The Truth Hurts

Luke 9:1-62

Photograph compliments of Christophet Ott.

A Word of Gratitude

Kay and I are so thankful for your many kind notes, letters, cards, and calls after the untimely death of our daughter, Catherine Grace. You have touched our hearts and borne us up. In this essay, I share a little more about our daughter. Later, I may feel strong enough to write more about her and about the pain of losing her. For now, please read how important the imparting of truth is in our individual lives, as well as for families, corporations, and governments — even if the truth hurts! Patrick+

Not your party

The truth hurts…especially when it’s about you.

On this point, a beatific enclave of Olmos Basin Park in San Antonio sets my teeth on edge. I pass it at least once, if not more, every week, and each time I catch sight of the small patch of verdant grass shaded by ancient live oaks, I cringe. Even though I have not walked that ground, nor sat on one of its picnic tables for fifty-one years, it is a place where someone dared to tell me a truth about myself that I did not want to hear.

A number of us journalism students from Trinity University gathered that spring Friday afternoon in 1974 for a wine and cheese party. The drinking age at that time was eighteen, so liberality was the rule of the day. We had invited some of our favorite professors, which added a sense of gravitas to the event and kept it from descending into a typical college end-of-week, drink-fest. An hour or so into the festivities after students and professors sorted themselves into groups of twos and threes, the senior Reporting professor approached me. He was a seasoned and very demanding instructor, having spent his twenties and thirties as an AP reporter. I greeted his approach with a sense of expectancy until he spoke. With no introduction nor explanation, he said, “Pat, you make friends easily, but then you throw them away as easily as you would a used paper cup.” He then walked away to join an adjacent group, leaving me speechless, incensed, and hurt.

Later that night in my dorm room, I realized he was telling the truth. A keen observer from his stringer days, he repeatedly witnessed my bad behavior. I did not like what he said. It hurt. Nevertheless, I knew full well that he spoke the truth.

Not helping things

Jump ahead four years, and I was in Karlsruhe, Germany at the end of my first major military deployment. I was twenty-four years old, a 1st lieutenant, and responsible for turning in eighteen million dollars worth of equipment, to include a cache of lethal weapons as well as armored personnel carriers, jeeps, and a truck-load of high-tech radios. The extreme winter weather of snow, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures complicated the process and our losses began to add up.

I paced back and forth asking my men too many questions and barking too many orders. Worried about my own court martial for dereliction of duty, I was only intensifying my soldiers’ already heightened anxiety. They, like me, just wanted to successfully finish the return of the valuable equipment to the German officials. Suddenly, my senior NCO, a big, 6’3”, 280 pound man we only addressed as “Big Sarge,” appeared before me, saluted, and asked, “Sir, may I speak freely?”

“Of course, Big Sarge, what is it?”

“What you’re doing here isn’t helping. I know you are trying to help, but you aren’t.”

A silence set in between us, and then he spoke again, “Go to the German Officers Club and have a beer. Go back to your quarters and write your wife a letter. Take a nap. Do anything, but don’t stay here. I’ve got this. It’s my job.”

I was stunned by his honesty that bordered on insubordination. Once he saluted, did an about-face, and walked away, I knew he was right. I was not lightening my men’s work load as I desired, I was sabotaging it. The truth hurt, but I got out of the way.

Not good company

Zoom forward eighteen more years, and I recall a memory about Catherine Grace’s childhood that, for me, is haunting. Since she died on Wednesday morning, July 9, most of my quiet moments have been filled with memories of her before the dreadful disease destroyed her life. One memory that I would rather forget took place when she was 16 years-old. We were living in Beaumont, TX at the time, and I was trying to bring a terribly fractured parish back to life. My “trying” escalated into obsession, which did not do good things for me or for those who tried to love me.

One evening I arrived home from work at about 7 PM, Kay was at work at the hospital, and Catherine Grace and John were home fending for themselves. I walked through the door growling vociferously about the unkempt state of the living room, the dirty supper dishes untouched in the sink, and the loud music emanating from John’s room. At that, Catherine Grace stepped directly in front of me and asked, “Dad, are you ever in a good mood?” My instinct was to fire back, but her question hit me like a sucker punch in the gut. I did not have the breath to speak. She was telling the truth. I was never in a good mood. Sure, I put on a good face for the public, yet the mask came off as soon as I turned onto Woodway Drive. Humiliated, I walked back to my room, closed the door, and fell on the bed face forward.

