NRSJohn 18
33Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"34 Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" 35Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" 36Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." 37Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
May Christ the King rule over all your days and deeds with grace and mercy. Amen.
One of the great things about growing up in Louisiana is that pretty early on you learn that everything is political, or should I say, everything human is, to one degree or another, political. People always talk about taking the politics out of this, that, or the other, but for good or ill, humans are political beings. If there are two or more people in a room, it’s political. If information is being shared, it’s political. If decisions are made, it’s political. That’s because politics is not just about campaigns and elections. Politics is about power and how power is used, which means that in any gathering of people there’s always a political element. Of course, we’re all familiar with state, national, and local politics, but there’s also office politics, and school politics, and home and family politics. There’s politics in me standing here speaking and you sitting there listening (I hope!). Politics is like the air we breathe or the space we occupy; it’s everywhere and in everything. Even the animal world has its pecking orders. The only question for us is what kind of politics. How do we define power? How do we use it? And who decides?
At the heart of today’s gospel is a political showdown. On the one hand, there’s Pontius Pilate, prefect, or governor, of the Roman province of Judea. Appointed by Caesar, he holds in his hands the reigns of government, both civil and military. Opposite Pilate stands Jesus, a Jewish peasant from Galilee who’s been charged with treason and blasphemy. Chief among Jesus’ accusers is the Temple High Priest Annas, whom Pilate himself had appointed to that position. The governor and Jesus meet on Pilate’s turf, in the praetorium, the prefect’s official residence in Jerusalem. The two men couldn’t be more different from one another, especially in their politics.
Pilate was the official face of Roman rule in Judea, a rule that might best be described as an iron hand in a velvet glove. Contrary to what you might have seen in the movies, the Romans could be very accommodating. They didn’t beat up on people willy-nilly. In Judea, Pilate’s main job was to insure the uninterrupted flow of taxes to Rome. Because Rome had this huge, far-flung empire, Rome was always on the verge of bankruptcy, and without the tax revenue from the provinces, the whole thing would collapse. To that end, Pilate had very little interest in the Jewish religion or Temple politics; in fact, he mostly stayed out of Jerusalem and lived in the Roman city of Caesarea. As long as the money kept coming in, he didn’t go out looking for trouble. But if trouble, or even the prospect of trouble, presented itself, then off came the velvet glove and down came the iron hand.
Jesus, on the other hand, held no human office. He had developed a significant popular following through his teaching, preaching, and mighty signs, which, of course, had political implications. According to John’s Gospel, Jesus began his public ministry by symbolically cleansing the Temple, declaring at that time, “Stop making my Father’s house a market place!” In a day when there was no line whatsoever between religion and politics, that alone would have been enough to land him on Pilate’s radar screen. When Jesus returned to Jerusalem for Passover, the great feast of Jewish liberation, it was inevitable that he would end up in a showdown with the powers that be.
As Jesus and Pilate face off in today’s gospel, Pilate flexes all the power of his Roman muscle. He’s in control, over the Roman soldiers in his courtyard, and over the prisoner who stands before him. Without introduction or greeting, Pilate speaks as both judge and prosecutor when he abruptly asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” When Jesus answers his question with a question, Pilate becomes indignant, flashing some of his Roman sense of superiority, “I am not a Jew, am I?” When Pilate presses, “What have you done,” Jesus makes a theological point, which also happens to be a political bombshell: “My kingdom is not from this world.”
In other words, Jesus is telling Pilate, “You don’t have final authority over me.” Jesus insists that he answers to a power higher than Pilate or Caesar or the Temple authorities, which, in that context, was both treasonous and blasphemous. The Roman Empire was based on the belief that there was no, nor could there be, any higher authority than Caesar, who was held to be both god and man. Later in this dialogue, after having handed him over to be flogged, Pilate will ask Jesus, “Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify?” Dumb question! Of course, Jesus knows that Pilate wields the power of the sword, but what Pilate doesn’t know, and Jesus does, is that the governor, the high priest, and even the mob gathered outside the praetorium are themselves the unwitting actors in a play directed by God from heaven. Even as they torture, humiliate, and kill Jesus, they are acting out God’s divine plan to raise Jesus from the earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky, from where he will rule at the right hand of the Father, forever and ever.
And because Jesus reigns, because he is the King, Lord, Sovereign of all, then we also answer to a higher authority. Even as we live in, with, and under the laws of men and nature, Christ is our King, the ultimate power by whom we live and move and have our being. Like Jesus, though, we also live in a world where many other powers pretend to have final control over us. Paul spoke of these powers in great cosmic terms as “the elemental spirits of the universe.” We might name them the economy, or the government, or cancer, or old age, or work, or whatever claims to own us and control our destinies. It’s a sad fact of life that we often find ourselves being pushed around and bullied by people and powers who think they hold our lives in their puny hands. But they are wrong.
Christ is our King, which means we are held in hands that still bear the marks of the cross. And it’s by the grace of that cross that we are, in Luther’s famous words, “perfectly free lords of all, subject to none.” We are not cogs in the soulless machines of corporations. We are not pawns pushed hither and yon by the forces of men and nature. We are not powerless slaves in bondage to masters who control our lives. We are children of the king, and if children, then heirs to a freedom that no one can ever take from us. Created in the image of God and raised by God’s Son to places of honor in the economy of God’s Kingdom, we are free, which means we’re no longer subject to power inside or outside us, and therefore free to love and care for someone more than for ourselves.
God’s freedom comes from God’s free grace in Jesus Christ, but living free is not as easy as it sounds. We’re constantly tempted to fall back into the bondage of false gods and phony promises. Every time we turn around there’s someone or something promising us the world if only we’ll hand our lives over to them. Sometimes we fall, sometimes we trade our birthright for a mess of pottage, but always – always! -- Christ is King.
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
