“Every time I am face-to-face with another person there is the opportunity for each of us to meet and be changed by the presence of God in the other.”
Sermon by Mike Kinman at All Saints Church, Pasadena, on Sunday, November 25, 2018.
Pilate said, “What is Truth?”
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There is something I do all the time, so often, in fact that it has almost become a reflex.
It’s this (bring hands together at heart, bow and touch hands to forehead).
It’s called pranam. And it is how my parents say goodbye to each other and to me.
One of the great blessings of my life is that my parents are of different faiths and that each has always shown deep love and respect for the tradition of the other. What they have modeled for me is a freedom from the tyranny of having to believe the other is wrong in order for something to be right for them. That has given them the freedom each to dive deeply into their own faith, knowing their different paths do not prevent them from being companions on the journey. It is a freedom that lets them be changed by each other because they are not threatened by each other.
The sacrament of this – the outward and visible sign of this grace between them – is pranam.
My dad is Anglican, born and raised in England. My mom grew up in the Episcopal Church, then about 40 years ago joined Self Realization Fellowship, which promotes the practice of meditation and yoga to bring people closer to God and the divinity in all people. Each of those paths has been so clearly the right path for each of them.
As for me, from third through eighth grade, before I chose following Jesus as my path, I was active in both churches. I went to an Episcopal school and acolyted at church, and I practiced meditation, read the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, and went to summer camp at the SRF Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades.
It was at that camp that I first learned pranam as a way of greeting and parting from another … but it is in the lives of my parents that it became a part of me.
The motion of pranam is deeply intentional. Facing one another, the joining of hands symbolizes the meeting of two souls. You then bow in humility, palms pressed together over the heart, then touching the fingertips to the forehead.
You might be familiar with the Sanskrit word namaste, which literally means “I bow to you” and has the deeper meaning of “the divine in me bows to the divine in you.” Pranam goes even deeper. It is an opening of body, mind and spirit that invites the divinity in you to become a part of me and the divinity in me to become a part of you. Not just an acknowledgment, but the expansion of the soul to embrace and be changed by the other.
Pranam is a revolutionary act. And I believe it is how people as different as my parents have been able to stay married for more than half a century. Because they are not only able to see the divine in each other but strive to have the best of the other become a part of them.
It is a simple motion. It takes but a few seconds. And I know I have been doing it for so long it has become reflexive in that habitual way that diminishes both its power and complexity.
At times I do it quickly as an expression of honoring … and yet it is so much more than that.
At times, I realize I use it as a defense. I can be so uncomfortable with someone seeing the divine in me, I use it as a shield so that before that recognition, that desire to encounter can reach me, I redirect it back toward the other in an act that looks like humility but is actually an unhealthy, unholy denial of the divine in myself.
The truth is, while pranam is a simple motion, as a way of being, it is often profoundly challenging. For us to be willing to be touched and changed by the divine in the other, we have to set aside the labels we use to limit and dismiss one another. We each have to acknowledge not only that the divine exists in people whom we find challenging, offensive or even dangerous … it means we have to acknowledge the divine exists in ourselves, which is often the more difficult task.
And it doesn’t stop there. Pranam is an act of deep vulnerability. For those who have experienced abuse in touch and relationship, for those who are experiencing oppression it can be threatening and even dangerous. So for pranam to be mutual, those with power must be willing either to use that power to create a space of safety or set aside that power so the other knows it will not be used against them.
It means that when one person faces another with the desire to use their power to wound them, while the vulnerable person may offer pranam as an act of deep, extraordinary love, they should never be forced into it. In situations of abuse, the true and necessary act of pranam is for someone who is not vulnerable to stand between abuser and victim so that injury and abuse is not allowed to continue.
Pranam is a simple motion. It takes but a few seconds. Pranam is a complex notion. It takes a lifetime to learn. But when I do it with intention, it expresses the deepest truth I know. That every time I am face to face with another person, there is the opportunity for each of us to meet and be changed by the presence of God in the other.
This morning, after journeying together through the entire liturgical year, we end our telling of the Jesus story with two people standing face to face – Jesus and Pilate.
Pilate is the governor. Jesus the prisoner. To any onlooker, Pilate has all the power … and yet it is Pilate who is afraid. Afraid that Jesus poses a threat to his power. And in his fear, Pilate cannot see who Jesus really is. In his fear, all Pilate can do is try to label Jesus in a way that will enable him to control him.
