The Truth Will Hurt, But It Will Make You Free

If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;

and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

The truth will make you free. This is a pretty common expression, isn’t it? And one that you probably didn’t know was from Jesus’s words in the Gospel of John. You usually hear it as “the truth will set you free,” but this translation of the Scriptures we use says “make” you free. In both cases, the idea is that knowing the truth leads directly to freedom. In fact, it’s more like knowing the truth automatically flips the freedom switch as well; they are on the same circuit, intimately connected with each other. It’s almost like they are equal: knowing the truth = freedom.

I want you to think for a minute about all the expressions you know that contain the word “truth.”

You might say that a rumor contains a grain of truth. You might say that you’ve come to a moment of truth in your life. Someone might advise you to be true to yourself. In a court, you would swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God. In World Religions class, you study the four noble truths of the Buddhist path. You might hear a really odd story from the news and conclude that truth is stranger than fiction.

But I think the expression that may actually go the best with Jesus’s sense of the word “truth” in this passage is that the truth hurts. The truth hurts--but it also makes us free.

Let’s think about how both of these expressions could be true at the same time: that the truth hurts, and that the truth will make you free.

I guess it was only a matter of time before I used Frozen 2 for a sermon. I’ll try not to spoil the entire thing if you haven’t seen it yet. But this surprisingly deep film has a wonderful example of the principle I’m trying to illustrate here, so I hope you’ll forgive me.

As the story progresses, Anna and Elsa learn that the supposedly noble character of their grandfather, the once-king of Arendelle, was not noble at all. In fact, they learn that he deliberately lured the Northuldra, the film’s stand-in for indigenous people, into a death trap meant to make their land less prosperous and thus force their dependence on him instead. It’s pretty dark territory for a kid’s movie; but it’s a profoundly spiritual and moral lesson: Anna learns, in particular, that she may have to destroy the kingdom she loves so much in order to right a historical wrong. It’s a good example of the principle that the truth may be difficult to face, but the truth will make them free. In this case, the truth will free the Arendellians from their guilt and culpability in the sins of the past; and it will free the Northuldra from their continued oppression as a result of this past sin.

The passage that we just read from Isaiah could easily apply to this principle as well. Isaiah the prophet foretells a time in which the injustice of his kingdom will make the entire kingdom sterile, cold, and unproductive; until they turn from their oppressive ways. Isaiah knows that justice and peace from the leaders of the kingdom will lead to God blessing the land once again with fruitfulness, with righteousness, with justice for all. Once again, the truth may be difficult to face, but the truth will make them free.

The story of Frederick Douglass, whom we honor and celebrate today, is a story not only of his amazing escape from slavery. It is also a story of his life as a prophet of Christ after his escape from slavery. Douglass literally spent the rest of his life telling difficult truths to people in power with the intention of setting people free. Douglass told these truths in difficult circumstances, and he told them not only to set free his fellow African-Americans, but indigenous people and women as well.

In Douglass’s case, truth-telling was complicated by many factors. One of the biggest difficulties Douglass faced as an abolitionist was that people used the same language to mean vastly different things. To some, the Gospel of Jesus Christ was perfectly compatible with the practice of human trafficking called slavery; but to others, like Douglass, Jesus Christ was the North Star; the one who liberates all people from their bondage and captivity.

Douglass realized that there is more than one way to be enslaved. You can be enslaved in your body and enslaved in your mind. The slaves were kept from reading and writing as a means to keep their minds enslaved. But Douglass knew that once his mind was liberated, his body would be liberated as well.

And yet there were those, namely the slaveholders and all those who fought to uphold slavery, who used the language of Christianity to justify their actions.

Sometimes we have to dive down deep in order to discover the truth about ourselves, about our pasts, about the past of our people.

Sometimes those deep dives reveal difficult things that we would rather not confront, difficult stories we would rather not tell, difficult parts of ourselves we would rather not see.

Would you be willing to destroy everything that you thought you loved to free yourself and others from a sinful past?

This was the question Douglass confronted his listeners with during his lifetime. Would you be willing to destroy your false ideals of Christianity, the false gods you have been worshipping, in order to discover the true God? Would you be willing to destroy the false god of slavery in order to liberate your brothers and sisters to a new life? Would you be willing to destroy your own economic security in order to see that others are able to eat, drink, and live a full and free life for themselves?

Would I, for example, be willing not to see my own slave-holding ancestors who fought for the Confederacy as heroic, but as morally culpable individuals who upheld one of the most terrible forms of oppression the world has ever seen in order to fully embrace the Gospel of Jesus Christ to which I am called as a Christian and a clergyperson?

Douglass himself had to go through this process of seeking and finding the truth.

He had to disbelieve in certain gods in order to embrace the true God. Douglass doubted the existence of a God who would have allowed him to be born a slave. So he believed in a God who allowed him to be liberated from slavery in both mind and body.

And that disbelief in the God of the Slavers, and that belief in the Loving, Life-giving, Liberating God of Jesus Christ, was what spurred him on to work tirelessly for the liberation of others as well.

This is a process all of us have to go through at some point in our religious lives. We have to identify the false gods that mask and deceive; we have to uncover them and name them for what they are.

While you might not think that I am an atheist, I disbelieve in many gods. I disbelieve in a God who accepts that one human being can own another one. I disbelieve in a God who is white, and bearded, and old, and sits on a throne in the sky. I disbelieve in a God who condemns me because of my sins. I disbelieve in a God who enables hatred to flourish. I disbelieve in a God of violence and fear.

And because of all those disbeliefs, I also believe. Like Frederick Douglass, I believe in the God of Jesus Christ the Liberator. I believe in a God who seeks the liberation of all people from the prison of their own sin. I believe in a God who seeks reconciliation among all. I believe in a God who sets a table and offers his very own body and blood as the meal for all who come. I believe in a God who forgives, scandalously. I believe in a God of peace who wants to free us from the mistakes of our past. I believe in a God who makes us free. I believe in a God who makes you free.

I’m going to close with the words of another preacher, Mother Janet Zimmerman, who puts so well in these words the God of freedom, the true God, that Douglass found in his own life and that each of us can find in our lives as well. She says this:

Made in the image of God, we are challenged daily to open our eyes to the movement of God’s grace within us. To recognize our own belovedness and to look for the belovedness of others. We are to be aware of our learned perceptions of appearances that constrict our ability to see God in others. And we are to pray to be able to see beyond our crippling prejudices to be open to the power of God’s salvation working in our own lives and in the lives of people who share this place.

We are invited to recognize our potential for goodness and to recognize the goodness in others. To bravely embrace the love that has been planted within us so we may share that with the world. None of us are “one story”- none of us are only our worst judgement or our thoughtless behavior. Goodness is in each of us if only we look and welcome its appearance.

And because Jesus lived and died and rose again for all, we are called to open ourselves daily to the new possibilities beginning in us and in our family as God’s children. Because Christ is alive, we can be empowered to be liberated from our “old” ways of seeing so we may experience God’s “new heaven and earth.”

What do you hear God saying to you as a child made in God’s image? Can you embrace your own beauty in the eyes of God? Can you recognize and greet the belovedness in others?

May in prayer, work, study, and rest we listen for the love that is eternal and ponder how we follow Jesus.

May the truth set us free, yesterday, today, and always. AMEN.