WHAT IS TRUTH? SAID JESTING TRUMP AND GAVE THE WRONG ANSWER

(a sermon by letter to the people of St.Luke’s Queen’s Park Brighton)

f I was on Desert Island Discs and was told I could only take one passage from the bible with me, and not the whole book, I’d choose

In the beginning was the word....and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

and I’ll tell you why.

In my life MUSIC has been my guiding spirit. It has brought me closer to a sense of the Divine presence than anything else. For others it’s nature, landscapes, paintings  but my point right now is that, as Charlie Parker pointed out in a rare television appearance, music speaks louder than words.

 And when music speaks, it cannot lie. The notes cannot lie. The tones and semitones in the octave can be put together to make a beautiful or a horrible sound but there is no sense in which they can be said to be dishonest. 

But what about WORDS?

Oh dear – that’s a very different story. They can be used to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (as we are required to swear when giving evidence in court) but they can easily be – and often are – used for all sorts of other purposes. To exaggerate, to conceal, to mislead, to flatter, to deceive, to insult, to hurt.  

To hurt or wound. Yes. Remember how the Letter of James Chapter 3 warns us of the power for good or evil of the human tongue. Like the rudder of a huge ship, it is a tiny part but governs which way the ship goes.

This is obviously the cue for me to lament the destructive power of social media. You bet I will !

Twitter, FaceBook and the rest enable nasty people to say nasty things about others with the shield of anonymity.

Above all “trolls”- those who get a kick out of hurling insults and stirring up trouble - can LIE with impunity. They can start ridiculous conspiracy theories with which to brainwash people (eg “’the Jews’ were behind 9/11” or “the holocaust never happened”) and accuse anybody who challenges them of being the ones who are guilty of “fake news”.

Ah now. There is the heart of the problem. We have sunk into a mire where “the truth” itself has come to mean whatever you want or prefer it to mean.

A cameo of this whole rotten business can be seen in the brief chaotic presidency of Donald Trump. Leave aside his own laughable preening and pouting ego, his psyche with the petulance of a spoilt toddler. What should worry us now is his poisonous legacy of having sullied the notion of truth.

I’ve been rewatching the admirable BBC series “The Trump story”. I am reminded that the trouble started right back at his inauguration. The videos of that event showed that the crowd which attended it was smaller than Obama’s had been. Trump’s ego couldn’t take that (talk about a sulking toddler!) and he ordered his hapless aide to declare barefacedly that this was “fake news”.

When pressed, another aide said that the President had merely presented alternative facts. What?? There are no such things. A fact is a fact and is true by definition. “Alternative fact” can only be a new-fangled synonym for LIE.

And yet, and yet. Millions of Americans apparently swallowed the lie, the alternative fact, the fake news, the conspiracy theory (call it what you will) that the postal votes cast for Joe Biden were fraudulent. 

The world is somehow going to have to get out of this moral cesspit of deceit. How? My answer as a priest is that the only sure way for every human being is to heed the words, life and example of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God.  He came and lived among us, as today’s gospel says, full of GRACE AND TRUTH.

  What a lovely combination.

*GRACE: a comeliness and beauty of human personality   coupled with the free offer of mercy and forgiveness. *TRUTH: the real thing. No fakes or alternatives. Christ’s truth is simple and pure. His words are life and spirit. He is an open book. He is honesty itself. He was and is THE WORD from all eternity and those who follow Him will never be deceived, confused, manipulated or sold a pup.

Mind you, it’s not always easy to be faithful to His word. All around us seeds are sown of doubt, half-truths, ridicule, hostility.

Whether honesty and decency can be restored to damaged American democracy remains to be seen. I pray that it may be so. I pray for Joe Biden. And I pray for all God’s children throughout the world as we battle to suppress and eliminate the coronavirus pandemic.

I pray that humanity may eventually emerge from this terrible plague, cautiously stumbling into a new dawn. No more greed, corruption, business-as-usual exploitation and blind delusion of “alternative facts”. A new dawn of mercy, compassion, tolerance, generosity and above all GRACE AND TRUTH.

Pigs may fly?

Yeah well maybe, maybe not. But don’t forget what Jesus said: Heaven and earth will pass away but my words will never pass away.