“Claiming Our Voices: Truthiness”

Luke 6:17-26

Jeremiah 17:5-10

A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley

February 11, 2007

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            I just returned from two fascinating trips, one north and one south.  The latter was to the Board Meeting of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America.  We’re a partner congregation of this organization which gathers, equips and mobilizes Baptists to build a culture of peace.  They labor with a wonderful array of peacemakers to change the world.  The 20+ board and staff gathered to do mundane things like approve a budget and revise by-laws.  But we also envisioned how we might be a more thorough and effective witness for peace in this world.  We made plans to sponsor trips to New Orleans, the First Nations people of Canada in 2007, Chiapas, Mexico and Nicaragua in 2008 and the International Baptist Peace Fellowship Conference in Rome Italy in 2009.  We made plans for the summer conference in Kentucky which will feature singer/songwriter/community organizer Si Kahn and rural poet and novelist Wendell Berry.  We heard the stories of the peace-makers and justice seekers across North America. 

My spirit was renewed.  It was not just because it was in the 40’s.  The North Carolinians complained about the relative cold.  The Canadians and the Minnesotans, on the other hand, knew better.  My spirit was renewed because of the synergy and energy around peace and justice issues.  So often we feel alone in our difficult work.  And yet when we pull together, we can do amazing things.

            On Tuesday and Wednesday, when it got up to zero degrees, I was in Mille Lacs at a meeting of the Minnesota council of churches and the leaders of the 11 tribes of the sovereign nations within the state of Minnesota.  While I was grateful for the chance to meet with these people, I was keenly aware of my presence as a member of the dominant culture.  I was aware that many of the people gathered there were from Minneapolis, working with the native peoples that flee life on the poverty-stricken reservations to become urban dwellers.  When I told people where I was from, I didn’t talk about being across the street from the University of Minnesota.  I spoke about being a block away from Heart of the Earth School, a school that educates many native people from many tribes and that I’m embarrassed to say I have only visited once.  But people did not trust me because I was a pastor or because I knew where Heart of the Earth School was.  They may never trust me.  Who can blame them?

            The history of the US is replete with violations of treaties—made in good faith by the Indian people but not so by the US.  Perhaps the most generous thing to say for the US is that their interests changed and the priorities ignored or violated Indian rights.  Too often the Missionaries and the churches served as assimilation stations where people were robbed of their culture, language and heritage along with their land.  It was, after all Thomas Jefferson who said that the best strategy to conquer the Indians was not at the barrel of a gun but through the Bible.  If you could make them docile Christians, then you could do anything you wanted.

            The words white people use sound to them like truthiness—things that sound vaguely like the truth, hold the frame of the truth, but loose with those pesky facts.

            The term, “truthiness” was introduced by Stephen Colbert on his satirical Comedy Central show where he plays a right-wing talking head.  The on-line Wikipedia says truthiness is “the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts (similar to the meaning of "bellyfeel", a Newspeak term from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). By using the term as part of his satirical routine, Colbert sought to criticize the tendency to rely upon "truthiness" and its use as an appeal to emotion and tool of rhetoric in contemporary socio-political discourse. He particularly applied it to President Bush's modus operandi in nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and in deciding to invade Iraq as well as the rationale behind online encyclopedia project Wikipedia.”

            Here’s how Stephen Colbert puts it: “Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word...It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the President because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?...Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.”

            So truthiness, while satirical, may well describe the way we approach, or run from certain facts.

            One woman told how a native group of veterans marched in the city’s Memorial Day parade.  Instead of being cheered and respected like other veterans, these people were booed and spit upon.  This happened recently.  And the worst part about it was that no one spoke out against the racism.  No one said that such behavior is beneath the people of that city.  Words are cheap.  They need to be followed up with action.  Action that is sustained, consistent and always holding respect, dignity and truthfulness as core values.

            That’s what Christianity ought to be about, don’t you think?

            The Gospel, in the hands of slick preachers, sometimes seems like truthiness.  Words get turned around.  Meanings get misrepresented or at least only partly agreed upon.

            Words like freedom

            Are we free to do whatever we want? 

            You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free is what Jesus said.  That freedom is rooted in truth.

            Words like liberty and justice for all.  That’s a great Judeo-Christian belief that is part of our pledge of allegiance.

There is liberty and justice for all as long as you are not in prison.

As long as you are not undocumented.

            As long as you’re not the wrong gender, the wrong orientation, the wrong political party.

