Sermon
The Search for Truth
The Rev. Jack D. Bryant
First
O me, man of slack faith so long,
Standing aloof, denying portions so long,
Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused
truth,
Discovering to-day there is no lie or
form of lie, and can be none,
but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon
itself,
Or as any law of the earth or any natural
production of the earth does.
(This
is curious and may not be realized immediately, but it must be realized, I feel
in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest, and that the
universe does.)
Where has fail'd a perfect return
indifferent of lies or the truth?
Is it upon the ground, or in water or
fire?
or in the spirit of man?
or in the meat and blood?
Meditating among liars and retreating
sternly into myself, I see
that there are really no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents
itself and what has preceded it,
And that the truth includes all, and is
compact just as much as space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in
the amount of the truth--but that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate any
thing I see or am,
And sing and laugh and deny nothing.
Second
Almost every sect, that has ever been,
makes Christianity rest on the personal authority of Jesus, and not the
immutable truth of the doctrines themselves, or the authority of God, who sent
him into the world. Yet it seems
difficult to conceive any reason, why moral and religious truths should rest
for their support on the personal authority of their revealer, any more than
the truths of science on that of him who makes them known first or most
clearly.
Third
You shall know the truth and the truth
shall make you free.
Sermon
You shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free. Those words are
from the gospel of John. They are
burdened with a theological significance peculiar to Christianity. Personally, I do not accept the meaning
intended by the author – but I accept the words, I love the words. You shall know the truth and the truth shall
make you free. I believe the quest for
truth – the divine impulse that leads men and women to seek, to question, to
explore – is part and parcel of what makes us human. And I believe the quest is as important – if
not more important than what we find. As
Clarence Darrow said, “The pursuit of truth shall set you free – even if you
never catch up with it.” That is why I
like that phrase in our invocation, “to seek the truth in love.” We do not claim that we have the truth – we
assert the obligation to seek the truth.
And most importantly, we affirm the obligation to seek the truth in
love. It is the search for truth – the
search for truth in love – that I want to talk about this morning. I do so as part of the series of sermons that
I am preaching on the words of our invocation:
Love is the spirit of this church and service is its law. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth
in love, and to help one another.
The search for truth is a
precarious quest because truth has an elusive quality. One honest person’s truth is another’s
error. Even if one finds it, one may not
recognize it. And if one does recognize
it, that doesn’t mean one will want it.
Truth is inconvenient as often as it is helpful. As Winston Churchill said, “Man will
occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself
up and continue on.” Or worse, one finds
the truth, but uses it not in the spirit of love, but to hurt another. “A truth
that’s told with bad intent,” said William Blake,
“beats all the lies you can invent.”
That is why I believe the search for truth must be conducted in the
spirit of love, because it is not enough to discover truth, for truth has too
often been misused, too often been turned into a weapon that serves evil just
as readily as it does the good. The
process of how one searches for and uses the truth is as important as the truth
itself.
I believe the search for
truth begins with one simple idea. I
don’t know everything. That’s difficult
to admit. When I was a lawyer I didn’t
do much trial work, but when I did I discovered a common human trait: People want to have the answer to
questions. Time and again I saw people
display physical distress at not having the answer. I would have to tell people that it was okay
not to know. I had to do this because
all too often I witnessed people conjure answers out of thin air rather than
admit they didn’t know. There are, of
course, advantages to this if one is not too concerned about ethics.
The same thing happens in religion. People are eager to declare that they know
with absolute certainty the mind of God.
They know exactly what happened two thousand or even five thousand years
ago. They have a literal, word-for-word
knowledge of the truth of events that happened in languages they can’t read, in
places they have never visited, and in cultures they don’t understand. The knowledge they claim is so perfect that I
don’t know how they distinguish themselves from God. I prefer the wisdom of Andre Gide: “Believe those who are seeking the truth;
doubt those who find it.”
That attitude is probably
behind the saying, “Question authority.”
I grew up with that saying. I
think every adolescent knows it.
Unfortunately, I was an adult for many years before I learned it is only
half of what one is supposed to know.
The full statement is, “Question authority – and listen to the answer.” It’s amazing how much other people know –
especially authority figures. There may
even be something you can learn from me – maybe.
That statement leads me to an important
issue. The invocation at the beginning
of our service speaks of a covenant. It
says, “This is our great covenant,” and part of that great covenant is “to seek
the truth in love.” Covenants are about
relationships. Like the covenant of
marriage, the “great covenant” of our invocation speaks to the nature and
quality of our relationships with one another – of each one of you to the
person sitting beside or behind or in front of you. It is the language of relationships. It says that our search for truth is not a
solitary journey. It is something we do
together. It is a journey on which we
must rely on one another. I believe to
do so, to realize that truth is not a solitary pursuit but an exploration of
our relationships with one another is to discover the truth of the poet:
And that each thing
exactly represents itself and what has preceded it,
And that the truth includes all, and is
compact just as much as space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in
the amount of the truth--but that all is truth without exception;
And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing
I see or am,
And sing and laugh and deny nothing.
“And sing and laugh and deny
nothing.” In particular, I believe one
should not sing and laugh and deny another – for some part of the truth resides
in every soul – even though no soul can contain all of the truth. The person we love, the person we dislike,
the person we hate, the man or women we do not know – every person is a part of
the whole. Even the lies that are told
contain part of the truth. The words
that heal one’s soul and the words that strip it bare all contain part of the
truth.
