Throughout our Becoming Real series, we’ve studied Jesus’ encounters with his followers that reveal His heart and take them deeper, but this Sunday’s encounter is a little different.
We’ll see Pilate’s one time encounter with Jesus, that reveals Jesus’ Kingdom and Cross, but also leaves us wondering if Pilate ultimately rejects the journey to becoming real…
What if someone doesn’t want an encounter with Jesus?
What if we’re resistant to what he’s saying?
What is underlying, at a deep heart level, the rejection of Jesus and his Kingdom?
What if we don’t become real?
Watch last Sundays sermon “Mary and Martha encounter Jesus - Part II” from our Becoming Real series
Pontius Pilate isn’t looking for an encounter of Jesus at all, in fact, it seems that he would rather not have one.
At the threshold of the cross, Jesus kneels before Pilate, the overseer of Rome, the one enforcing the oppression of the Jews.
Rome’s oppression is one of the things that has led Jesus to the cross.
Jesus has already been falsely accused, mocked, spit upon, and beaten.
And now the King of all is kneeling before a ruler of Rome, the cross looming ahead…
“Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?”
“Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice’” John 18:37.
Pilate responds with a telling question,
“What is truth?
What. Is. Truth?
Is it theological correctness?
Is it moral superiority?
Is it intellectual acumen?
Is it political?
Is it accepting?
Is it firm?
Is it required?
Is it real?
Interestingly, Pilate doesn’t say “What is the truth?”
He says “What is truth?”
His language hints at skepticism, burnout, and the famous Roman licentious living.
Paul notes this when he quotes the mindset of the Roman culture of the day, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die” 1 Corinthians 15:32.
But hiding in Pilate’s rhetoric is possibly the most subtle deception of our modern age, and one of the major reasons people reject Christianity.
Which, I suggest, is one of the main reasons that his encounter with Jesus ends in affirming His innocence, but rejecting His transforming power.
The truth, Pilate might say, isn’t something anyone possesses.
(ie. What might be true for you isn’t true for me. My truth has to do with me, my truth is a right, I deserve to have my own perspective, beliefs, and lifestyle. You do You, Jesus.)
This is called relativism or subjectivism.
It’s two tenants are 1) my reality is the only one that exists for me and 2) I can live however I want as long as I don’t hinder someone else’s reality.
And though Jesus is massively gracious and loving, ready even to give His life at the cross….
He also is Truth.
Reality is, there cannot be more than one truth.
Though it might sound loving to say that you can accept everyone as they are, it sounds like love. But it’s not.
In fact, if you don’t have an agreed-upon foundation for reality, something objective, eternal, unchanging…
Then we really can connect on nothing.
The only thing we can agree on is that nothing matters.
And that isn’t just a recipe for being greatly deceived, It’s also symptomatic of great loneliness and isolation.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart” Ecclesiastes 3:11.
God has placed a deep, even painful desire for reality itself, for becoming real inside each of us!
And beneath all our cultural skepticism about truth.
We all have a longing for reality, for truth, for Jesus.
The reality of truth is a Person, Jesus.
Jesus holds all reality together, and we only become real as we become more like Him.
I’ll see this Sunday as we consider these things deeper,
Pastor Dave