What is truth?

This year, I’m preaching from the lectionary…here on Substack. If you, too, feel like everything is crumbling: welcome to church. I’m glad you’re here.

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A Perseid meteor over Joshua Tree National Park in 2015.

My daughter and I were driving home after a long day of appointments and errands. It was dinner time and twenty degrees hotter than it should have been, and we were in a mile-long line of cars waiting for a green light.

We live outside of Fort Worth, in the sprawl of suburbia, and the roads in and out of our part of town are two-laned obstacle courses of pot holes, railroads, and the occasional loose cow. These conditions make the commute home a daily test of our religion and goodwill.

I sat in the line of cars, hungry and tired, wondering if we would make it home in the next half hour, when I hear from the back seat: “Mom, can I ask you a question?”

“Mommy’s closed for questions today, babe. We hit our quota awhile back. I’ll open back up tomorrow after coffee,” I quipped, hoping that would be the end of it.

“Just one more question,” my daughter replied.

“Okay, just one. Choose wisely,” I sighed.

“When we die, can we find each other so we can play? I want to play with you forever,” she said.

Suddenly I was lifted out of the monotony of late afternoon traffic and propelled into the clouds, bursting through the puffs into the sunlight. Her question had pierced my heart like a meteorite entering the earth’s atmosphere.

When we die, can we find each other?

In today’s text,¹ Jesus continues his last words to his disciples. He promises that when he leaves, the “Spirit of Truth” will come and never leave them. He assures his friends again of his proximity to God, and that because of this proximity, they are close to God, too. In fact, those who love the God of love will do just that: love and love and love. This, after all, is the only commandment Jesus gives.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says in many different ways: I am leaving, but you are not alone. I am leaving, but you have each other. And through each other, you have me. And that means God is among you always.

And he gives his friends ideas they can hold onto about God:

God is like an architect building room after room for all of her beloveds.²

God is like a road that you walk one step at a time toward abundant life.³

God is like a shepherd, whispering gentle assurances to all of her vulnerable sheep.⁴

God is like a parent who ensures that no one is without a family.⁵

And likewise, God is like a Spirit of Truth, reminding you of a love that exceeds the imagination of the most powerful empires in the world.

In his assurance that the disciples will not be alone, he tells them that the world cannot receive this Spirit of Truth because it does not know him. It cannot see him.

It’s as if he’s saying that if we think God is a bigger, better, more savvy ruler than say, Caesar, then we’ve got it all wrong. God’s power is comfort, not control. God’s power is propagation, not propaganda. God’s power is soft and weak, as ungraspable as the wind, as fluid as the river.

But, Jesus says over and over again: you can feel this power through the one thing that carries us even in death. Love.

For those of us reading this passage 2000 years later, we understand Jesus is trying to hard to tell his disciples that the worst thing was about to happen, but it wouldn’t be the last thing to happen. It would not be the lasting thing. But even with our hindsight, we, too, struggle to believe him.

You should understand: I am not the theologian to consult on the Trinity, or what exactly John meant when he said, “Holy Spirit.” I am not the pastor who will assure you of heaven or give you a pet certainty to call “God.” I am not the mother who will lie to her children and tell them everything will be okay when I know it won’t. But sometimes I wish I were all of these things.

I am someone who finds it important to hold bread in my hands each week and say, “Remember? That night? Brokenness?” And I am someone who keeps reaching for the wine and saying, “Remember? A promise of love all the way to the end?”

This, I think, is what Jesus means when he talks of the Spirit of Truth.

And for some reason, I keep finding myself talking about stories older than empires: stories of shepherds and prophets, of dust and floods, of death and miraculous hope. And I keep swapping these stories with others, saying, “Remember that one? About the Samaritan? About the mother’s song? About the women at the river?”

For millenia, we’ve been pointing to water and saying, “That means life gets to be new again.” And we’ve been pointing to each other and saying, “Beloved.” We’ve been talking of upside down kingdoms in the midst of empires doing their worst. We’ve been reminding each other of things that don’t seem true at first glance, but that we trust to be true: the peacemakers are God’s children, the poor in spirit are the ones who get it, the meek are the earth’s truest kin.

This also, I think, is the Spirit of Truth.

Our collective memory is the work of truth-sharing, of hope-generating, of love-connecting. It loosens power’s grip over us and pierces the monotony of isolation. It’s our human way of saying, “See? You’re not alone. I’m here. And they were here. And God is here.”

When we die, I hope we can find each other.

But even more so, as we live, I hope we can find each other.

Because somehow, in finding each other, we encounter the Divine over and over again.

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Things I Read/Listened to This Week and Loved:

• Why voting rights is a spiritual issue.

• The Artemis crew answers kids’ questions.

• Why we can’t stop talking about the Artemis crew.

• A bison teaches us how to rest.

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Neighborhood Bird Corner

Our swallow eggs have hatched and despite two broken eggs, we have three baby birds! We hear them chirping for food all day long. Below the photo is a video of the mama feeding them.

And here is a Mama Robin feeding her juvenile baby outside my office window.

1. John 14:15-21.

2. John 14:2-3.

3. John 14:6.

4. John 10:11.

5. John 14:18.