That is why our church is
not a congregation of disciples. You are
not asked to accept a discipline of truth, a discipline that includes some and
excludes others on the basis of what they believe. You are not asked to be a follower. Rather, our church is a bridging community, a
place where people are challenged and enabled to build bridges to one another,
that each person might learn something of the truth from the other, that each
person might in turn teach something of the truth to the other.
That is why we speak in this
church of the free pulpit and the free pew.
It is not my task to instruct you in proper belief. I am not hired to do that. In fact, I’m not hired at all: I am called – called to live with you in
right relationship – and part of that right relationship is to speak the truth
in love as best I know it from this pulpit on Sunday mornings. I am not hired to tell you what you want to
hear, I am called to share with you the struggle of my own heart, of my own
search for truth.
The newspaper writer and
editor H.L. Mencken once said, “A journalist’s job is to comfort the afflicted
and afflict the comfortable.” I’ve heard
it suggested that that is also the task of the ministry. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it is true of either
journalism of the ministry. There are
some who do believe it. Turn on what
used to be AM radio and most of what you hear is people afflicting one
another. They know the truth. They believe that “error has no rights.” They believe anyone who disagrees with them
is not just wrong, but not worthy of respect.
They use their belief in what is true to justify screaming and shouting
and vilifying others. And it’s not just
on AM radio: it’s on television, in our
newspapers, and in daily life. This
week, for example, there were two letters to the editors attacking Lynn
Schusterman for offering a Ten Million Dollar donation for the public good if
the citizens of
How different is the free
pulpit and the free pew. Standing in
this free pulpit, I am neither hired nor called to afflict you. That doesn’t mean that on occasion I may not
say something that afflicts you, but that is never the purpose of the free
pulpit. Its purpose is to allow a person
to open his or her heart in order to build bridges to those in the pews. Those in the pew are, in turn, obligated not
to believe, not to agree, not to become my disciples or anyone else’s disciples
– but to be challenged to think for themselves, to
join in the quest for truth. And where
there are disagreements, to engage in discourse and dialogue with one
another. Our mutual obligation is to
listen to one another – not necessarily to agree with one another. I believe the exchange of ideas that comes
out of that kind of conversation is essential to the search for truth in
love.
My own search for truth has
led me down paths I never expected. Not
all of them have been easy. But I’ve
glad I’ve walked them. They have led me
to some ideas, some truths – or at least partial truths – that I hold
dearly. These are some of the truths
that I believe.
I believe in the truth of
love. I believe with all my heart that
Viktor Frankl grasped a fragment of genuine truth when he said, “love is the
ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.” I believe with him that salvation “is through
love and is love.”
I believe that the past is
not prologue to the present. I believe
the past is with us right now. I believe
my past – and my family – even those who have passed
on – are with me and are a part of my life.
I believe that to deny that is to deny myself, for all that is past is a
part of me.
I deny the existence of the
devil and of any God that is an entity from a supernatural world. I believe in a God that is part of this
natural world, part of the natural order.
And my devil is in my own heart and the hearts of others. Good and evil are not something out
there. I believe the truth of good and
evil is that they lie dormant within each heart.
I believe the world is in a
constant state of becoming. In every
instant, the world is created anew. Each
new world, each new act of creation is dependent upon the past and incorporates
it – but there is free will also in each new becoming. That is why I believe people can change. It is why I believe lives can be
transformed. It is why I believe in
facing the world with an attitude of hope – the hope that speaks not of future
dreams and expectations, but the hope that says one can do something right now,
in this place, in this moment, to make the world a better place. I believe to do so is to take up the
responsibility of being – from moment to moment – co-creator of the world, that
the potential within our hearts will yield the good and not evil.
I believe in the truth of
human feelings. I have known pain in my
life. I know that others have known
pain. I believe no one can know the pain
of another. I believe the pain and
suffering that a human being experiences is real – even if no one else
understands. I believe to be a child of
God is to recognize that others are also children of God and that the pain
others feel is real and genuine even if we do not experience it ourselves.
I believe that true religion
speaks to something that transcends need in the conventional sense. I believe true religion speaks not to what we
need, but to what we ought to be. If
ultimate value is truly ultimate, then it must speak to the human potential to
transcend ourselves and to be something more than what we are. We cannot become more than what we are by
just satisfying our needs, for the satisfaction of our needs can only address
what we are, not what we can be - not what we should be. The purpose of religion is not, therefore, to
turn our needs into our ends. “It is,” in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, “to convert ends
into needs, to convert the divine commandment into a human concern.”
I believe that the true seed
of religion arises out of the sacredness that lies within the individual. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Nothing is
at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” But religion rises to maturity only when we
transcend ourselves and reach out to that which is greater. By asking what religion demands of us we
deliberately choose to reach beyond ourselves -- not for gain, and not as part
of a bargaining process, but because there are some obligations that we assume
for the privilege of doing them.
And I believe that truth
need have no fear of error. As Thomas
Jefferson said, “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” And I believe truth is eternal.
This last week a member of
the congregation called me and expressed disagreement over something I had
said. I expressed my thanks for the
willingness to call me and talk about it.
Was I wrong? Was my caller
right? I don’t think that’s as important
as the conversation we had – a conversation that led us, for a few minutes, to
walk together on the search for truth.
Do you agree with what I have said here this morning? Are my truths your truths? Perhaps not. But that is not my purpose. My purpose is to speak the truth as best I
know it – and to speak it in love. Our
common purpose is to continue our journey.
Our common purpose – through an act of creation – is to transform the
words of our covenant – to seek the truth in love – into reality.
Love is the spirit of this
church and service is its law. This is
our great covenant: to dwell together in
peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.
Amen.