Readings: Matthew 26:14-35, Luke 23: 44-56, John 20:1-10 and Luke 24: 13-35.

John Keats wrote that ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.’

But there is nothing beautiful about the image of the cross – an instrument of torture, His body pierced, hanging, bleeding, His bones out of joint, bodily functions slowly failing, all in front of a crowd mocking, weeping, shouting insults – there is no dignity. This is not justice, not even for the robbers hanging beside Him.

The cross is a symbol of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’, and a testament to the failure of human judgement. It was our choice and our doing, it was evil working through an individual (Pontius Pilate) passing on the blame as Adam did in the Garden, washing his hands of responsibility, and through a crowd looking inward to themselves as judge and jury who call out collectively to ‘crucify Him’!

This was not by God’s hand or His want. In the beginning God saw all that He had created, and it was good – but of all the visible creatures only we were made in His image to have the freedom to know and love our Creator. By this privilege we were given the stewardship of the earth, yet we turned our hearts away – as moral beings, only we have managed to corrupt what was beautiful, for our own good, our own convenience, and our own pleasure.

The sun stopped shining and darkness came over the land. The image of Jesus, as the image of God is shown as wholly merciful as He takes on all our sins to be burned up in the fire of His love. The darkness a brief separation of heaven and earth which were created to belong together, the earth and all that is in it to be a visible sign of an invisible reality – to be a mirror of God’s Kingdom in heaven, connected by the fullness of His love.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13). We see now the contrasts at work – of light and darkness, innocence and sin, Jesus and the cross, love and evil.

Perhaps we can change the words of John Keats to say instead ‘love is truth, truth love – that is all ye know of heaven on earth and all ye need to know’?

God is love (1 John 4:16), love is His being and His doing. Jesus tells us He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). Love is the pathway between heaven and earth, God and man, man and his neighbour. Love is the connection, the bridge between us, which brings us life now and forever.

Love’s being is all in all and love’s doing is all things working together for each other – for flourishing, for fruitfulness. Truth must likewise work similarly for our flourishing and life. Both love and truth have an essence which gives meaning and understanding to us. Believing the truth is then also the way to life now and forever.

Jesus reinstates our personal knowledge and understanding of God following the fall and our exile from the Garden of Eden. Jesus is the invisible truth revealed to us in the physical reality of time and space to which we belong.

We see this on the road to Emmaus – the disciples reflect after having their eyes opened to see that the stranger with them was the risen Lord Himself ‘were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’ Understanding is truth when words and meaning align or harmonise. The reflection or perfect mirroring of each other becomes a connection like opening a door to an old friend, or an unveiling of what was invisible – the truth as love – and Love is a fire.

But the world tells us we live in a ‘post-truth’ age because it has confused the difference between truth and reality – for we all experience reality in a different and personal way – language is the collective agreement to which we subscribe that holds our perceived reality together in a cooperative way. Language enables us to be known uniquely yet held together as one. It is impossible to know and understand another’s thinking without communication and that collective agreement of its meaning. For example, we say ‘grass is green’ because this is what we have been taught green and grass look like and so have agreed it cooperatively. However, what is real to us may or may not be true, because reality is a complex picture that we have built up of our experiences and our relationship to them – like fragments of time and experience put together to create a mosaic in our minds. We then hold new events or facts against this internal mosaic to see if they match up, like a jigsaw puzzle we look to see if they fit our underlying beliefs which will include, among other things, the relationship between our world view and self-concept. It is then the inferences and evaluations we make from these underlying beliefs that cause us to accept or reject these fragments as they are presented to us. If we shut out God from this framework – we see only worldliness, which is ultimately meaningless, fleeting, and empty without His love.

Judas had not subscribed to the truth of Jesus as the Messiah. It is highly probable from what is given to us in the Scriptures that he had just one measure of kingship in his mind and heart with which to assess his experience of Jesus. The hope in his heart of a king who would bring him riches, favour, and rewards – like the thirty pieces of silver he collects.

Peter on the other hand believes in his heart Jesus is the Messiah, he genuinely believes he will not deny what he thinks he knows to be the truth of the Word made flesh. How hard it is for us to say what we will do in the future, or to put ourselves in the moment of a different reality, a different moment in time and space – where everything has changed, what we once knew is no more – Jesus has been arrested and life for Peter will never be the same again.

What can we learn from Peter’s experience today? Perhaps it reminds us how easy it is for us to judge others when we cannot predict with any certainty what we ourselves would do when faced with a different moment of reality. When we think of migrants and refugees fleeing from climate induced drought or famine, from war or oppression. What would we do if we found ourselves facing such poverty and death – would we not wish ourselves to chase after life? Would we not try to survive? If you had nothing but the dirt under your feet, would you not think the Western countries were rich? It is food for thought.

Let all that you do be done in love (1 Corinthians 16:14). God sees the heart and we know the risen Lord reinstates Peter with the same question asked three times, ‘do you love me?’

Love is expressed in so many ways, but each time it is personal, and relational. St Aquinas says love is the root and cause of every emotion. But when our love is turned inwards to ourselves, it desires power, and expansion, starts wars, or competitions for its own good – not for mutual flourishing. But the sword of truth and love fights for unity and wholeness, it walks alongside otherness recognising we do not live alone, and we are all responsible for each other’s wellbeing in an interconnected and global society.

Love is truth, truth love – that is all we need to know of the Kingdom of heaven to come on earth.

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May the glory of our risen Lord fill our hearts with His love, His truth, peace and joy – now and forever. Amen.