The Solemnity Of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King Of The Universe, Year B., Christ The King B-- Let The Truth Finish Up

David Foster Wallace said, "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you,” in other words, the truth has to be assimilated in your conscience before it can set you free.

Stanley Hauerwas, of Duke Divinity school, says, in effect, that, when we don’t let the truth finish its process in us, self-deception results. Many congregations and communities, indeed our entire culture, lives under a conspiracy of niceness that says, "I promise never to tell you the truth about you if you will do the same for me."

e.g. Students at Catholic High School in San Francisco Staged a Walkout Protest of Pro-Life Assembly; they never let the truth that life begins at conception be finished with them.

Hermann Kutter and others have said, "First, I preached my church empty, and then preached it full again."

Not everybody is unwilling to let the truth be finished up with them.

Tim Reardon, the school’s interim president, said that he has since received “many notes from those in the community who appreciate that we are providing the Catholic position [on] this highly polarizing topic.”

We heard John 18:37 in our Gospel today, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." By not letting the truth finish its work in us, we distance ourselves from Jesus.

Similarly, Saint Bonaventure said that "conscience is like God's herald and messenger; it does not command things on its own authority, but commands them as coming from God's authority, like a herald when he proclaims the edict of the king.

We have already been rescued, transferred, delivered from one kingdom to another, yet the full realization escapes us. I think of the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness. Through Moses, God had delivered them from the Egyptian taskmasters, and yet they held onto their slave mentality. A whole generation of Israelites died in the desert before the people were ready to cooperate with God. (Neal Lozano, Unbound).

Lynette P. Miller said, When I was little . . . 10 or 12 . . . we always went to church on Good Friday. And the story of the crucifixion would be read. And I had the same reaction every year. Even though I knew the story, and how it comes out, I could never get safely past the part…when the soldiers and the thief on the cross called out, “Save yourself! Save yourself and us if you are the King of the Jews”,… Do it, I would think, Do it! Just this once. Show them!!! Of course, it never happened. Jesus remained silent. He remained on the cross. The story went on to its usual end. And little by little I came to terms with the fact that it always would, that it was a foolish, childish fancy to think anything else. It was many years later that I began to see the face of God on that cross. For Jesus did

indeed “show us”. He showed us how it really was.

He showed us God’s self. [TOUCHSTONE, MAY 1984]

They were looking for a Lion, He came as a Lamb, and they missed Him.

They were looking for Liberation from Rome, He submitted to the Roman cross, and they missed Him.

They were looking for him to fit their mold, He was the mold maker, and they missed Him.

Ordinarily, unfinished work is unintentional. But we are unfinished people and that was Jesus’ plan all along.

Philippians 1:6 says that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

In other words, the verse says that God is not finished with you yet, but it also says, GOD WILL FINISH WHAT HE STARTED if we let his truth finish up with us.

Amen.