What Is Truth?

Each year as we gather for the Readings for Holy Week services, I find that one or two verses stay with me for days and weeks after Easter.  This year it has been Pilate’s probing question during his interrogation of Jesus, “What is truth?” (John 18:38a)

Indeed, what is truth?  It is a question which is as relevant and urgent today as it was two thousand years ago.  When called to testify at a trial, one is required to swear or affirm to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  Is truth limited, then, to statements that are admissible in a court of law?  Hardly.  There are many things we know in our lives which cannot be proven true or false by the standards of our justice system.

Neither is truth simply the recitation of facts.  To be truthful facts must be accurate; but without context, plain facts can be deeply misleading.  As an example, consider the old Cold-War-era joke regarding a foot race between the top U.S. runner and his counterpart from the U.S.S.R.  The American won the race.  The next day the Soviet newspapers reported that their runner had come in second, and the U.S. runner had finished next to last.  The facts are accurate.  The manner of stating them is contrived to convey a false understanding of the results of the contest.

The Beatitudes

The Gospel reading for the last Sunday in January was Matthew 5:1-12, the passage which is generally referred to as The Beatitudes.  The title comes from the Latin word “beatus/-a” which means “blessed” and reflects the first word of nine of the twelve verses, sayings of Jesus which begin “Blessed are …”  It’s a beautiful and familiar section of scripture, and our worship leaders built the whole service on it.  The minister preached on it.  The choir sang a setting of it from the Russian Orthodox tradition.  The hymns echoed the thought.  It was a good reminder that in the midst of the chaos of the present time, we are all blessed children of God.

In the days following the service, I continued to ponder the Gospel lesson, and in doing so, recalled that there is another version of The Beatitudes recorded in the Gospel of Luke.  Unlike the very familiar reading from Matthew, we rarely, if ever, encounter the Lukan version in worship.  Comparing the two is an interesting exercise.

Shouting Defiance and Hope

The seed of the idea was planted in a Facebook conversation.  In response to the link to my latest letter to the editor of the Lancaster newspaper, a friend commented “shouting defiance and hope.”  I recognized the phrase immediately as coming from the song “Compassion Piece” by Carolyn McDade and replied that, in the coming months, that would be my theme song.

A few days later, as I drove into Lancaster to meet another friend for lunch, the final page of the song was humming in my mind.  “I ask you, will compassion walk past shadows deep and many miles long, shouting defiance and hope?”  That evoked anticipation of the thousands of women planning to march in Washington and other cities on the coming Saturday, shouting defiance of the bigotry, hatred, and abuse that marked the actions of the incoming administration, and hope that women and men, children and elders, would rally to build a nation grounded in justice, equality, and embrace of diversity.

What God Showed Up?

On Christmas Day our congregation worshiped by praying the Christmas liturgy followed by a service of Lessons and Carols adapted from the historic Service of Nine Lessons and Carols presented each Christmas Eve by the choir of Kings College, Cambridge, England.  In our slightly shortened version, seven scripture lessons tell of the Incarnation in the birth of Jesus.  A familiar Advent or Christmas carol is sung in response to each lesson.  The entire service is a moving declaration of the foundation of the Christian faith – Jesus, the Christ, was born among us and recognized by those who heard the good news as Immanuel, God with us.

A few days after Christmas I saw a post on Facebook quoting the Rev. Franklin Graham as saying that Donald Trump’s win was the answer to the prayers of many: “Trump won because ‘God showed up.’”  I found this troubling because what I have learned of Trump’s words and actions so far seems to be at odds with the God who is described in the liturgy and scripture lessons we had read in church just two days before.  Thus I undertook a comparison.

Demand Honesty; Preserve Our Republic

I wrote the following letter to the editor on 11/29/2016. It was published in the 12/09/2016 print edition of LNP, the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, daily newspaper.

How do we live as a nation among nations with a Head of State whose word means nothing?  To Trump down is up, dark is light, the grass is purple, and the sky is orange.  Then tomorrow he will contradict everything he said today and declare that he never said anything different.  Truth means nothing to him.  Facts are irrelevant.

He has said that he will pull the U.S. out of the Paris Accords on Climate Change.  He has named climate change deniers to critical positions on his staff.  On Sunday (11/27) his prospective Chief of Staff Reince Priebus stated that Trump “has his default position [on climate science], which most of it is a bunch of bunk.”  His disregard for the basic principles of science is stunning in its ignorance.

Trump’s words and actions are the tactics of an abuser.  They threaten the safety and well-being of our country and of our world.  The worst of the damage resulting from his inaction on climate change will not become evident until after he leaves office.  The harm to our international relationships will be much more immediate.  Our allies will lose trust in our ability to keep our word and to fulfill obligations.  They will quite likely diminish or withdraw their support and cooperation.  Our adversaries will delight in the uncertainty, taking advantage of the confusion and mistrust to further their own ends with little restraint.

We must be vigilant.  We must refuse to normalize Trump’s behavior.  We must demand honesty in our government. We must struggle in whatever way we can to preserve our republic and to insist that all our elected officials respect and adhere to the provisions of our Constitution.  The generations coming after us deserve no less.

 

Florence Foster Jenkins

Florence Foster Jenkins.  She was a wealthy heiress, New York socialite, avid patron of the musical arts … and possessed the most excruciatingly unmusical singing voice ever heard on the stage of Carnegie Hall.  I first heard that voice around 1960, coming from the grooves of a 78 rpm record owned by my violin teacher.  By that time, less than twenty years after her death, her story was already laden with legend and myth.

The recordings were played for comedy value.  The picture that emerged of the singer was that of a deluded coloratura wannabe, rich enough to buy her way into a recording studio and ultimately into Carnegie Hall.  But it is perhaps precisely because she was so stupendously awful that interest in her has never waned.  Eight of the nine songs that she recorded in the Melotone Studio, including the one that I heard at my teacher’s home, were released on vinyl in 1962 and later on CD.  Several of those songs are now available on YouTube.

The Sin of Slavery

In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last month, Michelle Obama spoke with poignancy about the fact that she, the descendant of slaves, was now living in a great mansion built by slave labor. “That is the story of this country, the story that has brought me to this stage tonight, the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters—two beautiful, intelligent, black young women—playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

Her speech was an acknowledgment of where we as a country have been and a recognition of how far we have come.  Sadly, it was met almost immediately by some who objected to any mention of the legacy of slavery, and by others who questioned the truth of her words.  Researchers countered the latter with clear evidence.  The White House and the Capitol building were constructed with both slave and paid labor.  Though records are spotty, and it is not possible to determine precisely what percentage of the work was performed by slaves, there is documentation of 385 payments made to slave owners for “Negro hire” (a euphemism of the day for the rental of slaves) between the years 1795 and 1801 by the commissioners in charge of constructing public buildings in the District of Columbia.