Lent 4 (NL4) John B. Valentine
John 18:28-40 March 15, 2026

“ALTERNATIVE TRUTHS”

Do any of you perchance recall the name Kellyanne Conway??

• Formally ... she was a ‘Campaign Manager’ to Mister Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign ... and then a ‘Senior Consultant’ to President Trump during his first term in office ...

• Informally ... in both of those roles ... she was the president’s lead attack dog.

It was Kellyanne Conway whom President Trump turned to again and again and again during his first term to argue his case in the court of public opinion .... to go on this, that and the other news program and make the case as to why what they were doing was good for the nation.

And it was in that role that Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “Alternative facts”.

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Any of you remember that whole hullabaloo??

It was right after his first inauguration ... President Trump ... in the context of a news conference ... claimed that his inauguration was the biggest ... the bestest ... the most well-attended presidential inauguration EVER!

And the folks at CNN and a couple of the other major news outlets challenged that claim.

The newsfolks stuck to their guns ...

• Trotting out public transit ridership statistics in our nation’s capital on every inauguration day back to President Bush’s inauguration back in 2001 ... and

• Comparing aerial photographs of the National Mall from each of those events and the like.

But the Trump administration stuck to its guns as well ...

Arguing ... on-air ... again and again and again ... that the media were deliberately underestimating the size of the crowd ...

And make the case ... and I quote ... that the ceremony had drawn the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe" ...

And it was in that context that Kellyanne Conway ... on Meet the Press ... in response to a question regarding false claims about crowd size and the loss of credibility ... declared that “our press secretary ... Sean Spencer ... was simply citing ‘alternative facts.’”

When pressed about that claim in the days and weeks that followed ... Conway prattled on and on about how what she called “Alternative Facts” and “Truthful Hyperbole” are just different ways of seeing things ....

And that the so-called “professional fact-checkers” employed by the mainstream media were all just bleeding-heart liberals anyways.

But again the news media folks fired back:

• that the truth is the truth ...
• that “facts and the truth are not partisan” ... and
• that “alternative facts” are really just “damned lies and falsehoods”.

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Now I’d LOVE to tell you that that encounter between Ms. Conway and the mainstream media was just a one off ...

That we’ve come to our senses and can again agree ...

• that facts are facts ...
• that the truth is the truth ...
• that truth, justice and the American Way matter ...

But ... sadly ... I can’t. “Alternative facts” are apparently just the way things are right now.

Lamentably ... to me at least ... we now live in what is being called a “post-truth” world.

Aided and abetted by new forms of communication ... Facebook and Twitter and podcasts and the like ... the society in which we live deems “objective facts as being less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

We don’t care what the statistics and the peer-reviewed science says about say about childhood vaccines and childhood obesity and climate change and the like ...

We care about how we feel about how we FEEL about childhood vaccines and childhood obesity and climate change and the war in Iran and the like ...

And we just go cherry-picking from all the information out there to support what we feel to be right.

But I guess we should have seen it all coming ... folks.

Isn’t that the very same thing that Pontius Pilate did almost exactly two thousand years!

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Did you hear it in the text that we heard read just a little bit ago?

• That story of Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate ....
• That story of Jesus being questioned by the Roman governor of Palestine ....
• That story of Jesus facing down the political authorities of the world in which he lived.

We’ve got this story of a politically-motivated hearing of the sort that is so very much a part of things in our own nation’s capital ...

With Jesus ... the accused ... standing before Pontius Pilate ... the chief interrogator.

And it’s filled with a whole litany of leading legal questions:

• “What accusation do you bring against this man?”
• “Are you the King of the Jews?”
• “What have you done?”
• “So you are a king?”

And then ... finally ... that final hauntingly inquiry: “WHAT IS TRUTH?”

Now ... to the first of those questions ... Jesus has a ready answer:

• “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”

• “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

• “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

But to the last of those questions ... Jesus has no answer.

