This morning we continue our series of messages on the six great ends of the church – the pillars of our faith together in the Presbyterian Church, USA.

FIRST GREAT END
We are called to proclaim what? THE GOSPEL. For what purpose? THE SALVATION OF HUMANKIND.

SECOND GREAT END
We are called to provide what?
NUTURE, SHELTER, SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP. For whom? THE CHILDREN OF GOD.

THIRD GREAT END
We are called to maintain what? DIVINE WORSHIP. Worship that opens us to relationship with whom? GOD.

Now we come to the FOURTH GREAT END OF THE CHURCH: “THE PRESERVATION OF TRUTH.”

GOSPEL READING: John 14:15-17
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you.

NEW TESTAMENT READING: 2 Timothy 1:13-14
Follow the pattern of the sound words, which you have heard from me in the faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus; guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.

SPIRIT TRUTH; THE BELOVED WAY This morning we are going to have a conversation about the bald truth.

Have you heard about the new shampoo for men who are losing their hair? It’s called “What’s the Point!”

Sorry [fill in the names] [Burt, Ernie]

What is the point of our call to preserve the truth?

And what is the truth we are called to preserve?”

Anybody want to take a shot at these questions? Anybody?

I ask these questions sincerely out of a troubled heart. What is the point of the truth we are called to preserve?

These are the questions that I have been wrestling with for some time now.
When I was at Gonzaga University working on my Master Degree preparing for my career change into Pastoral Ministry I proposed a theological method to deal with these questions.

· “Theology – or faith seeking understanding,” I wrote, “begins with the experience of individual conversion.”

· This conversion, I continued, “is shaped by scripture and tradition within the experience of a faith community.”

· The leads I wrote – “to a deepening understanding that Jesus came to teach us how to live a life centered in God.”

That’s quite a mouthful isn’t it? (smile) Fortunately it was accepted for a 20-page paper that I wrote on John 14:6.

That reminds me of a story I heard about the husband of a pastor who was in his usual hurry to drive home. He tailgated one particularly slow car for some time, mumbling under his breath the whole time. Suddenly his attention was drawn to the license plate on the car – a vanity plate that simple read Luke 4:8. Not familiar with that particular verse the husband didn’t immediately understand it’s significance, but it stuck in his mind even as his mumbling became, cursing out loud, as the slow car, that was in his way, down the road.

Finally after getting home and relaxing for a few moments, thinking about that verse he reached for his wife’s Bible. It took him only a minute to locate Luke 4:8. “And Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘get behind me Satan…!” (laughter)

Just think I could’ve written a 20-page paper that verse in the Bible! But I chose John 14:6, or perhaps it chose me. Jesus of John’s gospel saying “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.”

I was trying to make sense of these three questions,
· What is the point?
· What is the truth we are called to preserve?
· What is the point of the truth we are called to preserve?

This came out conflict in my troubled heart. For this verse had been used like a hammer in the community of faith that I grew up in, to exclude anyone who was not part of our narrow expression of the Christian Reformed faith – the focus was on “no one comes to God except through me,” and yet I had this deepening fascination about what this truth of Jesus as a way to life centered in God really meant.

This is what I discovered, using this theological method that I proposed, as I studied and reflected theologically on this “truth” passage.

1. John’s gospel and theology is centered in the incarnation, that Jesus became God’s living word (wisdom) in the flesh.

2. This statement of Jesus as “the Way and Truth and Life” is meant to be comforting and hopeful to troubled hearts. The disciples have just finished their last Passover meal with Jesus. They have just been told that Peter will deny Jesus. Into this context of impending denial and death, Jesus acknowledges their pain. Then he focuses on the depth of the Kingdom of God – there are many dwelling places – promising that he will prepare a place for them there.

3. What was happening to Jesus physically and spiritually in his farewell discourses WAS happening to those in Johannine community NOW some 70-years later, after Jesus life, death and resurrection.

