In John’s gospel, when Jesus is taken before Pilate, they have a conversation.  A conversation not so much about what Jesus may or may not have done wrong, about his criminal record, if you like; but rather about Jesus’ relationship with that scarce reality which some of us still call ‘the truth’.  Let me read a small part of that conversation to you once more:

Pilate said to him, ‘So . . .  you are a king?’
Jesus replied ‘You say that I’m a king!  For this I was born, and for this I came into the world: to testify to the truth.  Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice’.
Pilate asked him ‘What is truth?’

Is truth a creation of political interests, as with the American election campaign?  There, the ‘truth’ is carefully spin-doctored so that we hear only what they want us to hear, and we only see what they want us to see.  Despite all the media attention, despite all the supposedly ‘in-depth’ profiling of the candidates, we still know almost nothing about the real, flesh-and-blood Al Gore or George W Bush, or about their policies. What we see and hear are, rather, images and shadows, virtual realities which have been produced in order to carefully match the candidates to market-expectations. Each of the candidates want to appear as though they are on the average American voter’s side.  And that means pandering to fears, prejudices, and the ever-escalating expectations of consumers like you and me.

So perhaps the truth is something that big business creates for our consumption?  Take the example of the Nike shoe company.  In their recent advertising campaign, Nike tried to sell us a version of the truth.  A truth in which those who wear their shoes become sports superstars – superstars unconcerned with anything else in life but winning at their sport.  Nike tried to convince us that this is a worthy way to live.  That it is virtuous, in fact, to be so focused on personal goals that the rest of the world, the world of politics and religion and even of family relationships is of relatively no importance.  Of course, Nike would like us to think in this way so that we will buy their shoes.  Shoes made by illegal child-labour in the sweat-shops of China and Malaysia.  Now, if I were to adopt the Nike virtues, then this rather disturbing fact would be of no consequence whatsoever.  It would have no more substance than a shadow which exists beyond the bounds of my own personal truth.

So perhaps the truth is something that each of us creates in order to protect ourselves from the more horrible realities all about?  Perhaps the truth is a ghetto which we create with our buying-power, a safe place filled with people and things which are just like us, familiar faces, familiar stories which will soothe our growing anxiety about the world.  Here the truth no longer has any public value, it has been privatized.  The defining catch-cry of ‘You have your truth and I have mine’ says ‘I don’t want the hassle of having to engage with your point of view, mate; I’m quite comfy with my own prejudices’.  Each to their own.  Live and let live.  In an affluent society like ours, each of us can afford our own private bubble of personal truth.  And its more comfortable to stay there, safe from the world of other people’s experience and other people’s problems.

But, for Christians, the truth is not something which can be created, or commodified, or surrendered to those most powerful.  Because, for Christians, the truth has nothing to do with us, and our own selfish interests.  The truth is something which is there before us, and beyond us, and around us.  The truth is God.  And God will not be manipulated, or sold, or domesticated for private viewing.  Listen to what Jesus says to Pilate.  He says ‘Buddy, I don’t care who you are or who your friends are.  I don’t care how powerful you are, or how anxious you feel about the power of others.  I’m just here as a voice for the truth.  And the truth is not what you would like it to be.  Whatever is most comfortable, or most convenient, or most sexy, or most expedient.  The truth just is, and it’s a whole lot bigger than your blinkered point of view’.

Christians today need to hear this word of Jesus.  We need to hear it because we are not immune from the capacity for fabrication and deceit which characterizes our modern world.  There are Christians in our world, and right here in our own community, who talk about ‘marketing’ the gospel.  About doing market research to find out what kind of God people would like, and then ‘packaging’ Jesus to fit those so-called market ‘expectations’.  But what if people’s so-called ‘needs’ are not really their needs?  What if the ‘needs’ that people identify in market-surveys are really just consumer expectations which have been created by advertising?  What if the things we think we need are just ephemerals to make life feel more comfortable, to keep us safe and sound in the privatized bubble of personal fulfillment?  If that’s the case, and I think it is, then the packaged ‘Jesus’ of the religious marketeers is not someone who can help.  At best he is a panacea to help us escape from our difficult social and political obligations.  At worst he is a drug to ease the pain of our addictions.   Either way, this Jesus cannot really help.  And he cannot help because he is not real.

The real Jesus cannot be packaged to meet market-expectations.  He cannot be domesticated to suit my house, my home and my family-style.  He cannot be summoned to confirm and support my prejudices.  No, the real Jesus is not so manipulable.  The truth of his being is the truth of God, and so he forever eludes and escapes the designs we would place upon him.  He is always and forever the ‘other person’, the one who calls us beyond where we are in our private bubbles, into the wider and more deeply interfused truth of God.  A truth which is always, always rather different than we think or imagine it to be.

Within the confusion of our current age, and particularly while the Jesus-marketeers are gaining the ascendancy in our churches, I believe it is important that we listen to the still, small voice of those in our tradition who have devoted themselves to prayer.  Because these are the people who have not be seduced by their own false desires, or by market-forces, into creating a God to suit themselves.  These are the people for whom prayer is first of all a listening, a listening for the overwhelming truth of God, the real God.  The real God, says John of the Cross, is not one who can be imagined by mere human beings.  Rather, he is the one who imagines US into being.  So that in the end, it is not our knowledge of God that matters, but rather God’s knowledge of us. Thomas Merton, my own spiritual mentor, once said this, and I commend his wisdom to you today:

My hope is in what the eye has never seen.  Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards.  My hope is in what human hearts can never feel.  Therefore let me not trust in the feelings of my heart.  My hope is in what human hands have never touched.  Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers.  Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone .

One of my favourite John Lennon songs includes the following lines:

I’m sick and tired of hearing things from up-tight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites.  All I want is the truth, just give me some truth.  I’ve had enough of reading things from neurotic, psychotic, big-headed politicians.  All I want is the truth, just give me some truth now.

Glory be to God – Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver – as in the beginning, so now and forever.  Amen.