I’m starting this morning a series on the Quaker testimonies. I did a series on the testimonies a couple years ago here, so guess I’m starting to repeat myself (myself). The testimonies are so central for Quaker faith that we need to look at them from time to time, and from different angles. After all, Quakers have no creed. We believe that our faith is more about how we live than what beliefs we affirm. So our testimonies amount to our creed. Now, in the beginning, the testimonies were certain specific things Friends refused to do (like swear oaths in court), or insisted on doing (like addressing people as ‘thee’ or ‘thou’). Over the years, we began to categorize these various specific behaviors into general principles. Today, we usually list these as truth-telling or integrity, simplicity or plainness, equality, community, peace, and a concern for our stewardship of God’s creation.

This morning, I’m starting out with the testimony of truth-telling, integrity. I have to admit, I struggled all week to think how to approach this message. I had lots of ideas, but I couldn’t get settled on any of them. Finally, yesterday around noon, I had a conversation with Caroline about it. We decided that the testimony of truth or integrity really comes down to three elephants. I want to consider these three elephants of truth with you this morning. All three elephants may already be familiar to you. But I bet you never heard all three mentioned at one time.

The first is the famous remark by the great sculptor Michelangelo. He was asked, if he were going to sculpt an elephant, how would he go about it? He replied, first, I would take a large block of marble. Then I would start chipping away everything that isn’t an elephant. Well, I’m sure that the statement is true as far as it goes, but I suspect there’s more to it than that. I suspect that he starts out with an image in his mind’s eye – an image of a particular elephant. Now, sculpting with marble is a lot of work. It must be a labor of love – the sculptor must have a passionate desire to see that mental image emerge from that mass of stone.

I think that is something like God’s work with us. God loves each of us. God has a passionate desire to see the real you and the real me emerge. But it’s long, arduous process becoming who we are. A lot of work, with a lot of frustration along the way. Like the passage that Beverly read for us a moment ago, God shines the light of divine love upon us. And we either come to the light and find out who we really are, or we flee from it and try to be something else. The light of God’s love for us is also the light of God’s truth about us. It makes us see our failings and our weaknesses. It makes us recognize our delusions about ourselves, our misguided ideas and actions. But God isn’t really so hung up on those things as we usually suppose – those are just the chips that fall on the floor (if we are willing to let go of them). God is interested in who we really are, not our mistaken ideas and misguided actions. But how much of ourselves are we willing to bring into the light of God’s truth? Whatever we’re willing to bring into the light of God’s truth, God can work on that with us. God sculpts us into something beautiful, if we will allow it.

The Advices and Queries have been traditional Quaker tools for helping us live out the testimonies in our lives. Regarding the testimony to the truth, the first and second Advices of Britain YM’s Quaker Faith & Practice read, “Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life. Bring the whole of your life under the ordering of the spirit of Christ. Are you open to the healing power of God’s love? Cherish that of God within you, so that this love may grow in you and guide you. Let your worship and your daily life enrich each other. Treasure your experience of God, however it comes to you. Remember that Christianity is not a notion but a way.”

The second elephant of truth that came to Caroline and me was the parable of the blind men and the elephant. You probably know it. Some blind men are trying to figure out what an elephant is. One of them feels a leg and says, “Ah, the elephant is like a tree, strong and firmly planted in the ground.” A second one feels the elephant’s tail and says, “Ah, the elephant is like a snake.” The third man feels the elephant’s trunk and says, “Ah, the elephant is like a great vine, hanging from a tree.” This parable reminds us that God is always beyond our comprehension, and that we have different experiences of God in our different circumstances. Years ago, a friend of mine added a fourth blind man. This one is just standing there minding his own business, when the elephant shifts its weight and steps on his foot. The fourth blind man just says “Ah!”

So the fifth and sixth Advices of Quaker Faith and Practice read, “Take time to learn about other people’s experiences of the Light. Remember the importance f the bible, the writings of Friends and all writings that reveal the ways of God. … While respecting the experiences and opinions of others, do not be afraid to say what you have found and what you value. … Do you work gladly with other religious groups in the pursuit of common goals? While remaining faithful to Quaker insights, try to enter imaginatively into the life and witness of other communities of faith, creating together the bonds of friendship.”

The third elephant of truth is the so-called “elephant in the living room.” I’m sure you’re familiar with the expression. It refers to some big, glaring, unmistakable fact that we all see. But keep avoiding talking about it. We know it’s there, but it’s either too messy or too threatening and scary to acknowledge. So we just talk around it, even though it’s so big, we can’t even see each other very well around it. I worshiped for some years with a Friends meeting that was a wonderful and stimulating group of people. And their meetings for worship were often very rich times. But their monthly meetings for business were just a disaster. People would be going after each other in ways that had nothing to do with the business under consideration. I was a newcomer. I didn’t know what old grudges were being played out in that group. But there was a very big elephant in that room – maybe a dead, rotten elephant at that, really stinking up the place.

Love and truth are so important to each other. Truth without love is often unkind and won’t forgive. Love without truth easily becomes sentimental, soppy and false. I think it’s significant in our Scripture reading this morning that Jesus brings love and truth together so powerfully. Friends have often been pioneers in pointing out the elephant in the living room, the inconvenient truth that everybody wants to avoid. We think of the great prophets of our tradition, such as George Fox refusing to swear an oath in court because it implied a double-standard of truth. Or John Woolman quietly exposing the blight of slavery in colonial America, as a brutal negation of everything Christians are supposed to stand for. But when you read the journals of these great Quaker heroes, you learn that their big moments of truth were built upon many small and seemingly inconsequential ones. It was in faithfulness in the small matters, in the minor moments of truth, that Fox, Woolman, Elizabeth Fry, Lucretia Mott and so many other Quaker prophets came to their major moments of witness to the truth.

And so I will close with the 37^th and 38^th Advices in Quaker Faith and Practice: Are you honest and truthful in all you say and do? Do you maintain strict integrity in business transactions and in your dealings with individuals and organizations? Do you use money and information entrusted to you with discretion and responsibility? … If pressure is brought upon you to lower your standard of integrity, are you prepared to resist it? Our responsibilities to God and our neighbor may involve us in taking unpopular stands. Do not let the desire to be sociable, or the fear of seeming peculiar determine your actions.”