'The Spirit Moving: the Spirit Challenging Falsehood - Acts 13: 1-12 - July 24, 2011- Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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            A woman went to the police station to report that her husband was missing. In the description, she said, 'He's 25 years old, six-foot-three, physically fit and handsome.' The desk sergeant responded, 'Wait a minute. I know your husband. He's in his late forties, short and stocky, and pretty plain looking.' 'I know/ said the woman sheepishly. 'But you can't blame a girl for trying.'

            More and more we are living in a world that seems too ready to sacrifice the truth. Like that woman, we would rather live in the reality we create than in the reality we have. Unlike that story, these refusals to see the truth can be quite serious. For example, Mahmoud Amadinejad, the president of Iran, refuses to admit that the Holocaust - the murdering of six million Jews during the Second World War - really happened. He has conducted meetings and conferences for Holocaust-deniers. Never mind that in order to deny the Holocaust you have to negate the tragic memories of millions of people, as well as the clear proof of the stilt-standing concentration camps. It's simply more convenient for some to believe it never happened.

            Or another example, one that baffles me. For all of my adult life, including most of my preaching career, science has ruled. I personally don't have any trouble believing in both the claims of science and the claims of faith, but for centuries many have seen the two claims to truth as contradictory. And, in the battle between them, science ruled the roost. You could say, 'The Bible says ...' and a few people would pay attention. But if you said, 'Scientists have proven...'  then that was all you needed to say, and people assumed the truth had been found. It seemed to me that was true until scientist after scientist- scores of them - banded together to warn that the earth was getting warmer, and we better do something about it. All of a sudden, people said that scientists didn't know what they were talking about, as they advanced ever more adamantly what Al Gore labeled, 'An Inconvenient Truth.'

            There are a lot of inconvenient truths today, and a lot of convenient lies. A little boy asked his father if every fairy tale begins with the words, 'Once upon a time.' And the father said, 'No, son. Some of them begin with the words, "If I'm elected I promise to ... nr There area lot of convenient lies that are said in the name of politics - we hardly expect anything different. The same with advertising -we expect exaggeration - it's part of the game. Falsehood shows up other places.

            Consider the nation of China in the 2008 Olympics. They conducted a search to find a young girl to sing the Chinese national anthem. When they found the voice they wanted, they were dismayed that the singer was not especially attractive in their eyes. So they found another young girl with the look they wanted, and had her fake singing the anthem with the first girl's voice dubbed in. The international community decried the superficiality of it all. But would anybody deny that our own society is obsessed with physical image - to the extent that studies have shown that political candidates who are perceived as younger and more attractive can make absolutely crazy statements about history or other topics, and be forgiven much faster than candidates who are perceived as older and less attractive? Our obsession with image accounts for many convenient lies about what is truly important and worthy about a person.

            Jesus said that it is the truth that sets us free. We should believe that because Jesus said so. But we also see it every day - how we get trapped in our lies. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has written, ‘People too easily accept that truth is the first casualty of war; isn't it really that peace is the first casualty of untruthfulness?' And indeed, if you look at most of the wars that have been fought, you will likely find a bed of lies beneath them. If you look at the crucifixion of Jesus, you will see the same thing -the case against Jesus was a bed of lies - innuendoes, false accusations, denials, betrayals. Ever since Adam and Eve, humankind has had trouble living honestly. And the cost is high - peace; integrity; marriages; homes; faith; national pride.

            We have been reading our way through the middle chapters of the Book of Acts this summer, and seeing the powerful things that happen when God's Holy Spirit is moving. We've seen that when the Spirit is moving, the Spirit is healing; the Spirit is breaking down walls; the Spirit is building up the Church; the Spirit is setting prisoners free. Today we can add to that list that the Spirit is challenging falsehood - uncovering the truth. bur scripture story from Acts 13 talks of this in myriad ways:

            First we/retold about the church at Antioch, which was becoming the most important church in the early Christian movement. We're told in Acts 13: 1 that there were prophets and teachers in that church. There were many other people too; but I think the reason-these two particular jobs were lifted up is that prophets and teachers are essential for speaking the truth - attacking falsehood. And that was the constant battle the early church was fighting - standing up for the truth in a false world.

            Of these prophets and teachers, Saul and Barnabas are singled out by the Holy Spirit to be commissioned and sent away to preach. They leave for Cyprus, and end up in the city of Paphos, where they encounter a false prophet named Bar-Jesus - which means {Son of Jesus' - not, of course, Jesus our Lord, but some other man with that common name. This name play becomes more noticeable for a couple reasons: first of all, a couple verses later, the man is given a different name, perhaps because the early Christians didn't especially like the fact that a false prophet would be connected with the name Jesus. But also because when Paul confronts the man, he calls him a ‘son of the devil,' as if to make clear that this man, whatever his name, is the opposite of a son of Jesus.