But not only does Jesus fail to be labeled and controlled, he refuses to do the same to Pilate and instead invites him into a deepeer kind of relationship.
“You say I am a King,” Jesus says. But he refuses to take that label. Instead he says, “I was born and came into the world for only one purpose – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who seeks the truth hears my voice.”
And Pilate’s reply echoes throughout the millennia.
What. Is. Truth?
What. Is. Truth?
We journey through the entire story of the Gospel and it ends this day with a question. And not just any question – but THE question.
What. Is. Truth?
The answer is not only standing right in front of Pilate, the answer is in the word itself.
The Greek word translated as truth is alétheia. It is not truth as proposition but truth as revealed in relationship. It can better be translated as “the state of not being hidden.” 20th century philosopher Martin Heiddegger described alétheia as the “opening of presence.”
Pilate asks “What is truth?” and yet Truth is standing right in front of him. Truth as the opening of presence. Truth as unconcealed relationship with a God who desires nothing more than to be fully present with us. Truth as the expansion of the truthful soul, each encountering and being loved and changed by the divine in the other.
Truth is standing right in front of Pilate, and yet Pilate cannot grasp it. Or maybe Pilate does understand it all too well and it is too difficult, too threatening for him to acknowledge and engage. For if Pilate were not only to acknowledge and be changed by the divine that was in Jesus but allow Jesus to touch and awaken the divine that was in him, he could not help but be toppled from his oppressor’s throne for he could no longer bear to play such a role.
Truth is standing right in front of Pilate. Truth that is the opening of presence. Jesus stood in front of Pilate, pressed his palms together, held them to his heart then bowed and touched his forehead.
And Pilate took his hands … and turned away and washed them clean.
What about us?
Are we willing to be changed by who is right in front of us?
Do we label and dismiss or do we truly encounter?
Will we stand together in the places of greatest vulnerability, risk and pain?
Do we greet each other with pranam?
What is truth? Truth is pranam. It is the quest to have the divine in each of us reveal, encounter and become one with the divine in the other. It is not the violence of abuse and subjugation, nor is it the violence of the quest to convert or save the other. It is not proposition or dogma or a set of rules that must be followed but the expansion of the soul to embrace and be changed by the other.
It is the freedom to dive deeply into the richness of our own faith tradition, knowing that different paths do not prevent us from being companions on the journey. It is a freedom that lets us be changed by each other because we are not threatened by each other.
It is the difference between striving for justice as a way of doing good for others and striving for justice because what once was “the other” has become a part of you, a part of me, a part of us.
When we stand face to face and pranam, I cannot oppress you without knowing I am oppressing myself.
When we stand face to face and pranam, I can bear no injustice against you because there is no distinction between your pain and mine.
When this is our truth, there is no homelessness because we would not let God sleep on the sidewalk. No mothers would wail over their dead children in the street because we would never allow a world where OUR children were gunned down with impunity. No one would be separated from their child at the border because all would be welcomed not only here but everywhere.
When we stand face to face and pranam, there is no racism, sexism or ageism, no xenophobia, homopobia, biphobia or transphobia, no fear or hatred of any other of any kind … because we are too enthralled with the joy of encountering and being changed by the many names, faces and stories of the divine.
What is truth? Pilate asks? Truth is standing right in front of him. Truth is Christ. Truth is pranam.
Truth that meets us at our most abused and broken but refuses to let us stay there, hearing our tales of suffering and victimhood and loving them into tales of triumph and flourishing.
Truth that takes all the world tells us is ugly and unlovable about who we really are and says “no … you are made in God’s image. You are beloved. And beautiful. And powerful. And good.” and then bids us see and love each other the same way.
It is the truth of Christ, and so it bids us stand like Jesus in front of the throne and with our very lives on the line demand our leaders bow to the most vulnerable and oppressed and say those words the devotee in the Bhagavad Gita says to the divine:
“My activity, my love and my mind are at your service.”
Truth is standing right in front of Pilate. Truth that is the opening of presence. Jesus stood in front of Pilate, pressed his palms together, held them to his heart then bowed and touched his forehead.
And Pilate took his hands … and turned away and washed them clean.
What about us?
Are we willing to be changed by who is right in front of us?
Will we label and dismiss or will we truly encounter?
Will we stand together in the places of greatest vulnerability, risk and pain?
Will we be free to be awakened, to be inspired, to be transformed by each other because we refuse to be threatened by each other?
Will we greet each other with pranam?
