A King for All

2 Samuel 23:1-7; June 18:33-37; Revelation 1:4b-8

Are any of you fans of batman? Have you ever gone to one of the batman movies? The third Batman movie, Batman Forever, offered viewers a new Batman, a new Robin, a new Batgirl and two new villains – Two-Face and the Riddler, played by Jim Carey. Played with his typically over-the-top wackiness, Jim Carey's version of Riddler came off as wonderfully twisted and crooked as his question-mark walking stick.

Even if he hadn't been wearing lime green duds and sporting orange hair, the Riddler would have been the movie's most colorful character. The Riddler was intriguing because he never offered any straightforward answers. He never directly addressed either his cohorts or his enemies. Every statement he made, every hint or challenge he gave Batman, took the form of a mind-bending riddle. If you wanted to know what the Riddler was trying to get at, you had to think.

Jesus appears to be a bit of a "Riddler" himself in today's gospel lesson. Standing before the Roman prefect Pilate, the one official who can either condemn him to death or set him free, Jesus appears oddly obstinate. Pilate hurls at Jesus some direct, basic questions – "Are you the King of the Jews?" "What have you don?" He gets back from Jesus only the most oblique of answers. At first, Jesus asks Pilate what he personally has heard or knows to be true. Jesus then offers an unsolicited description of the nature of his kingdom – that is is "not from this world" and so of no political concern to Pilate.

Finally, when for a third time, Pilate confronts Jesus with a question-accusation that would seem to demand either a "yea" or a "nay" – "So you are a king?" – Jesus once again sidesteps Pilate's question in order to introduce a new subject – the topic of "truth." Can't you imagine Pilate's frustration? Here he is trying to douse a political flash-fire and all Jesus wants to do is fan the flames by playing philosophical fiddlesticks.

The "riddle-me-this" - type of responses Jesus gives Pilate do more than drive the Roman official crazy. Jesus' "answers" introduce new, more appropriate agendas into Pilate's kangaroo court. When confronted with a wholly uncomprehending audience – the Pharisees, scribes or others who challenged Jesus' teachings and proclamations – Jesus typically refuses to acknowledge his accusers' inaccurate categories. Jesus transforms these hostile situations even as he transforms the world.

As Pilate turns to leave Jesus and to back out to face the bloodthirsty crowd in today's text, the Roman prefect wonders aloud, "What is truth?" What was the truth in this strange and twisted situation.

– The truth was not to be found in the fear and frenzy fomenting outside the praetorium.

– The truth was not to be found in Pilate's courtroom.

– The truth was not to be found in the crowd's choice of Barabbas the thief over Jesus the Christ.

– The truth was not to be found in the crown of thorns and purple robe Jesus was dressed in by the soldiers.

– The truth was not to be found in the inscription they nailed above him that read "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews."

– The truth was not to be found in Jesus' death on that cross on Golgotha.

Yet each of these events did, in its own strange way, "bear witness to the truth." For if "truth" is something we inhabit, a peson we become, and not just a proposition we put forth, then the truth itself reflects the incomplete and imperfect nature of human life. As a Roman functionary who dealt routinely in objectives and outcomes, Pilate finds this difficult to understand. The truth for him is not usually imperfect and incomplete. Jesus, perhaps for the first time, introduces Pilate to the notion that the truth is found sometimes not just in the answers, but in the questions themselves. In this case, the truth was not a Proposition, but a Person, and he was standing right before his eyes: Jesus – "The Way, the Truth, the Life." Jesus – the Divine Riddler!

What, then, is "the truth" as it lives among us today? Think you're going to get a straight answer now? Ha! Guess again, Batman! Instead of an "answer" we offer you three familiar songs – each of which offers a unique if oblique glimpse into the "truth" of life as we know and experience it every day. Three songs! Well, what are they?

The first song is quite musically advance, intonationally complex and theologically laden. Not! Try "Itsy-Bitsy Spider." It was probably one of the very first songs many of us ever learned, complete with all its hand motions. (Have the congregation sing the song!)

A cute song? Try it from the spider's perspective. The truth is that the spider is getting nowhere. The truth about life is that from the spider's perspective, life is just ODTAA ! What's that? ODTAA ? It's one darned thing after another! The ancient Greeks already had figured this out and composed a myth to express this truth. The tale of Sisyphus ends with the hero condemned for eternity to struggle to roll a huge stone up a steep hill. But every time he reaches the top and it looks like his task is finally accomplished, the stone rolls all the way back down to the bottom, again. Sisyphus begins each day by once again facing his " Sisyphian task" – pushing that same rock back up that same hill.

