Devotional Messages

DEVOTIONAL MESSAGE

John 8:31-36 – Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you truly continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.  What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”  Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.  The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever.  So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” (NRSV)

If you don’t realize you’re enslaved, is it possible to be set free?  “The truth shall set you free” is one of Jesus’ most famous quotes, in my estimation.  Almost as famous in some circles is the quote from the movie “A Few Good Men”, “You can’t handle the truth!”  And far too often, both are true.  Even when the lies that shape our lives are binding us up in gruesome ways, those cages are so familiar that we prefer them to the uncertainty offered by the truth.

Sometimes, it’s other people’s truths that unsettle us and make us wish they’d stay caged up in falsehoods.  What do we do when we can’t handle the truths that are emerging in our society from people who had previously been marginalized into silence?  What do we do with the discomfort it causes to realize that things were never as good as we’d thought?  What do we do when the stories that others are sharing are prodding at our own hearts to tell the stories we’ve squashed down so deep inside we’d almost managed to forget them?

Sometimes, as for Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie, we don’t want to face the truth because it reveals that we are not as virtuous or wise or decent as we like to think we are.  In these cases, we need to open ourselves to the miracle of God’s mercy and trust that Jesus will walk with us through the difficult paths of confession and repentance toward redemption.  This isn’t easy, but it’s vital to being a faithful follower of Christ.

Sometimes the opposite is true.  Sometimes the truth is about a time when our dignity and worth was so violated by someone else that it hurts too much to think about it.  This is a much harder path, and one that we can only choose to walk on our own timeline.  When we get in the way of someone walking such a path, it’s because we’re the ones who can’t handle their truth.  Too often, we collude with the slave masters of shame and fear to keep that truth from bringing the necessary liberation.

It’s one thing to resist our own liberation.  But to stand in the way of someone else’s?  That’s what Jesus was talking about in Luke 17:2, when he said it would be better for such a one to be tied to a millstone and thrown in the sea.  Far better to follow Jesus and embrace the truth that will set us free!