The truth hurts. Facedown on the mattress, I realized something had to change…something about me had to change.

Truth telling

Eating crow has taught me some lessons that I would have otherwise avoided. For one, the hardest truths catch us by surprise. They have to sneak up on us, lest we continue to cleverly evade them. No one wants to learn that he’s a crappy friend, a misguided officer, or an angry parent. For another, the truth leads to change. Until I was confronted by my deficits, I continued to sail quickly around them, leaving a string of hurting people in my wake. Thirdly, the truth brings us back to God. In all three of these incidents, before I was bravely confronted, I was flying solo. I gave no thought of inviting God into my sinful situations. I was handling things myself — “thank you very much” — but I was doing so very badly.

1. Surprise! You’re a jerk.

I do not like remembering these encounters, and yet one or more of them reappear in my head pretty much every day. Usually it’s when I realize to my disgust, “What! I’m tossing out this rubbish again!” On that score, I have no doubt that Martha internally replayed her embarrassing confrontation with Jesus again and again. She is a woman who is sure of herself and her role. Jesus arrives for supper with her, her brother Lazarus, and her sister Mary. Martha determines the occasion will be first rate. In the story, you can almost hear the pots and pans clanking, smell the delectable emanations from the kitchen, feel Martha’s plodding footsteps moving from stove to table, all accompanied by her intermittent grumblings.

In an adjacent room, you can make out the sound of Jesus’ voice and the queries by the disciples sitting around him. Mary says nothing, careful not to miss a single word Jesus speaks.

Martha, for her part, has held her anger long enough. She is so confident that she is on solid footing that she marches into the room and faces Jesus, ‘Teacher, please tell my sister Mary to get off her lazy duff, leave off listening to you for at least a few minutes, and give me a hand with this supper.’

Figuring she was completely in the right, Martha did not expect Jesus’ response, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things, and they are pulling you two directions at once. But only one thing is necessary, Mary has discovered it, and it will remain with her long after this dinner has been eaten and forgotten’ (Luke 10:38-42).

Most often the truth has to jump up and shock us — even embarrass us — to have any lasting effect.

2. Change is in the air

My dressing down by the “Big Sarge” humbled me as I stood on that frozen pavement of the old Nazi barracks in Karlsruhe. At the same time, the NCO’s truth-telling, as painful as it was, led me to undertake a new type of leadership. To be successful as a combat officer, I had to discard my compulsion to micromanage my troops and, instead, trust the leaders under my command. Specifically, that meant that I needed to decentralize leadership so that we could disseminate authority, cultivate creativity, be able to operate effectively in separate locales, and still function at a high level in my absence. In due time, the Big Sarge’s truth-telling enabled me to lead our battalion’s next emergency deployment much more effectively.

What I learned as an infantry officer has made a measurable difference in my role as a rector (head pastor) of three struggling churches. The key to bringing renewal to a parish is not to stride in like General George C. Patton with a swagger stick and pearl handled revolvers, as if the redemption of the congregation is solely in my hands. Rather, the secret to a parish’s revival is to equip lay leaders to take charge of the vital areas of church life. Just as in the military, decentralize and disseminate leadership, and the congregation will creatively percolate with or without the clergy present. Furthermore, they continue to be faithful and fruitful long after the clergy leaves.

Because of my comeuppance as a 1st lieutenant, I feel a special kinship with the Samaritan woman with whom Jesus had a private conversation. The woman encountered Jesus about noon at the village well. Her profligate serial love life necessitated that she hide out from her neighbors, which meant she had to sneak to the well during the heat of the day instead of the cooler, early morning hours when other women would be present. She tries to avoid Jesus’ scrutiny with small talk until he asks her about her husband. ‘I have no husband,’ she counters.

‘Right you are,’ says Jesus, ‘because you’ve had a string of husbands and the guy you’re living with now is not your husband.’

No doubt, the woman is red faced, but she does not break away from Jesus. Astonishingly, she runs down to the village and begins broadcasting, ‘Come see this man who told me everything I ever did.’ Immense change takes hold in her life. Here is a woman who was avoiding her neighbors out of utter shame. Now she is gathering them all together, even while owning up to her past intemperate life. The story begins with the woman being humiliated by Jesus’ truth-telling about her sordid life; however, the story ends with the woman being sent out as Jesus’ evangelist (John 4:1-42). The truth, though often painful, dramatically changes the course of our lives, no matter how regrettable our histories.