– As the office worker whose desk sports an "In" box and an "Out" box if life isn't just ODTAA .

– Ask the homemaker who tries valiantly to keep the family's house picked up and looking decent if life isn't just ODTAA .

– Ask the woman who had two out-of-control cars careen into her dining room in the middle of the night within three months of each other, if life isn't just ODTAA .

– A year from now, just ask that new mother of septuplets if life isn't just ODTAA !

Who doesn't know what it's like to start over and over again, constantly climbing "up the water spout," even though we know that the rain is coming! Is truth the "Itsy-Bitsy Spider"?

Or is truth "Rock-a-Bye-Baby"? Here's another cheery children's song that has a long, cherished career as a soft and soothing lullaby. But have you really listened to the words? (Have the congregation sing the song!) This is supposed to soothe a fussy baby to sleep – a song about a baby falling out of a treetop! Perhaps the long-awaited cure for that mysterious baby ailment known as "colic" will be found by simply not singing this song to our kids and terrifying them!

Isn't a truth about life the fact that sometimes terrible things do happen? Life can unexpectedly jolt us with tremendous loss, pain, betrayal, death. The child's lullaby does not say "if the bough breaks, the cradle will fall." It proclaims "when the bough breaks . . ." To be alive and living in this world is to live in the midst of falling branches, failing relationships, fragile hearts. Isn't it true that "life is difficult," that life can be tragic?

The New Testament bears witness to this aspect of the truth by both opening and closing with tears. Like life itself, the gospel begin with a cry: "A voice was heard in Ramah , wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled because they are no more." Also, like life itself, the Bible ends with a cry: "I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they cried out with a loud voice, 'Sovereign Lord . . . how long will it be before you judge and avenge?'"

Jesus, himself, suffered the truth of life's tragedies when, in pain and despair, he called out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" An old "truism" offers a kind of rock-a-bye lullaby for grownups to muse upon: "There is no more pain in the world than one person can bear. But all the world's pain can be contained on one cry." The truth in life is full of surprises – but not all of them are good.

But, then, there is one more truth song. The words to the song were written by a professor at Princeton – Professor Henry Van Duke. The music was written by Ludwig van Beethoven. The song is called "Ode to Joy." The music and words to this hymn are found on page 89 in our hymnal. You can turn there, if you want too, and sing with me:

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee,

God of glory, Lord of love;

Hearts unfold like flowers before thee,

opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;

drive the dark and doubt away.

Giver of immortal gladness,

fill us with the light of day.

So, what is truth? "Joyful, joyful, we adore thee, God of glory, Lord of love." The ultimate truth is that no matter how serious the grind, no matter how grinding the tragedy, God's love shines through. We can experience joy and gladness and peace in the midst of an "Itsy- Bitsy Spider" world, a "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" life. In truth, we can give thanks for all of life.

This week, we will sit around our Thanksgiving tables, re-creating in our own families a moment from our country's past, a moment we want to capture in our own present. That small band of 102 ill-prepared settlers who, on a cold November morning, established a tiny outpost at Plymouth Rock, spent a grim and grueling first year. They had to learn and live the "truth" about how new life would be in the "New World." Their crops failed. Their seed rotted. They fell ill from disease and malnutrition.

Despite the new land, new hopes and new horizons, once again life just seemed to be itsy- bitsy, ODTAA . Although they came to this New World with high ideals, with tremendous reserves of faith in God's providences in their undertakings, the unexpected harshness of the land, the hardness of their new life, their heartsickness for home sent half of the first colony of "Pilgrims" packing . . . for eternity. The lullaby of religious freedom turned out to have verses just as mournful as "Rock-a-Bye-Baby," as they buried their wives, husbands and children in the frozen ground of Massachusetts.

But for those who stuck it out – who experienced these tough truths of life – there came a time when at least they could hear strains of another ode-to-joy tune weaving its way through their souls; words from verse three of "O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go" –

O Joy, that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee;

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

And feel the promise's not in vain,

That morn shall tearless be.

Calling together their colony and joining together with those who were here first, naive peoples whose generosity of spirit, knowledge of their environment, and material goods had made the Pilgrim's survival possible. They genuinely and joyously celebrated the truth about their new life in the New World.

The ode-to-joy truth we all can affirm when we sit down at our Thanksgiving table is this: God's love is continually in our midst, God's forgiveness is eternally available, God's peace pours out in an unending stream, God's joy can fill up all the cracked and imperfect corners of our lives.	Amen.