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SERMONS

Trinity Sunday
June 6, 2004

M. Scott Peck is a psychiatrist who has written several popular books about psychology. One of them, entitled The People of the Lie, is a book about evil. It is a psychological examination of the nature of human evil. It carries its title because of the one characteristic that Dr. Peck believes to be common to those people and situations that he would call truly evil. That characteristic is the presence of lies, both big lies and small. The truly evil-and those people who are not evil but are caught in evil situations-find it almost impossible to recognize and to speak the truth. There seems to be a compulsion to keep things confused by repeated deceit.

The promise of Jesus to his disciples in today's gospel provides a contrast to the situation described by Dr. Peck. The scene is once again the Upper Room on the night of Jesus' betrayal. He is talking to them about what is to happen to him, about the fact that he will be returning to the Father. But he also gives them a promise, the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.

"When the Spirit of truth comes," he says, "he will guide you into all the truth."

If the presence of falsehood is a recognizable characteristic of evil, then the presence of the truth should be a recognizable characteristic of the people of the Holy Spirit, the Church. There are two aspects of the action of the Spirit of truth in the Church that I want to mention this morning. These two aspects of the truth represent two types of relationships that are present within the Church. The first is the relationship of the Church with the Father and the second is the relationship of believers within the body of the Church.

First, the relationship of the church with God. Jesus promised his followers that "when the Spirit comes, he will guide you into all the truth." God reveals God's self continually to the Church. Through the aid of the Spirit, we are able to comprehend this revelation, at least in part. The whole of God is more than any of us can fully grasp, and so we each can see only a part of that whole. We, each of us, see God, but only incompletely. Our vision is limited and distorted by our humanness. We need each other to complete the picture. It is together that we recognize God's place in our lives and it is together that we can discern where God is leading us.

This frequently does not happen without a struggle. I am very fond of my own particular understanding of the truth that God is revealing to the Church. And I am not eager to have my piece of the truth challenged by yours. But it is necessary that we struggle together, each of us contributing our vision, and each of us allowing our vision to be molded and changed by the visions of our brothers and sisters. It is in this way, through our common struggle to hear God's voice, that we can discern the direction in which God is calling us to go.

A second way that Christians can be recognized as the people of the truth is in our relationships with each other. In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul writes, "So then, putting away all falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another." We are called to speak the truth one to another. Falsehood has no place within the community of faith. It is not possible to build a true relationship with another person based on falsehood, based on a lie. True community is not possible unless we are able to speak truthfully to one another.

But simply speaking the truth is not enough. Each of us is aware, I am sure, of how easy it is to use the truth selectively as a weapon to hurt another person. The truth is to be used to build up the community, not to destroy it. The truth must be judged by love, and spoken out of love. Paul completes his instructions concerning truth by imploring the Ephesians to "be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you."

By speaking the truth in love, one to another, and by seeking the truth of God for our lives, we can be faithful to the Spirit of truth, as befits brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ.

David Christian
The Chapel of the Cross
Madison, Mississippi