Sermon

Seek the Truth

by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer

Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will. The Rev. William Sparrow, 19th century dean of Virginia Theological Seminary, is credited with these words.  They are preserved in stone over the entrance to the library at that seminary….and….they are words which also sum up the work of prophets fairly succinctly. Prophets have the capacity to see what most of us prefer not to see, and the courage to name the disparity between things as they really are and things as we prefer to see them. It is a costly enterprise for the prophet. Their reward is usually suffering, and death.  

Micah, whom we hear in our first reading today, was one of the Minor Prophets – minor in the sense of brief, not in the sense of unimportant. Micah lived in Judah eight centuries before the birth of Christ, at a time in which the northern kingdom of Israel had been conquered by Assyria. Micah sounded the alarm to the southern kingdom of Judah because he saw that the leadership in Judah had gone seriously off the rails. The leadership had purchased an expensive peace with Assyria and had passed on the cost of such tribute through burdensome taxes to those who could least afford it.  The Torah called for justice and Shalom – the well-being that comes when all live equitably within a system of justice – but those demands had been conveniently ignored. Meanwhile, the king and the courtiers consulted oracles – for-profit prophets, if you will – who, for a fee, assured the leadership that God looked favorably on their faithless and corrupt decision-making.

When we are immersed in a system, it is often impossible to see the wrongness of the way things are. Hence, the work of prophecy – to see what others do not or will not see and to name that reality courageously, such that others will want to kill you for it.

Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will. Micah’s colleagues in prophecy include Isaiah and Amos. Those who were later influenced by his vision include Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Miraculously, their prophetic texts were preserved even as the southern kingdom of Judah marched inexorably toward its destruction. The prophets were not heeded; they were ridiculed, stoned, imprisoned, and killed. It was not the Assyrian empire that destroyed Judah two and half centuries after Micah’s prophecy, it was the Babylonians. Jerusalem was sacked, the Temple destroyed, and the leadership taken captive. The descendants of those taken captive, who were permitted to return some 60 years later, were the ancestors of the none other than the Pharisees. So intent were those who returned from Exile to avoid another disaster like the Exile, that the keeping of the Law became seen as the highest good. Two thousand years of reading Matthew, Mark, and Luke have taught us to regard the Pharisees as little more than nit-picking fusspots. The reality was far more complex. They rigorously adhered to the Law precisely because the stakes were so high. Failure to obey the Law had landed their ancestors in Exile. They weren’t about to make that same mistake.

Problem was, rigorously obeying the Law carried a host of unintended consequences that oppressed the very people the Law was created to support – the anawim, the voiceless powerless ones of Jewish society; not surprisingly, the very people to whom Jesus directed his Good News.

In her book, Beyond Mere Obedience, theologian Dorothee Soelle identified two different kind of spirituality. Authoritarian Spirituality places a high value on divine power and defines its cardinal virtue as obedience. The Pharisaic tradition is a great example of Authoritarian Spirituality. Soelle contrasted this with Emancipatory Spirituality. This spirituality sees divine love as the central value; its cardinal virtue is the exercise of responsible freedom. Meaning, we are made free to respond in love to God and to one another. Or, as we heard Jesus say in last week’s Gospel, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Fr. Joe nailed it last week in his sermon when he identified that love of God and love of neighbor are two sides of the same coin. For Jesus, the unintended consequences of righteousness defined solely in terms of obedience to the Law were unacceptable. And so he courageously named that reality such that those around him wanted to kill him for it.

Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. A little internet research revealed that William Sparrow’s full phrase originally included that last clause. Lead where it might. The prophetic voice leads us is to transformation. And let’s be clear, it’s no small thing to be on such a journey. It is no small thing to sort out the authentic voices of prophecy from the blandishments of contemporary living. Among the sundry and manifold messages competing for our attention, each claiming to have the corner on the truth, how are we to sort it out?

Jesus suggests to the crowd in the gospel today that words and actions must be congruent. There should be integrity in how ethics that are taught are actually then lived by the teacher. That asking the lawyer’s question, cui bono? – Who benefits? – can often be a helpful starting point in seeking the truth and in weighing the costs. The good news (ok, the challenging news) is that the spiritual gift of prophecy is not a pre-requisite for engaging that work. Seeking the truth is the work of discipleship – seeing clearly, listening intently, choosing to live our lives in a way that is congruent with our faith, that is revelatory of God’s love, that leads us on a journey of transformation.

Come whence it may, cost what it will.

© Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral