JN 18: 37-38  & 19: 16-30  

Jottings on John…From the Good Friday Gospel… 2017 

Pilate’s question about Truth goes to the heart of Jesus' mission & kingship. At the very beginning of His ministry, Jesus has had to wrestle out in the wilderness with the Truth of Who He is. What kind of Messiah He’s to be. He’s been tempted to hand Himself over to devilish ways of being Messiah, but discerns there’s no Truth in that direction. Jesus commits to being God’s Truth. To God’s way of doing things or not doing them, & His own role in all this. 

Which lands Him now before Pilate. Pilate & all he represents is on trial as much as Jesus is. In his turn & in his own way, he now has to wrestle with Truth in this legal & moral wilderness Jesus is caught up in. Pilate’s "What is truth?" is a question many of us are asking today- or should be. Pilate represents those of us who, when faced with questions of truth, are too easily tempted to take his path of contemptuous, "Truth? What’s that? Who needs it?!” How are we shaping up to the Truth question?

Jesus tells Pilate, “Everyone who belongs to the Truth can hear my voice”, echoing what He’s earlier said to antagonistic fellow Jews [8:47]. Later, when Pilate refuses to change the wording over Jesus’ cross, this Truth-about-Jesus question may still be bothering him! Now he takes the stand he might have taken earlier. In what is being done to Jesus today, where is Truth for Him, for Pilate, for any of us, to be found? Vanstone¹ once put it: Jesus has now allowed Himself to be handed over & becomes the Object of what’s happening, rather than the Subject of the Gospels He’s been before. God’s Truth may call us to ‘hand ourself over’ from time to time, rather than lie in one way or another to maintain control over real-life situations.

A question of truth in another form arises incidentally here. The other Evangelists tell us a Cyrenian is pressed into service to carry Jesus’ cross, but JN insists He carries it Himself. Is it a theological point JN’s making, or just a different tradition current in his circle? I doubt it matters. It does bring to mind, though, the ‘alternative facts’ we keep hearing from some political circles. Can we really make up truth on the run, & as it suits us? Jesus, nailed to His cross, is the Essence of non-negotiable Truth. Whoever carries that cross to Golgotha, Jesus is nailed up on it! Are we living out Jesus Truth day by day as He does, come what may, nail us as it may? 

¹  W.H.Vanstone, The Nature of Waiting, DLT, 1982