My first year living away from home at college, I lived in a dorm room with 4 other guys. Among those four, there was one whose fiance had recently dumped him. She was his high school sweetheart and they had been together for eight years. To say that the break-up hit him hard is an understatement. He was devastated. I rarely remember seeing him smile in those early months of living together. It was tough to watch. The thing that really gave me pause though was the way he interacted with people around campus during that time. We would be walking across campus together and someone would ask, as many of us are wont to do, “How are you?” The anticipated answer to that is, of course, something like “fine” or “good” or “okay.” What people didn’t anticipate was the way this roommate of mine responded. He would respond by telling them EXACTLY how he was feeling in that moment. It was not a simple one word response. It was a story of all the events that had contributed to his current state of wellbeing. As you might imagine, it was a very unsettling experience for the asker of the question.

At that time, I was rather embarrassed when this would occur. He was rocking the boat, shucking this societal norm. And on top of that, what he expressed about his current wellbeing was always sad and depressing. I suspect that those who asked him how he was doing, besides just not expecting more than a one or two word response, probably had very little desire to hear about his pain and problems. When this would happen, I would often simply keep on walking, under the guise of needing to get to where I was headed. But the truth is that I just didn’t want to be associated with it, with him.

Looking back on that experience now, I can see something that I didn’t see at that time. Beyond just bucking social norms, my college roommate was testifying to the truth of what he was feeling. While most of us hold all of that in, or at most save it for our closest of relationships, he just let it all hang out there. Testifying to the truth is the right thing to do, but it is also the most dangerous.

In our passage from the gospel of John for this morning, Jesus has been betrayed by his friend, arrested by the Jewish leaders, and now stands before Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea. Pilate didn’t know much about Jesus except that his own people had turned on him. And when Pilate asked the Jewish leaders what Jesus had done wrong, they simply told him that Jesus was a criminal. So, Pilate wanted to know more. He went to question Jesus. He asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus deflects the question with his own question, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Jesus already knows the answer to this question, but he wants to hear what Pilate has to say about it. Pilate responds rather plainly, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?”

At this point, Jesus returns to Pilate’s first question. He says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Then, perhaps in an attempt to find a way to justify sentencing Jesus to death as the Jews want him to, he tries to get Jesus to admit that he is a king, even if he is not claiming to be the king of the Jew. But Jesus says to him, “You say that I am 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.” Jesus knows what Pilate is trying to do. He is trying to keep himself out of trouble with the Jewish leaders by finding a way to justify sentencing Jesus to death. But Jesus turns things back on to Pilate. “You say that I am king,” he says. That is not an admission, so Pilate cannot use that against him. Then Jesus speaks right to the core of what Pilate is thinking about. Jesus tells Pilate what he is really about.

“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Jesus wasn’t planning a revolution. He wasn’t staging a coup. He was simply telling people the truth. What an off characteristic for a leader to have. Jesus wants Pilate to know who he is and to realize the consequences of the decision he will soon have to make. And to add to that, Jesus says, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” In this statement, Jesus makes it clear that if Pilate believes the Jewish leaders rather than Jesus that Pilate does not belong to the truth.

I feel convicted by that because I know that I choose my own desires over the truth all the time. I choose to calm my own fears rather than stand up for what is right and true. I choose to justify my poor behavior rather than simply owning up to it and asking forgiveness. Author Vi Keeland once wrote, “Sometimes we believe things not because we know they are true, but because the lies are easier to accept.” Jesus, over and over again, refused to take the easier path. Over and over he chose the truth. And here he tells Pilate that testifying to the truth was what he was born for. Testifying to the truth was Jesus’ mission in life. And that was what the chief priests and elders didn’t like. They were comfortable in their lies.

I think Pilate really wanted to speak the truth, and to a certain extent he did. Jesus after this in the story, Pilate went and  told the Jewish leaders that he had found no fault in Jesus. But then to keep himself out of trouble with those leaders, he put the decision about Jesus into their hands, thus removing his own guilt about what he knew was going to happen. Later on, he verified that intention when he said that he was washing his hands of the matter, thus removing his guilt and placing it onto the people and the Jewish leaders.

Humans are good at lying. And we are good about believing lies, especially the ones we tell ourselves. Sometimes we lie so much that we forget what the truth even is. Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” When we lie once, we have to then maintain that lie moving forward. The more lies we tell, the more of them we have to remember. For centuries now, we’ve seen leaders like Pilate who lie to absolve themselves of wrongdoing or who like to protect themselves or their interests. We see leaders who lie to get what they want, who lie to take down their opponents, who lie to continue marginalizing the weak and downtrodden.

I think we’ve reached the point in our society now where so many lies have been told that we no longer have any real concept of what the truth is. We only have OUR truth, as opposed to THEIR truth. But the reality is that no one has a monopoly on the truth. I heard it said that former Chicago Cubs announcer, the late great Harry Carey once said, “There are three types of truth: my truth, your truth, and the truth.” In order to find THE truth, we must do three things.

First, we must testify to the truth as we know it. This does not mean arguing or telling others that they are wrong for believing something different. It simply means testifying to what we believe is true. This may mean standing up for someone who is being hurt by another person or by a system that treats them unjustly. It may mean admitting our faults and our struggles. It may mean expressing our feelings no matter how embarrassing or scary it may be. We must follow the example of Jesus and testify to the truth.

Second, we must listen to the truth that others are testifying to, as difficult as that may be at times. As I said before, no one has a monopoly on the truth. That means that, even though we may be convinced that OUR truth is right and THEIR truth is wrong, there is still something we can learn from one another.

And finally, we must turn our eyes to the one who is truth, to God, who revealed the truth through his son Jesus Christ. In Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we find the greatest revelation of truth ever. The truth that love ultimately prevails over hate. The truth that peace does not come through violence but through sacrifice. The truth that life is not about avoiding pain and hardship, but about what lies beyond it.

One of my favorite musicians right now is an artist known as Jellyroll. And he has a song out right now titled “I Am Not Okay.” I love this song because it speaks to the truth of how I feel at times, more times than I usually like to admit. It speaks to a world of people who feel this way from time to time, some constantly. But it also speaks to a deeper truth. I want to share with you the words and see if you hear the deeper truth I’m referring to.

It begins, “I am not okay. I’m barely getting by. I’m losing track of days and losing sleep at night. I am not okay. I’m hanging on the rails. So if I say I’m fine just know I learned to hide it well. I know, I can’t be the only one who’s holding on for dear life. But God knows, I know when it’s all said and done, I’m not okay, but it’s all gonna be alright. It’s not okay, but we’re all gonna be alright.” And then the final verse and chorus: “I know someday we’ll see the other side. The pain’ll wash away in a holy water tide, and we’re all gonna be alright.” Did you hear it? The song very clearly speaks to the deep pain we can experience in this world. I think there have probably been days for all of us when we’ve said, “I am not okay.” But the deeper truth is that “it’s all gonna be alright.” And how do we know that to be true? We know because Jesus testified to that truth through his life, through his death, and especially through his resurrection from the dead. Things are not okay, right now. But it’s all gonna be alright because of the love of God. That is a truth worth testifying to. Amen!