Fiction and Truth
Christmas 2c, John 1:1-18; January 3, 2016
Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. Years ago, there was a magazine, "The Wittenberg Door". One of the most popular sections in the Door was titled, "Truth is Stranger Than Fiction". That section was always interesting. If the Door was still publishing here are some of the items that likely would have been highlighted this month:
PROUD GUN CARRYING CHRISTIANS POPULATE TEXAS CHURCHES.
MANY REFUGEES TURNED AWAY BY COUNTRIES ORIGINALLY LARGELY POPULATED BY REFUGEES.
BILLIONS STARVE WHILE MILLIONS JOIN WEIGHT WATCHERS.
Truth is often stranger than fiction.
In any case, here we are at church. Now we are hearing words about a Word becoming flesh. This Word is proclaimed as truth.
Ah yes, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Thanks be to God!
Although fiction often attempts to convey reality and sometimes does so successfully, fiction also experiences limitations. At its best fiction attempts to penetrate the human heart. Again, sometimes it does so successfully. But at other times people resist. In Biblical terms, we can harden our hearts, and experience in the face of fiction mere entertainment.
Don't we already have enough entertainment? From soap operas, to professional wrestling, to eating contexts – enough already!
There is the ever present reality – and the truths of our reality. This is a new year. Many of us make resolutions as the new year dawns. Whatever the year or its newness, suffering and death are part and parcel of our reality. At the same time healing, birth and new beginnings are part of our reality, part of our truth. To be sure, being human includes significant amounts of messiness, of unpredictability. But so too do wonder, awe and amazement mark our human fabric.
All of this is brought to my mind by spending time yesterday at Boundary Bap Cemetery. Walking across those beautiful grounds, reading the headstones, waiting to be with a family I deeply care about as they were readying themselves to bury their mother and grandmother – I thought again of how important it is to be honest about truth and fiction.
The author of John's Gospel faces this reality in amazing ways. At the conclusion of today's lesson he writes, "No one has seen God." Part of that seems so obvious. After all, God is Spirit. We cannot see spirit. But part of that statement is also difficult for us to comprehend in terms of faith. One of the best known proverbs to the English language is, "Seeing is believing".
In this new year, some may say, "Who cares?" Who cares if there is a God? We in North America have the good life. We have so much stuff. We experience so many opportunities. In some ways the world is our 'oyster'. From Hawaii, to Cancun, to Europe, Australia and New Zealand, we enjoy possibilities for leisure, exploration and learning, that none of our grandparents could imagine. But in order for that to happen many of us work more hours than our forefathers or foremothers and certainly experience a far greater geographical separation from even our nuclear families than most of them did. This too is part of our truth.
But limitations remain. We are mortal. We know, we experience illness, suffering, death and incredible loss. We know brokenness. Cutting words are spoken or relayed by a look. Harmful actions are taken. Helpful actions are omitted. Promises are broken. Many people are hurt. Sometimes we are among them.
In those moments we begin to glimpse a larger truth. We do need help. We need help from beyond ourselves and even our collective gifts of expertise, technology, a myriad of abilities.
The author of John's Gospel knows this. He writes, "It is God's only Son, who is close to the Father's bosom, who has made him (God the Father) known."
It's an audacious claim. It's a claim we need to hear again and again and again. It's a claim we need to ponder in our hearts and minds.
God's only Son, close to the Father's bosom, right where he can be nurtured. It is this only Son of God who reveals God to us. Yes, I said, revealed. And I meant in ways that we can know, experience, have intimate knowledge of. God and us. Through this Son we are made children of God, drawn near to God's own bosom. Is this too good to be true? Truth sometimes is stranger than fiction.
So, I invite you – no, I exhort you this year to look and see. Listen and hear! Look and see, listen and heart, this only Son of God. In Him is life and light. From turning water into copious amounts of wine at a wedding, to walking with a Samaritan woman (one whom he was never to speak to) at a well and leading her to new life, to telling his disciples in many ways that his life, love, suffering and death are to be the way of new life for all his followers, Jesus shows us God.
Not only that. There's more! Jesus calls us to follow him. We are to serve as He has come to serve. In such following is life – both for us and for the world. Even in the midst of all our limitations, the information and human experience that might lead us to think that this can't be true – He is truthful. Indeed in Jesus we see that truth is stranger than fiction. Love is stronger than hate. As powerful as death is (and it is!) – death bends its knee t the One who himself suffers and dies, but on the third day is raise.
A blessed New Year to you and to those whom you cherish from the One who is life and light who shows us God the Father and calls us as we are, warts and all to follow Him. Here's a truth to live. Amen.