The Truth Will Set You Free - August 31
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 25; PM Psalm 9, 15; Job 12:1-6,13-25; Acts 11:19-30; John 8:21-32
Today’s Reflection
A friend I met my sophomore year in high school had just moved to our town from another town a couple hours away, where he had been part of a church youth group called Aletheia. He really missed his old youth group, so he’d often wear his Aletheia T-shirt to school. On the back of the T-shirt, under the Aletheia logo there was a Bible verse, “And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. –John 8:32.”
So, whenever I see this verse, I think of Marc and his T-shirt. Aletheia, by the way, is a Greek word that translates as “truth” or “unconcealedness.” It’s a cool name for a youth group—a place where you can connect with God’s truth, a place where you can be your true self, where you don’t need to hide the truth of who you are.
But as I look back on it now, I don’t agree with the way John 8:32 was used on the back of the T-shirt because we’re only getting half of the story. Reading verse 32 by itself, it sounds like magical thinking: “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” But as someone who is apt to ask questions, my mind wonders: How can we know this truth? And how can knowing this truth make me free?
If we go back just one verse, though, and read verses 31 and 32 together, the mysteriousness falls away and it becomes very clear how we can know this truth that makes us free. It’s a classic if-then statement, with the “then” part clearly implied: If you continue in my word, [then] you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
So, while both verses would have been too long to be the tag line on that vintage 1988 youth group tee, it’s necessary to read them together in order to grasp the message Jesus had for his disciples then and for us now. Jesus himself is telling us how important it is to continue in his word. In order to be a disciple, or a follower of the Way of Jesus, continuing to spend time with God’s words is essential.
It’s important to keep in mind that these two verses about how to be a disciple follow a dialogue in which Jesus is beginning to prepare his friends for the fact that he will not always be walking amongst them: “Again he said to them, ‘I am going away… Where I am going, you cannot come’” (8:21).
So, when Jesus tells them to “continue in my word” so that they will “truly [be] my disciples” he is answering a concern that they have: How can we keep being your disciples if you are not here with us, in person? Jesus, as their pastor and teacher, is reassuring them by giving them a simple plan for how they can stay connected with him, even when he is no longer physically present with them. Continue in my word.
We have never been in Jesus’ physical presence, but we know him and are truly his disciples when we continue in his word. Likewise, these past several months, we haven’t even been able to be in one another’s physical presence at the church—and yet we have still found ways to be the church together every day as we come together for Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, and Sunday worship. And each time we do this, we are continuing together in God’s word as we pray the Psalms, read aloud from the Hebrew scriptures, the Epistles, and the Gospel, and share these daily lectionary reflections.
Though we’ve been imprisoned by the pandemic these past several months, we’ve also, strangely enough, found a way to continue in God’s word so that we will continue to know the truth and, in so doing, to be set free.
—Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection:
At what moments of your day do you feel most free?
What do you notice you are doing when you have those “a-ha moments” of connecting with the truth of who Jesus is in your life?
How does participating in daily prayer and weekly worship change your sense of who God is, and of who you are in relationship to God and other Christians?
Daily Challenge:
Invite a friend or family member to join you for Morning Prayer or Noonday Prayer today or even for this whole week.
How does it change your relationship to share this time with another person in this way?