To the question “What is truth?” ... Jesus has no answer at all.

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BUT WHY NOT?? Why doesn’t Jesus answer Pilate’s question as to “What is truth?”???

Actually ... it may well be that the reason that Jesus didn’t answer that question is that it isn’t really a question you can answer.

• Some scholars have suggested that the reason Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question “What is truth?” is because that question is conditional ...

Kind of like the question “When does it stop being partly cloudy and start being partly sunny?” ...

“Because” ... they would say ... “it depends on the conditions under which the question is being asked.”

• Others have suggested that the reason Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question “What is truth?” is because that question is subjective ...

Kind of like the question “Which grandbaby is the cutest grandbaby ever?”

Because all of us know that “My grandbabies are the cutest grandbabies ever.”

• And still others have suggested that the reason Jesus doesn’t answer Pilate’s question “What is truth?” is because that question is oxymoronic ...

Kind of like the question “How can something be ‘new and ‘improved’ at one and the same time?”

Because ... if something is really ‘new’ ... what was it improving on??

Heck ... it may well be that Pilate’s question ... and Jesus’ non-answer ... is trickier than any of those tricky questions!

You see ... in a certain way ... Pilate’s question is actually more along the lines of a question like “When did you stop taking drugs?”

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Think about it this way:

What is it that Jesus says about ‘the truth’ that leads into Pilate’s question?

He says “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” ... does he not???

Jesus seems to be saying ... seems to be telling the powers of the world and telling us ... that “The Truth” isn’t some objective philosophical reality.

Rather ... “The Truth” IS a relationship.

“The Truth” isn’t something we talk about as being ‘out there’.

Rather ... “The Truth” IS something that begins ‘in here’.

“The Truth” isn’t ‘conditional’ or ‘subjective’ or ‘oxy-moronic’.

Rather ... “The Truth” IS something we experience in our lives when we encounter this One who is standing before Pilate!

“The Truth” ... to steal the thunder of a famous theologian from back in the 19th century named Soren Kierkegaard ... isn’t something Jesus teaches.

“The Truth” IS who and what Jesus is!

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You know how ... here in the context of this morning’s worship service ... we shared in some “Words of Confession and Hope”??

Those words were ... in part... an admission that we have fallen short of God’s perfect standards.

But ... more than just owning up to our actions of failure and our failures to act ... those words are a confession that we have denied the Truth Himself.

• That we don’t hear his voice ...
• That we don’t truly know him ...
• That we certainly don’t follow him.

Oh sure ... sometimes those words roll pretty mindlessly off our lips ...

But the closer we look in the mirror that is those Words ... the clearer it becomes that we don’t belong to the Truth himself ....

That our lives and our living are constant confessions that we don’t really follow Him.

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One of the most memorable movie scenes of all time was ... and still is ... the closing scene of that Tom Cruise / Jack Nicholson movie from back in like 1992 entitled “A Few Good Men.”

Remember what it was that Nicholson’s character ... Colonel Jessup ... said in context of that courtroom scene at the end of the trial that was at the heart of that movie ... when he was under interrogation in that courtroom?

You want the truth? “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”

Now I somehow doubt that Jesus would have shouted at Pilate with the same volume and vitriol with which Colonel Jessup addressed his courtroom ...

But he might well have said the same thing ... that Pilate couldn’t handle the truth!

• Pilate wasn’t interested in the truth ... he was interested in keeping the peace.

• Pilate wasn’t interested in justice being done ... he was interested in keeping his job.

• Pilate wasn’t interested in doing the right thing ... he was interested in keeping his resume clean.

Because the truth that Pilate couldn’t handle ... the truth that the world can’t handle ... the truth that we ourselves can’t handle ...

Is that Jesus himself is the Truth ...

And that Jesus’ answer to Pilate’s question “What is truth?” is really just something that he has been saying throughout John’s gospel ......... “I AM.”