True or False: "I am always kind to everyone."

The theme for this year’s Vacation Bible School was “God is our hero.” We told the children about five people in the Bible, some young like them, and some older like me, who were heroic because God helped them be a hero like him. We learned that with God’s help, heroes can do the unexpected, heroes can take action, heroes can step out on faith, heroes can save the day, and heroes can stand for the truth.

In order to help the children appreciate how difficult it can be to stand for the truth without God’s help, we asked them to consider ten statements and decide if those statements were true. We told them that if the statements were true, they should stand up for the truth and we sweetened the deal by rewarding them with a Hershey’s kiss. We began with a statement that they could all stand up for: “I am alive.”

Most of the children could truthfully stand up for the second statement as well: “I have at least one brother or sister.” “I have a pet” was a statement that the majority of the children could truthfully stand up for and receive their chocolate reward.
There was a lot of discussion among the children about the fourth statement, “I have brown hair.” Many of the dirty blondes were obviously distressed and in a moral, epistemological and psychological bind: is my hair blonde or brown? What is the truth? How badly do I want another chocolate? Am I willing to fudge or bend the truth a little in order to get it? What will Father Tom think? What will God think?

“I play soccer” also created a lot of hesitation. When they appealed to me for clarification, I suggested that it meant that you were currently playing soccer, and not that you had ever played soccer, but I gave in and let them stand and receive their chocolate if they’d ever once played soccer.

“I like school” was also a tough question for them to answer honestly. I’m sure they all had expressed their dislike of school on more than one occasion in the past, but none of the children remained seated, and hopefully their occasional dislike of school had indeed not yet hardened into a fixed and unchangeable attitude toward learning.
“I don’t like pizza” was also a tough question, though many of the children were able to resist the temptation to fudge the truth for a piece of candy and chose to remain seated.

The last two questions were designed to keep all the children seated on the carpet as a test of their honesty: “I am always kind to everyone” and “I have never made a mistake”. I was a bit surprised at how many children stood up and honestly expressed their belief that they had always been kind to everyone, even when a brother or a sister or a friend sitting right next to them made very specific and direct accusations against them, insisting that they had not always been kind to them or to someone else they knew.

I share this story with you because you and I as adults are also quite capable of being in denial about the truth about ourselves, about the things we have said or done that have been less than kind. We may honestly think that we are always kind to everyone, or at least a lot kinder than other people we know, or at least we initially try to be kind to everyone we meet until the other person makes it impossible for us to continue to be kind, which excuses and justifies our own unkind behavior.
When Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” and then asks, “And who do you think that I am?” and Peter gives the correct answer, Jesus must quickly tell them not to tell anyone that this is the correct answer because he knows they will not be able to accept the truth that, even though Jesus is indeed God’s chosen Messiah, the Son of God and Son of man, he is not the kind of Messiah that the elders and chief priests and scribes of his people, the very people who might have been able, more than anyone else, to dare to stand up and claim that they had never made a mistake, would nonetheless kill Jesus because they would honestly think they were doing the right thing, that Jesus was actually more of a demon-possessed pretender and a dangerous and misguided imposter than the true Messiah, as Peter confesses in this morning’s gospel.

This is one of the most heart-wrenching truths of the gospel, that the very people to whom the Messiah was sent, the very people who should have known better, are also the very people who rejected Jesus and who persisted, by and large, in the rejection, even after he was raised from the dead, down through history to our own day. I’m not here to single them out for special condemnation, but rather to suggest that all of us, in one way or another, are probably living in denial about the truth about ourselves, the world and God, no less than the vast majority of Jews.

You’re all familiar with the spiritual we sing on Good Friday that asks the question that, if we are truly honest, we must all stand up and admit is true, namely, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” “Yes, I was there.” Each year we can all identify with someone in the central drama of all human history. This past year I was Pilate. I knew Jesus was innocent. I knew the Jews had handed him over because they were jealous. I did the best I could to save him, even though he wasn’t very cooperative. But in the end, I let the crowds have their way with him because I didn’t see any other way to resolve the explosive powder keg of a million Jews squeezed together in Jerusalem to celebrate their liberation from another foreign power, the ancient Egyptians. Other years I’ve been Peter or one of the disciples who just ran away, or one of the criminals, or Joseph of Arimathaea. If we’re honest, we played a part, even if was just being a member of the crowd, swept up in the opinions and false judgments of our leaders.

Paul agonizes over the stubbornness of his fellow Jews to accept the good news of Jesus Christ in his letter to the Romans. Will they continue to remain seated forever, insisting that Jesus was a dangerous or even foolish imposter, or maybe just a mistaken and confused rabbi? And again, let’s not be too quick to pile on the Jews and condemn ourselves by our own unkindness and mistaken zeal.

All of us probably know people who are in denial about one thing or another, people we may love deeply or people we could care less about or even despise, people whose false beliefs and the miseries they create for themselves can almost bring us an initial and perverse satisfaction, allowing us to feel somehow superior, until their suffering begins to impact our own lives in a negative way too and we come to know the truth that when one rejoices we all rejoice and when one suffers we all suffer.
And are we willing to consider the fact that there are people who think the same way about us as well? “When will Tom finally get it? When will the Palestinians or the Israelis or the liberals or the conservatives or the rich or the poor finally get it? When will they know the truth about themselves and about God and the world around them and be able to stand up for the truth?”
Zechariah answers these questions in a hopeful way. His prophecy this morning is very comforting. I’m sure it served, in part, to help Paul find hope for his fellow Jews, that they might one day honestly repent and join the fellowship of those who have come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the one whose suffering is not something to be ashamed of, or a tragic mistake, or something he deserved, but an act of divine love which has forever altered the course and destiny of every human being, male and female, slave and free, Jew and gentile.

Zechariah begins by saying, “On that day . . . “ The Day he is talking about is the day of the Lord’s second coming. He’s prophesying that when that day comes, the Lord will defend the Jews and the house of David from all her enemies and that at long last the Jews will look on him whom they have pierced and they will weep bitterly over Jesus, as one mourns for an only child, as one weeps over a firstborn. And when that happens, the fountain that was opened up in Jesus’ side by their very piercing will also be the means by which they will be cleansed from all sin and impurity.

And so there is hope for all of us to finally acknowledge our own sin, our own impurity, our own denial and illusions about ourselves, and in so doing, to receive the cleansing fountain of God’s love, not only for our own sakes, for the abundant life that Jesus promises us, but for the sake of others, who may have suffered because of our sins which we have continued to deny.
This is grown-up religion, as Paul explains it to the Galatians. When we finally accept the truth about ourselves and the truth about God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, we no longer need a disciplinarian to point out our false beliefs and actions. We now live by faith in Jesus, trusting that he came, not to condemn us, but to save us, to cleanse us from our sins, and to know and experience the unbelievable truth about ourselves, that God wants to adopt us as his beloved children. Paul reminds us that the law can never cleanse us. It was never given to us for that purpose. The Law can only tell us the truth that we are, in fact, dirty.

Let us then receive with thanksgiving the word of God which can pierce us to the heart, that the fountain of God’s grace may flow to cleanse us and renew us, if not today, then surely, thank God, whenever we look on him whom we have pierced. So why not look on him today, now, for a reward so much greater than any piece of chocolate or any other worldly consolation? AMEN.