            And the reason for that, says Paul, is that the man is full of deceit and villainy. Again, there is a contrast that Luke is drawing here - Paul and Barnabas are filled with the Holy Spirit; this false prophet is filled with lies. And Paul asks him, ‘Will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?' Those words are worth chewing on as well. There are outright lies - we know the harm they can do. But then there are half-truths: or lies of omission - things that make crooked the straight paths of the Lord. Things that bend the truth. And those are just as harmful. ‘Well, I didn't lie; I just didn't tell the whole truth.' ‘It all depends on what the definition of "is" is.' Someone has said that if you are telling a half-truth, then you are holding on to the wrong half. It is falsehood, and the Holy Spirit shines a bright light on it, and challenges us to live in truth, and not in lies.

            It is interesting that when Paul (or Saul) confronts the false prophet, he does it by bringing on the curse of blindness - the false prophet was struck blind. Paul would be very familiar with that because when he himself was converted to faith in Jesus, as told in Acts 9, he was struck blind, and had to be led by the hand. So was the fate of the false prophet. It's as if the Bible is pointing out that when we live in lies, as Paul was doing, as the false prophet was doing - eventually we lose all sight of the truth. Consider the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley, where Matt Damon plays the character of Ripley, a man who is so talented at lying that he is no longer capable of making a true statement. Finally, he realizes how dark and corrupt he is inside, and he hates himself. But he doesn't know how to break the power of falsehood - he doesn't know how to find the truth. He is blinded to it.

            The Good News in today's scripture is that there is a way to get back to the truth - it is one of the gifts the Holy Spirit of God can give us. What Paul discovered in his own life - and who knows, what he may have hoped for that false prophet - was that the time of blindness, when he was totally dependent and unable to lie anymore - was the time when something new and life-changing could happen. So when the scales fell from his eyes at last, he no longer wanted to live a lie. He had found the truth of faith, and the truth had set him free.

            You see, Jesus not only said that the truth would set us free. He said that we would know the truth. And then he said, 'I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.' When we turn to Jesus - when we let his Spirit loose in our lives - there is no room for falsehood. The truth of God's love, delivered in the sacrifice of His Son Jesus, is too wonderful to hide. He invites us to become real, honest people, admitting our faults, with nothing to hide, and living lives of integrity and honor. It is so limiting, so burdensome, to be false. It is so freeing to be real. Faith in Jesus is an invitation to that kind of life. One of the best testimonies to the power of truth I've run across lately is the story of a young girl with tough beginnings - she was raised early on by a struggling teenage single mom in Mississippi. By the time she was fourteen, she had been sexually abused on three different occasions. She kept this secret for years, feeling it as her own personal shame. Through her older teens, she acted out in anger, but also was determined to overcome her beginnings. Her mother grew overwhelmed with her, and sent her to live with her father. This was the pivotal event in her life. Her father had found faith, and had found truth, and it turned his life around. And he taught it to his daughter - so much so that she became dedicated to uncovering the truth, and became a journalist. It was a fateful career choice. She became a rising star in journalism, someone known for her honesty and compassion. Her way of speaking plain truth, and her openness about her life, resonated with people in a world where truth is rare, so much so that eventually her show became the most watched daytime talk show in the history of
television. She called it her ministry. And she would always tell her guests ahead of time - 'Just tell the truth. It will save you every time.' In one of the most famous moments on television, moved by the story of abuse that a guest was sharing, she finally tearfully confessed the shame and hurt she had carried about being abused as a child - and she was set free of that prison she had lived in for so long. And she once remarked how ironic it was that with her obsession with honesty, and her reputation for fostering the truth - her name was actually a mistake: she had been named for the biblical woman Orpah, but the midwife wrote it wrong on the birth certificate -- and so she has been known all her life as Oprah.

            Just t

ell the truth, her father said. There is amazing power in honesty. And perhaps this morning's scripture story of the encounter between the Holy Spirit and a spirit of falsehood can prompt each of us to examine ourselves with some pointed questions: am I truthful? Can I be trusted? Does my life lie on a bed of lies, or on integrity and honesty? Do I value the truth only when it is convenient? Or do I embrace it as the very foundation of my life? Are there self-deceptions in my life? Am I blinded in falsehood? Or have I found the truth that sets me free - the one who came to shine a light on falsehood and break its power?

            We believe there is a God who searches us and knows us. We believe there is a Savior whose cross is the place where all is seen and forgiven. And we believe there is a Holy Spirit that confronts falsehood, and sets us free to live in truth. It is Good News; it is grace; it is God's gift for all who would claim it today.