3. U-turn back to God

Of course, the most significant benefit of encountering the truth about ourselves is that it may very well lead us back to God. That night I was so stung from my daughter’s words that I literally hid out in my bedroom, foregoing dinner. While I was brooding, I recalled that two Roman Catholic Benedictine monks, Fr. Peter Funk and Brother Michael Gallagher, had moved from Mt. Saviour Monastery in Pine City, NY to begin a new Benedictine community in Beaumont. I met them at an ecumenical event earlier that week, and I had written down their phone number. Rising from the bed, I dialed the number and got Peter on the first ring. I asked him when they began prayers the next morning. “6 AM is Vigils,” he responded. “I’ll be there,” I said, only to hear a long silence on the other end. Much to their surprise, I showed up that morning and for most every morning for the next year.

Prayer changed my priorities and slowly changed me back into the father I was called to be. I had really lost my way. The enormity of my task in leading a parish, from which 223 members had left only months before my arrival, was consuming me. And rather than recognizing it was God’s church and these were His people, I conceived of my call as the “Patrick Gahan Show.” The results of my folly were predictable — both in the parish and at home — until I began praying again with other believers.

The most dramatic confrontation in the Bible of someone who was obsessed with pursuing God’s work was Paul. Zealously trying to please God, he was hired by the temple authorities to round up people ‘belonging to the way’ — those earliest Christians scattered around Judea and the surrounding area. In hot pursuit on a road outside of Damascus, Paul is knocked to the ground when the risen Jesus confronts him with the truth: his militant crusades were not serving God but quite the opposite; he is ‘persecuting’ God.

Paul is struck blind during the petrifying encounter and, ironically, is commended to the care of a senior member of the way, Ananias. Under his care and with his prayers, Paul is made well and his life is dramatically redirected (Acts 9:1-22). Paul was not “zapped” into his new life but nurtured in this newly revealed faith by the Holy Spirit and other believers.

Paul and Ananias. Pietro da Cortona, 1631.

News flash. It’s not about you. Luke 9:18-27

Picking himself up from the dust, Paul learned that the road that led to God necessarily led through the truth. Like every Christian I know, including the one who greets me in the mirror, Paul had to set aside his ego to discover that Christ, not only speaks the truth; he is the truth. The eternal truth of God is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. His teachings illustrate God’s unceasing mercy and justice. More importantly, when Jesus sacrifices his life on Calvary and subsequently defeats death by rising from the dead, he embodies God’s determination to love, save, and restore His people. God does so even though He realizes how malformed we are by sin. For Paul, a man who was obsessed with pleasing God, that hard truth redirected his life and, in a handful of years, caused a cataclysmic shift in human history.

We should not be surprised then that Luke, Paul’s disciple, highlights Jesus’ discomfiting statement as the centerpiece of chapter 9 in his Gospel:

‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.’ Luke 9:23

What increases the impact of Jesus’ declaration is that he makes it immediately after Peter identifies him as the Christ, the long awaited Messiah of God. Rather than lingering over the moment, however, Jesus immediately mutes Peter’s glorious disclosure with news of his fast approaching execution at the hands of the religious authorities (9:18-22). The true path of the Messiah is not what Peter or any of Jesus’ disciples expect.

If the alarming realization of Jesus’ execution is not enough, he then identifies Rome’s grisly instrument of death, the cross, as the symbol of discipleship. Not until Jesus’ ascension will Peter and the others comprehend the irony of Jesus’ symbolism. On one hand, those who follow Jesus live un-burdened lives because of his sacrifice on the cross. Peter, writing some thirty years after the resurrection, expresses the freedom Christ’s sacrificial death bestows on us: ‘Christ himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed’ (1 Peter 2:24).

On the other hand, our response to Christ’s ultimate gift on the cross is hardly passive. He calls us to daily take up the cross ourselves, not as a means to salvation — for that sacrifice has been made once and for all, but as a means of growth in understanding how great a gift we have received from him. Paul, in his Second Letter to the Church in Corinth, written about 56 AD, succinctly explains the disciple’s response to the crucifixion: ‘Christ died for everyone so that they would live for Him. They should not live to please themselves but for Christ Who died on a cross and was raised from the dead for them’ (2 Corinthians 5:15). Yes, our salvation is a free gift from God; it is undiluted grace. Yet to experience the vitality of the saved life, we must die to our insatiable egos so that we may live for Christ and the people he intentionally sets along our paths. The great paradox for the Christian is that we must let our fervid quest to live the good life die so that we may live for Christ, the avenue to the really good life. To take up our cross daily is, in a sense, to be born again repeatedly. Our daily dying and rising is necessary because Christ incessantly confronts us with the hard truth about ourselves.

