What were you born for? (What is the truth that is worth my life, my energy, all that I am and all that I have to give?)  

In one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons, Lucy (I think) asks Linus the question: “What are we here for?”  His response – “We are here to serve others.”  There is a whole panel just showing Lucy pondering that response.  And then comes her obvious follow up question:  “Then what are the others here for?”   

I am reminded of that question as I listened to Jesus’ dialogue with Pilate in today’s gospel.  Though it is Jesus who is on trial, you get the sense that it really is Pilate and the world on trial.  “For this I was born, for this I came into the world – to testify to the truth.”  Of all the responses that Jesus could have given to the question of why he was born, isn’t this perhaps the most puzzling, and, the most disappointing?  Even Linus’ response of “We’re here to serve others” seems ‘better’.  What does it mean to testify to the truth?   

What does it mean to testify to the truth?  It is not an idle question in our days.  The Post Dispatch and various blogs are all in a tizzy because Archbishop Carlson responded to a plea by one of his bishops for funds to help speak the truth about the nature of Marriage in a ballot referendum in Maine.  Our congress is actively debating a revision of our health care system.  Some within that debate want to make the right to abortion a part of HEALTH CARE.  I can tell you, it ain’t very healthy to that unborn child.  Is there a truth about the dignity and inherent worth of all life, from its moment of conception to natural death, regardless of what our ‘opinion’ on the matter might be? 

“For this I was born, for this I came into the world – to testify to the truth.”  Standing there before Pilate, knowing that Pilate holds Jesus’ physical life in his hands, Jesus is very deliberate.  And he stand in the only place that he knows has LIFE for him – in his love for the Father.  I have come to serve a kingdom, but not like you think – not with power, not with force or violence.  I am no threat to your earthly kingship.  But I am a huge threat to what you think really matters.  For what really matters is testifying to the truth.  

But here you need to understand what that word “TRUTH” meant in the cultural world of Jesus.  Truth was not a mental assent to logically proven and deducted formulas.  Truth was a road that one can follow with complete trust that it would lead to life.  Truth is a road you can follow trusting it will lead you to life.   

And what is that truth that Jesus was born for, lived for and died for – if not precisely this? That the kingdom of God is the one where love reigns, where forgiveness rules, where sacrifice is the order of the day, where thinking of the other first is our deepest truth and our greatest priority.  The Kingdom of God is any experience and choice in life that loves without holding anything back.  The Kingdom of God is every experience and choice in life that loves without holding back.  And if that is not a truth that is worth my life, my energy, all that I am and all that I have to give, then I don’t know what is!

We celebrate today the feast of Christ the King, the one who was born to testify to the truth, and the one who would die to show us the ultimate nature of the truth.  The pattern, the truth about life that will always lead to LIFE ETERNAL – is that of sacrificial love – loving without holding anything back.  FOR THIS I WAS BORN, says Jesus.  What are YOU born for?