Honest to God

Honest to God--June 17, 2019

[Jesus said:] "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come." [John 16:12-13]

"The truth" is more than a random collection of factually correct propositions. "Springfield is the capital of Illinois. The square root of 81 is 9.  Mercury is the planet closest to the sun." And so on. Those are all true, but they are not the sum total of what truth is really about. No, "the truth" involves truth-telling about ourselves, including the kind of difficult honesty that we are usually afraid of even attempting. 

This, I think, is one of the real gifts Jesus offers to his followers--the gift of honesty made possible by the Spirit--but we tend to treat it like a white elephant we don't know what to do with.  We live in a time and a place that doesn't always regard honesty as a good thing.  Instead, we are surrounded by examples of voices who say whatever puts themselves in the best light, regardless of whether it is true or not.  We live in a culture in which "What polls well with your base?" or "What makes me look good?" are more pressing questions than "What is actually true?" and in which our public figures regularly look for someone else to blame rather than owning their own failures, mess-ups, weaknesses, or blind-spots.  We live in an era when telling a partial set of the facts isn't just acceptable--it's a survival skill for spinning the narrative for tomorrow's headlines so you can look good at the end of the day.

And, in a sense, I completely get it.  Covering over our mess-ups and weak places makes total sense if you are afraid of what people will think when they see our flaws and failings.  Of course we would want to keep hidden the things that don't show ourselves in a good light, and of course we would rather not own up to the past times we said the wrong thing or did the wrong thing, or revealed the clay in our feet, if we are afraid of what others will say when our broken places are uncovered.  Certainly--that may well just be a part of human nature as we know it, because we are all so deeply afraid of rejection.

But Jesus seems to truly think that the gift of the Holy Spirit makes a different way possible for us.  Jesus seems to believe that the Spirit makes it possible for us to risk being honest about ourselves, and honest about the way the world really is.  And for Jesus, it seems part of the reason is that he thinks (and speaks) of this Spirit as "the Spirit of truth."  That is an even richer and deeper idea in the Greek word we translate as "truth."  The Greek word is "aletheia," which more literally means something like, "not-covered-up-ness" or "the state of things not being hidden."  There is something powerfully (maybe even dangerously) personal in that wording.  It points to the many ways we do hide things about ourselves of which we have been taught to be ashamed, or to cover up truths about the world which do not fit our preconceived cookie cutter picture of reality.  The Greek notion of truth as "aletheia" isn't some nebulous noun, to be paired with "justice and the American way" as Superman's rather vague job description, but rather "aletheia" is more like an invitation to be utterly real--real before God, and real with one another.

When Jesus refers to the "Spirit of truth," he doesn't only mean that the Spirit only speaks factually correct sentences, but that the Spirit makes us into people who can tell the truth about ourselves and who can be honest and open-eyed about the world in which we live, without rose-colored lenses or other fakery. The Spirit Jesus sends is the Spirit "of truth" because the Spirit makes us able to risk showing our vulnerable spots--something that is possible only because the Spirit casts out fear from us like a demon, and assures us we are held by grace already, just as we are.  Once that much is clear and we know we are beloved no matter what, it becomes possible for us to risk being honest even about the things we are not proud of in ourselves. Grace, in other words, makes truth-telling possible.

And in fact, we are freed from having to play that no-win game of, "I didn't want to hurt your feelings, so I kept this thing a secret from you." For one, that never really works since the truth will eventually come out, and for another thing, Jesus' own example shows us that it is better to be honest, even when the thing you have to say will be difficult to hear, rather than pre-emptively deciding someone else won't be able to handle it well. I am reminded of a line from Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner where one character says that lying is really a form of theft, because deception steals the other person's right to the truth. I think something like that is what the Spirit makes possible--a community of people who owe each other the truth and who keep giving it to one another, honestly and vulnerably, because they are no longer afraid of what will happen when the truth is out. As long as a thing is secret, it has an ominous--almost demonic--power over the secret-keepers to compel them at all costs to keep it hidden. But once we can be honest with each other, the demon loses its leverage and can no longer make us do its bidding. In a sense, you could say that the Spirit of truth, whom Jesus sends, casts out those old demons--like the book of First John says, "Perfect love casts out fear." And that's the thing--we are so completely loved, we no longer have to be ruled by fear--not even by fear of the truth.

That is really a unique possibility for us in the Christian community: we can be the group of people who don't need to put a particular spin on things, who don't need to be afraid of others seeing our mess-ups.  We can be the group of people who don't have a list of talking points to make, but rather can tell the truth even if it makes us look bad.  It is all possible if we take grace seriously and know that we are so deeply beloved that even our mess-ups cannot undo our beloved-ness.

So today, as people convinced the Holy Spirit has been given to us, we can dare to be honest with each other.  Maybe we will be guarded around strangers still, and maybe we will not give our Social Security numbers to the ex-coworker who was convicted of embezzling, sure.  But with one another in this community of faith, we will be honest.  We will be real.  When someone asks how we're doing, we can skip the pleasantries of just saying, "Fine," back when we really aren't fine, and we can be truthful.  When someone else is clearly struggling, we will not pretend we don't see them so we don't have to be bothered by them.  And when it comes to being honest about our failures, our weak spots, and our sins, we can put all our cards on the table with each other.

That's at least one piece of what it will mean for us today to be people filled with the Spirit of truth.  Let us dare to be honest with each other, no matter how strong the pull of the world around us is to settle for something less.

Lord Jesus, send your Spirit to move in us again and to draw the truth from us, even when we are afraid of what will happen when we are honest.