‘You give them something to eat.’ Luke 9:1-17

The hard truths just keep coming in Luke 9. The chapter begins with Jesus sending out the twelve apostles to exorcise demons, heal the sick, and preach the good news of the Kingdom of God. In other words, he sends them out to do the work they have witnessed him doing. By all accounts, the twelve’s mission was wildly successful. Among other things, the results of their miraculous ministry has gotten back to King Herod, so that he is rattled about Jesus’ ministry.

After such a demonstration of spiritual power, it is surprising when later the disciples want to callously dismiss the crowd of 5,000 that has gathered around Jesus. Night has fallen and the crowd has grown desperate for dinner. Jesus will have none of the disciples’ scapegoating. ‘You give them something to eat,’ he commands. Have the disciples already forgotten the phenomenal ministry enterprise from which they only recently returned?

‘O faithless and perverse generation, how long must I put up with you?’ Luke 9:28-43

Eight days after Peter correctly identifies Jesus as the Christ, Jesus takes him, along with James and John to a mountaintop to pray. The fact that the three disciples do a lot of sleeping and not much praying is an indicator of their on-again-off-again faith. They are shaken fully awake, however, when Jesus is abruptly transfigured into his former heavenly appearance and is seen speaking with Elijah and Moses, two long dead heroes of the faith. If the cinematic spectacular is not enough, the subject of Jesus’ conversation with the two patriarchs, his departure at Jerusalem, is a wake-up call. The Greek word used here intensifies the message — Jesus’ departure, his exodus, is to be accomplished at Jerusalem.

The three descend the mountain, bid adieu by the thunderous voice of God, and instructed by Jesus to keep their peace about the celestial fireworks that they had witnessed. They reach the foot of the mountain to discover the other nine disciples have been unable to exorcise a demon from a child. The demon torments him and drives him into epileptic fits. Did not the twelve just return from a successful barnstorming preaching, healing, and exorcising crusade? Jesus is exasperated and can’t keep the truth to himself, ‘O faithless and perverse generation, how long must I put up with you?’

‘Whoever receives this child in my Name receives me…’. Luke 9:43b-50

Jesus takes a breath after his latest disappointment with the disciples and thinks it wise to remind them, yet again, that he is headed to Jerusalem to be executed by those in power. The disciples, for their part, hear nary a word of Jesus’ warning, and instead they begin a vigorous argument about which one of them will emerge as the greatest of the twelve. Jesus has heard enough, so he marches a child into the middle of the disciples’ self-aggrandizing discussion. Only then does Jesus speak:

‘Whoever receives this child in my Name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives the One who sent me; for he who is least among you all is the one who is the greatest.’ Luke 9:48

In the face of the disciples’ egocentricity, Jesus takes another stab at getting their attention. Without a great deal of theological expertise, a reader can readily ascertain that Jesus’ insistence that ‘whoever receives a child receives the Lord is a clever restatement of his previous statement — ‘If any one would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross…for whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.’ To experience abundant life in Jesus’ kingdom is not to gather up honors, titles, and wealth for yourself but rather to divest ourselves of all that folderol and attend to the weakest, the most vulnerable in our midst. This is the lens by which we better understand Jesus’ crucifixion. Who are we but the helpless ones — like that child Jesus marches out. We are power-less to fight against sin, and yet Jesus, the Son of God, the creator of all that is, the most beautiful and wise of us, sacrifices himself for the sin-drenched likes of us. In return, he asks us to live our lives exhibiting his selfsame sacrificial love. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it best in his seminal book, The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Seven years later, the Nazis would hang Bonhoeffer. He was thirty-nine years old.

‘No one who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’ Luke 9:51-62

Jesus has tried to prepare his disciples for what is to come and how they must respond, yet now he must set his face to go to Jerusalem. James and John are comedic in their offer to bid fire from heaven to consume a Samaritan village that failed to put out a proper welcome mat for Jesus. The twelve have not exhibited an ounce of spiritual power since the moment they returned from their preaching, healing, and exorcising mission. Jesus turns and rebukes them…but inside he must be laughing at their pitiful posturing.

