Today’s Gospel passage takes place in Judea at the Feast of Tabernacles, a traditional time for pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which is in Judea.  The “Jews” in this Gospel means Judeans; Jesus himself was a Jew in the religious sense, but there was much more hostility to him and his teaching in Judea than in his native Galilee.  Jesus says to these Judeans, and to us, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)  What is this actually saying to us?

Well, in the first place, when Jesus says “the truth,” he obviously isn’t talking about “three plus two equals five,” or even knowing all the doctrines in the creed.  “Knowing” in Hebrew and for Jesus is not about abstract knowledge, but about personal experience.  The word is even used for the most intimate experience: the Bible says, “Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain.”  (Gen 4:1)  Something inside of us has a deep relationship with reality and can enable us to recognize the truth when we see it.  But sometimes our firmly held notions or hidden agendas won’t let the truth in; as Jesus says, “My word has no room among you.” (John 8:37)  The Judeans were invested in their traditions and temple worship, not to mention the prejudice that Galileans were just ignorant backcountry folk.  There was no room for Jesus’ teaching in their minds.  Jesus wants the Judeans—and us—to be able to recognize the truth when it confronts us.

He also says that the truth will set us free.  The Judeans object to that, and claim that they are already free because they’re not slaves; for them, freedom simply means not being a slave.  Today, we Americans tend to have a different idea of freedom, as the ability to do whatever we want, without external constraints.  But I think Jesus has in mind a third definition: the freedom to do what we know is right, free from defensiveness, our personal compulsions, and our fears.

For me, a prime example of someone who “knew” the truth in that sense was John Woolman, an 18^th century American Quaker.  As a Quaker, he believed in the inner light that enables us to perceive the truth—that is, what we call the Holy Spirit in their souls—and he followed the Quaker custom of listening silently to that inner light every day.  At some point, his inner light made him see that slavery was morally wrong.  I’m sure that other people in the community explained to him that slavery was necessary for the economy and even good for the slaves, but he knew the truth and wasn’t fooled by those arguments. 

And the truth set him free.  It freed him from the need to minimize expenses, maximize his comfort, and follow a standard career path.  For example, he stopped wearing cotton clothes, which were inexpensive and comfortable, because he knew where the cotton came from.  He gave up the store he owned and became a wandering preacher and abolitionist.  Eventually he took to visiting Quaker meetings in slave states and shared with Quakers there his conviction that people should free their slaves and help them to start independent lives.  The Quakers he spoke to listened to their own inner light and gradually came to recognize that Woolman was right.  They freed their slaves and spread the word.  Within twenty years, all American Quakers had freed their slaves, without war, reconstruction, the Klan, or a legacy of bitterness and hatred. 

So who is the hero of this story?  Well, John Woolman was an amazing man.  But to me the heroes are the slave-owning Quakers he visited.  These were people who because of the society they had grown up in considered slavery normal and just.  But they listened to him and consulted with their inner light, and they recognized that slavery really was wrong.  And accepting that truth gave them the freedom to face the difficulty and costs of giving up the injustice they were accustomed to. 

Not all of us are called to lead a life like John Woolman’s. But all of us are called to develop the suppleness of mind to recognize the truth when it’s pointed out to us, and to respond when God tells us what we should do about it.