4. These Jewish followers of the way have been excommunicated from their Jewish synagogue and community. They are trying to find their place in a world they increasingly felt isolated in as Jewish Christians. They thought they were living in the end times. The longer they waited for Jesus to come back the more they attempted to reinterpret Jesus life, death and resurrection in hopes of gaining guidance and understanding for lives and their uncertain future.

Where are you most deeply troubled? Can you hear Jesus speaking into your pain, and places of denial and death?

In those places where you feel increasingly isolated from the world that God loves, will you open yourself to the Way that guides you into understanding?

Can you hear Jesus encouraging you to continue to believe in God and him?

Do you know what the word believe meant before it got distorted by “Christianity’s marriage with modernity?” I have Marcus Borg to thank for this insight that has come from his life work of attempting to understand who Jesus was and what his life mission was about. Up until a few centuries ago the word believe meant to belove, to yearn for God, to pay attention to God, to be loyal to God, to value God above all else. Isn’t this how Jesus lived centering his life in love of God with heart, soul, mind and strength?

Fascinating then that Jesus tells us who are still following him that if we love him we will keep his commandments. How? By saying yes to the Spirit of truth that dwells within us. This is what Timothy is referring to when he says “follow the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me in the faith and love in Christ Jesus.” In the Greek he idea being conveyed is that the essential word of God is Jesus Christ, which is personal wisdom and power in union with or centered in God.

What is the point? Jesus is a highway, a road to travel on – if you will – into life (centered in) with God.

What is the truth we are called to guard or preserve? Spirit truth. The way we see in Jesus has been entrusted to us, and lives in us, as the beloved way.

Evangelist Tony Campolo was in Haiti recently to check on missionary work there. He came to the little Holiday Inn where he always stayed to shower and clean up before boarding the plane to go home. He left the taxi and was walking to the entrance of the Holiday Inn when three girls intercepted him, the oldest couldn’t have been than fifteen. The one in the middle said, “Mister, for $10 I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’ll do it all night long. Do you know what I mean?”

Campolo did know what she meant. He turned to the next one and I said, “What about you, could I have you for $10?” She said yes. He asked the same of the third girl. She tried to mask her contempt for him with a smile, but as Tony said, “it’s hard to look sexy when you’re fifteen and hungry.” Campolo said, “I’m in room 210, you be up there in just 10 minutes. I have $30 and I’m going to pay for all 3 of you to be with me all night long.”

He rushed up to the room, called down to the concierge desk and said I want every Walt Disney video that you’ve got in stock. He called down to the restaurant and said, “Do you still make banana splits in this town, because if you do I want banana splits with extra ice cream, extra everything. I want them delicious, I want them huge, I want four of them!”

The little girls came and the ice cream came and the videos came and the four of them sat at the edge of the bed and watched the videos and laughed until about one in the morning. That’s when the last of them fell asleep across the bed. And as Tony Campolo saw those little girls stretched out asleep on the bed, he thought to himself, nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed.

Tomorrow they will be back on the streets selling their little bodies to dirty, filthy johns
because there will always be dirty, filthy johns who for a few dollars will destroy little girls. Nothing’s changed. He didn’t know enough Creole to tell them about the salvation story, but the word of the truth of the spirit said this: but for one night, for one night you let them be little girls again.

Take a look at the front of your bulletin covers at the banner that was created visually to convey what happens we “preserve the truth”

The banner represents “the light of truth shining in the darkness” – the light from this word of the spirit that said to Tony Campolo “for one night let them be little girls again.”
The dove in the banner reminds us that the truth we proclaim to the world is the gospel of Jesus Christ – God with us and God for us. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Even though nothing appears to have changed for these little girls who are back on the street selling their little bodies light did enter into their darkness from this one person who guarded the Spirit Truth on and in a Beloved Way.

And isn’t this the point of the truth we are called to preserve?

Please pray with me.