Three would-be disciples approach Jesus as he walks steadily toward Jerusalem. Jesus makes it clear to them that personal security and devotion to family — two reasonable needs — must be subordinate to our commitment to Christ and our dedication to serve in his kingdom. The truth of the matter is that neither double-minded, nor half-hearted persons need apply to be Christ’s disciple — for no one who puts his hands to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Luke 9 puts a magnifying glass on the disciples and, by association, each one of us. As Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem and onto Calvary, we must ask ourselves if we will follow him or hang back in cowardly indecision. Very often, we have remained frozen in place, impersonating Christ’s disciple but hardly being one. That truth about us hurts.

No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back… Augustin Hirschvogel, 1549. National Gallery of Art

‘Evil is always accompanied by lies.’

If the truth hurts so much, how do we let ourselves fall so far away from the One who is the Truth? Lies is the short answer. In 1978, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, wrote the refreshing international bestseller, The Road Less Traveled: The Unending Journey Toward Spiritual Growth. The book’s revolutionary thesis was “To love someone is to will their spiritual growth.” His next book, published in 1983, was The People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. This book was more revolutionary than the first, in that he dared to declare “that evil is always accompanied by lies.” Any individual can do an inventory of their own life to realize that Peck hit on a bedrock truth: We always shroud our evil deeds, even our small peccadillos, under the cover of lies.

The problem, of course, is as long as we hide behind lies instead of owning the hard truth about ourselves, we will never get well. Peck’s thesis about evil works as much for corporations and governments as it does for individuals. Recall Enron, the energy, commodities, and services company that was founded in 1985. For sixteen years, it was considered one of the most agile, innovative, groundbreaking companies in the U.S. Then in 2001, the company suddenly went bankrupt to the tune of 63.4 billion dollars in assets. How? They had posted false accounting statements for years — overtly lying to its customers, investors, and employees. Among the many victims of the c-suite’s lies were the employees, all of whom lost every cent of their retirement savings.

Our present governmental administration is tenuously held together by lies. As I write this, for instance, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, announced the Trump administration is rescinding all limits on greenhouse gasses emissions that were set up in 2009 and known as the Endangerment Finding. Speaking at a truck dealership in Indianapolis, Zeldin declared, “The proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” Then he added, the proposal would also erase limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks on the nation’s roads. The Clean Air Act of 1963 will be gutted. This deadly, retrograde move is being made under cover of the lie that there is no climate change and no danger to humans from toxic gas and diesel emissions. The health hazards unleashed by this short-sighted decision will be shouldered by all of us, but most especially the poor who often live close to industrial roadways. Urban America could become like the third world, smog-choked cities we’ve viewed with pity on the nightly news. That being said, the truth behind the lie is profits, in a word greed. Repeal EPA Act

Smog choked city during the daytime. Photo compliments of Edrece Stansbury.

On the subject of greed. The life and death consequences of the Big, Beautiful Bill are coming into focus. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Yale School of Public Heath calculate that due to the bill’s drastic curtailing of Medicaid and significant reduction of health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, 42,500 additional Americans will die per year. That is more than the number of women who perish from breast cancer each year. Why would the president and congress champion such draconian legislation. The lie they disseminate is to reduce government spending and curtail graft. The truth is their determination to transfer support for the poor into the pockets of the wealthy. Like I said — greed. If we hide from the truth, how will our citizens, especially our most vulnerable, be healthy? In the long run, do we really think this legislation will make America a better place to live? Do we not see that the fallout of this bill will be monstrously expensive…never mind unquestionably immoral. Quantifying Trumpcare

And while we are considering immorality, on Tuesday the president mused that he may pursue legal actions against Beyoncé. Why? Ostensibly because she was illegally compensated to sing at a Kamala Harris rally in Houston. She wasn’t. The president’s two real reasons for dancing out Beyoncé name is, first, retribution, which apparently he will never get enough of. The other, far more important reason, is to deflect attention from the apparently unremitting call to release the complete texts of the Epstein files. For days now, the president has accused President Obama and Hillary Clinton of falsifying his place in the life of Jeffrey Epstein. Fox News has complied with the lies, trumpeting Obama’s name well over a hundred times in this propaganda fog. With so many MAGA supporters swallowing the Pizza Gate conspiracy that Democratic leaders were part of a child sex and cannibalism cabal, the president is on thin ice in his apparent long-term relationship with Epstein. Whether the American people will ever get the truth is uncertain. What is certain is that our citizenry is at risk — even the youngest of us — and we will never get well as a nation until the hard truth is told. Trump & Epstein