Truth is God is Love is Truth?

“For a long time I believed that God is truth, but now I know that truth is God.”  In Deepa Mehta’s beautiful and troubling film “Water” (Click for a link), Gandhi shares this statement with the crowd gathered to see him at the train station after he has been released from prison by the British.  Among those in the crowd are two widows, main characters in the story of their marginalization, which continues today, justified, as the film states, by the sacred texts of Manu.  Among those on the train that takes Gandhi toward his role in the liberation of India is the young Brahmin law student, who has been inspired by Gandhi’s teachings.  As the train pulls away, he takes into his arms the youngest widow, a nine year old girl who has been put into prostitution to provide money for the widows’ home to which she was sent. 

As Gandhi breathed into the people of India and the world this spirit of nonviolent protest against injustice, Christians soon celebrate Pentecost, when a departing Jesus breathed into his followers the Spirit with which he was filled, and which he wanted to breathe into them.  “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  And he said "If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."   As Gandhi departed, he shared this central tenet with his followers who he would leave in the station; as Jesus departed, the said to the followers he would leave on earth, “"If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you.”

John’s Gospel, from which these quotes are taken (its 8^th and 14^th chapters), is the poetic Gospel, the one that plays on our hearts and imaginations, that resonates within us, draws us to mystery.  And this mystery remains in us: what is the relationship between God and truth, between faith and knowledge, between holiness and justice?  When I heard this statement of Gandhi, truth is God, it disturbed me.  It troubled me.  I thought of it like a mathematical formula: Truth = God.  It seemed to constrain God.  But what about Breath = Life and Life = Breath?  What about Faith = Justice?  Troubling?  Pentecost is not a celebration of closure, the end of a story.  It is the spread of a virus, borne on the breath, on the breath that brings us word, and song, each with their own truth. 

Truth = God = Love: somehow I find that easier to accept.  The deepest truth is loving.  To accept as truth something that stops short of love is to accept a partial truth.  It was so to Gandhi.  Perhaps the Spirit of God may be calling us to this.  Pentecost readings: (Click for a link) 

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.