            But  there is one that you can’t mess with.  That’s love.

            Jesus calls us to love each other

            Jesus calls us to love God with all of our heart mind, soul and strength and to love our neighbor as our selves.

Jesus even calls love us to love the enemy.

            Love pushes us beyond our petty squabbles. And seeks the truth which sets us free.

            We have a very elite club in this church.  It is the club of people who have been married for fifty years or more.  Ruby and Dale Rott, Doug and Betty Roy, Mel and Shirley Roy, Dave and Ellie Bienhoff, Thor and Faye Kommedahl, Bob and Lu Carman are all in this club.  On Friday, Don and Char Follett joined the club as well.  How do you do it?

            I bet a lot has to do with focusing on what’s important.

            It’s truth.

You need to be trustworthy with each other.

            You need to be faithful.

            You need to be loving and be committed to working out the kinks along the way.          

Do you know that the best metaphor for God is love?  Gandhi said that God’s best definition is truth.  I think that truth and love are connected.  Jesus said that we are to speak the truth in love.

            Truthiness isn’t what makes a marriage last 50 years.  Truth is what does it. Love is what does it.  It’s based on the heart, and it’s based on fact together.

            We see through truthiness.  We need real, reliable truth backed up with evidence.

            Today’s scripture comes from the Sermon on the Plain.  Matthew calls this the Sermon on the Mount. 

It’s when Jesus sets out his systematic theology.  He has already set out his mission statement in Luke 4 in his first sermon.  Quoting from Isaiah 61, Jesus said “The Spirit is upon me because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the acceptable year of God.”  

Now in one of his early sermons he lays out the life of a disciple. 

Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms in Georgia wrote that the Sermon on the Mount or the sermon on the plain without Jesus is senseless idealism, an impossible frustrating ethical assignment.  It might make you bitter and cynical because the tasks are so huge.  At the same time, accepting Jesus without the Sermon on the Mount is unreal emotional cynicism.  We need the salvific work of Jesus and we need the ethical teachings of the Sermon on the Plain.

            Jesus gives us blessings and woes.

            Jesus’ audience contained people blessed and cursed by Jesus’ words. 

Jesus is saying that you are already blessed if you are poor, because you know where your true wealth lies.  Woe to you rich who never ever see this.

Blessed are you who are hungry now for you know what you need.  Woe to those who confuse what they need with what they want.

Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh.  You have gone to the depths of your emotions, you are not in denial of the state of the world.  You are someone who has access to the full range of emotion and you live in reality.  Woe to those who never feel that, who are so numb that they can’t feel for another’s pain.

If we remember that God’s preferential option is with the poor;

If we remember that God wants the hungry to be fed and calls into question the systems we have in place that keeps the hungry from being fed;

If we remember that God wants those who weep now over their plight to dance and laugh again;

Then we will see that we are called to worry more about that than we are to worry about how much people like us.

Think about the woes: economic hardship, relationships in crisis, war, fractured families, the multiple isms of the world.

Think about the things that are blessings in your life.  What blesses you: community, jobs friendships, opportunities for service and witness, relationships that have endured over the years?

In the reading from Jeremiah, God is said to test the mind and heart of all of us. And we will be known by the fruit we bear. Jesus and Jeremiah don’t let us get away with truthiness. For God knows our hearts.  God sees through our facades.  God sees through the truthiness around us.  And in the long run, we see what works.  In the long run, we have a love that lasts and lasts.  In the long run we can build that trust with people who have lost that trust.  In the long run, the truth will set us free.  What a blessing that will be.  And what a blessing it is when we see it even now.

LeDayne McLease Polaski works for the BPFNA.  She told yesterday how she preached at a church in New Orleans.  There were 12 people in the congregation.  They gave her $125 for preaching.  The collection that day was $70.00.  She went out to lunch with the pastor and his wife and they tried to pay for her meal.  She said, “no the Peace Fellowship would pay.”  She asked how they could afford to even think to give her so much.  They said, “As long as we give, we never go hungry.”  LeDayne said she thinks about the people in New Orleans and she remembers how small her concerns really are. 

The truth is that they showed her love.

The truth is that she showed it right back. 

And it wasn’t empty words.  It was action that builds trust.

Such action and trust and reliability is in this room and in each of us whether we are single, in a new relationship, recovering from an old one or have been together for 50+ years.

Thank God, who sees into our hearts and leads us in the ways everlasting.