do, or be willing to do.”

Two weeks ago, Marla and an Iraqi colleague were traveling on the airport road in Baghdad when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy that was passing nearby. Marla and her companion’s vehicle was engulfed in flames. They both burned to death. They too became “collateral damage” of the war.

Her parents, both rock-solid Republicans, were asked they been surprised by their daughter’s intense commitment to humanitarian causes, her father said, “No. Marla’s been that way since she was young. She had this calling and she pursued it with vigor. She didn’t do it for political gain or monetary gain. She did it out of love. I think her legacy will be to forever change the attitude of the U.S. government and the U.S. military on how they deal with collateral damage.” (From article written by Bob Herbert)

Few of us have such a strong sense of mission as Marla did. Maybe our purpose is not as specific as hers, and it may be much tamer. Yet we can each move closer to living into the truth of who we are and why we’re here by fixing our eyes on Jesus, who lived and embodied the ultimate truth of God’s unconditional love for us. We watch him telling the kicked-around nobodies that God even knows when a sparrow falls to the ground, so how much more does God care for them. We see him overlooking the human labels of slave, leper, woman, child, Samaritan, Gentile, and sinner, and beaming healing, loving, light into each one, awakening them to their eternal worth. We hear him telling us to love our enemies, because they too are children of God. We watch him dying on the cross, not for the righteous but for all of us who have lost touch with God, lost touch with the truth of who we really are, lost touch with our eternal destiny. And his agonizing death is a reminder of what we are capable of doing to all the sons of God and the daughters of God when we are blind to their true nature and to ours.

But we also hear him whispering to us through the Spirit of Truth, the Advocate: “You are eternally loved. You have but to sincerely ask, and you are forgiven. Your life and your gifts can play a part in my eternal purpose to weave every strand of creation into a new kind of kingdom–a kingdom founded on reconciling love, on healing peace, on irrepressible hope.

And don’t we feel ourselves attuning ourselves to the deep truth of who we are right here at HUCC when we reach out to welcome the stranger as a new brother or sister in Christ–especially when it requires us to stretch out of our comfort zone and reach through the human barriers of race or ability or sexual orientation? That’s when we know that the truth is alive among us. And don’t we feel ourselves aligning with our true purpose when we do things like support the CROP Walk--not because we know the people it helps, but because God knows them? And don’t we find ourselves living into our life purpose when we begin seeing our families and neighborhoods and work places as mission fields and as places to deepen our capacity for love and service and develop our gifts by sharing them?

Jesus told his followers, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” When we know the deep truth of who we really are, doesn’t that set us free from our fear of rejection and loss and failure and death that haunt us in this life? When we know the deep truth of who each other is, doesn’t that set us free from the prejudices and callousness that blind us to each other’s souls? And when we know the deep truth that we are here for a purpose, doesn’t that set us free from the distractions and dead ends that bind us to ourselves?

What is truth? The ultimate truth is the sheer, liberating, life giving, reconciling, transforming Good News of God’s love. In the coming days of our lives on earth, let us know this truth. Let us live this truth. Let us be this truth that we and all people and all the world are held eternally in God’s loving embrace.