The implications of Jesus approach to truth telling are important. To acknowledge the truth of Jesus’ metaphors as ultimately more than our interpretations requires a complete reordering of our hierarchy of truth. No longer can metaphor and narrative be considered some kind of clue or code to discovering absolute truth, they instead become a mediator between the absolute truth that exists independent of our experience of the world and the relative truth that exists in our understanding and application of the story. It requires us to acknowledge that anything we can reduce down into a clear propositional statement is in fact a relative application of truth within time and space.

To embrace this kind of shift the implications have to reach into our expressions of truth telling in life. The lecture style of information dissemination that has long dominated the western church faces some significant hurdles as the society we are trying to communicate to, rediscovers its appreciation for narrative truth. We are in desperate need of a rediscovery of purposeful humility. I’m not talking about a wholesale rejection of conviction. The story of Jesus’ entry into history and God’s ongoing investment in humanity are powerful narratives that should compel us to participate in their communication with more than a passing interest but we need to find ourselves able to talk passionately about our faith without the need to impose a reduction of that story based on our limited categories onto the people around us. We need to speak passionately about what we believe without the arrogance of applying our faith to other’s journeys. At un’ed.i.ted spirituality we are trying to re-imagine the art of truth-telling away from the distilled precipitate of truth we attempt to hand people and towards the metaphor of a catalytic event, a reaction created from the right mix of ingredients. The story of our individual journeys combined with the stories of God. All of a sudden instead of the distilled object of a propositional argument that may or may not relate to the individual journeys of the people in the community we have interactions happening all over the place. By resisting the temptation to edit down the story of God into sound bites we allow it to interact with the lives in our community and in that process people begin to integrate the scriptures into their lives in new and surprising ways that could never be articulated from my limited experience of God. This isn’t about rejecting the need for objective standards, it is simply about reminding ourselves how limited our standards can be at times. To balance the tension between those poles we need to embrace a more communal effort at wrestling with truth. As we approach scripture we try to describe the meaning pointing back towards the narrative structure. Instead of holding up our particular view of the truth above the story itself, we describe it. We point to it. We make motion towards the truth of the scripture all the while acknowledging our limited understanding of it. By resisting the movement towards prescriptive teaching we open up the application of these stories to be integrated into the personal journeys of each individual. Doug Pagit in his book Preaching Re-Imagined talks about the need to avoid the arrogance of application and as we move away from prescriptive teaching and towards a descriptive model we open up the floor for the community to integrate the scriptures not into my the leaders life but into theirs. This type of humility allows the people around us to engage with the truth from their perspective. Even though we are all coming together from different directions we are approaching the same center.

As we recognize the need to expand our stories of God, to move them back towards description and away from definition we have to engage in the same struggle as we practice church. Our expressions of teaching and communication have to become more descriptive of truth. As we recognize that our propositions can’t contain the reality of God we need to stop selling short his story and instead encourage people to engage in it for themselves. The danger that has always stopped us from moving in this direction has been the belief that without out the strong leadership of a trained pastor the people will go of the deep end. They will lose their theology, forget the truth, melt down their watches and create brand new golden calves to worship. Of course the reality has been quite the opposite; by allowing the pastor to become the single definition of the scriptures application in our lives we have created an idol out of the pulpit. Instead of pointing people towards and engagement with the story of God the clergy have set themselves up as a mediator, an indispensable translator. If we really believe in God and we really believe that his truth is bigger than and beyond our limited ability to grasp and control then where does this fear come from? That doesn’t mean we don’t need each other. In fact the greatest need we have is for a community to help us wrestle with these ideas of truth. As individuals it is our limited perspective that can skew any perception of truth. As community we balance and help each other move towards God. The reality of our modern western experience of church, however, is anything but communal. The pastor communicates truth to us. We receive it. As we wrestle with the implications of Jesus model of truth telling though we are called to walk a more difficult path, one on which we all walk together, the pastor serving as facilitator, describing truth, pointing back towards the narrative of scripture. Of course we need to apply the truth of the scriptures to our lives; we need to wrestle the narrative down into a propositional prescription but that is the job of each individual to find on their journey. As churches, Christians, leaders and pastors the role we need to assume is that of helper, storyteller and poet, pointing not to our view of truth but back towards the larger narrative.

I had the opportunity to spend a few days with Len Sweet a couple years ago at a retreat centre just outside of Calgary. For a renowned intellectual, he’s a particularly great guy. You’d like him. Anyway, in the course of one of the conversations he told a story about an experiment he tried while speaking as a guest at a church. He took the comments of Paul and began to interact with the audience. Paul says that followers of Christ we are to have the aroma of Christ and Len began to ask the community what this idea was all about. What did Jesus smell like? Did he smell like the fresh sawdust from the projects he had worked on as a young carpenter with his dad? Did he smell like the fish that had infiltrated every piece of clothing his companion fishermen’s clothes? Did he smell like the expensive perfume that Mary of Magdalene poured over his head? Perhaps an even better question, what does Jesus smell like now? In heaven glorified. What does the reality of heaven do to the senses?

For the Len the ultimate conclusion was apparent. Jesus, of course, smelt like the dirty and the unclean. Jesus for Len, smelt like a mixture of blood, sweat and tears… and fish, all from the company he kept. He smelt like those he chose to reach out to invest in, to spend his time with and the application was equally apparent for our lives. For us to follow Jesus we too must smell like the people who need our help.

But something strange happened in his interaction with the audience. A people suggest a few ideas. Perfume.
Love.
Roses.
No, not roses, Rose.
Rose?
What’s Rose?

Yeah, she’s right. Jesus does smell like Rose.
Soon everyone in the room was in agreement. Jesus did in fact smell like Rose.
So who is Rose?

There in the back of the room was a 60 year old woman, named Rose. She had been a part of the community for many years and in a variety of ways had influenced, it appeared, almost everyone in the room.

The point of the story is the incredible truth of Paul’s metaphor. For the people in that room the aroma of Christ was Rose. Equally, the aroma of Christ is the scent of the needy and it is the imagination of heaven. As Len stepped out of the way and allowed the community to wrestle with the images of the scripture it became bigger. It became less defined. It became not less but more true. In the process of placing ourselves within the experience of the metaphor we are able to connect with truth that is far beyond our ability to contain within our heavily edited perspective and as we approach the call to tell the truth, we need to approach the incredible mission with the passion to invest ourselves completely in the story, all the while cognisant of our need for the humility to acknowledge that our view of truth is limited.