Christ the King

Readings: Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37

The exchange between Jesus and Pilate 
is one of the New Testament’s 
most politically charged moments:
Jesus is called upon 
to testify in his own defense before Pilate, 
the agent of Roman imperial power,
his life seemingly hanging in the balance.
It is an exchange concerning 
the nature of power
and the place of truth.
We have arrayed before us an alternative:
truth that is based on power
versus power that is based on truth.

The exchange is reminiscent
of a story from the Book of Esdras
that is set in the court of the Persian king Darius
Darius controls the land of Israel
and is hemming and hawing 
about letting the Jews return from Babylon
to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem.
Three of Darius’s bodyguards have a contest,
each arguing which thing in the world is the strongest,
the king having promised that he will grant the winner 
whatever it is that he requests.
The first bodyguard, probably trying to be witty, 
says that wine is the strongest thing in the world.
After all, he says, “It leads astray 
the minds of all who drink it. 
It makes equal the mind 
of the king and the orphan, 
of the slave and the free, 
of the poor and the rich.”
The second bodyguard, undoubtedly flattering Darius, 
says that kings are the strongest thing in the world,
because when they command others must obey:
“If he tells them to kill, they kill; … 
if he tells them to lay waste, they lay waste; 
if he tells them to build, they build.” 
The third bodyguard, an Israelite named Zerubbabel, 
maybe trying to bring Darius down a notch,
says that women are the strongest thing in the world.
After all, as powerful as a king might be,
it is still a woman who gives him birth,
and a woman whose beauty can easily turn his head.

But then Zerubbabel says that actually
the truth is stronger than any of the other three.
For wine can be unrighteous
and kings can be unrighteous
and women can be unrighteous,
but truth can never be unrighteous;
all of these things will pass away 
in their unrighteousness,
but “truth endures and is strong forever 
and lives and prevails forever and ever.”
Then, Zerubbabel the Israelite adds,
“Blessed be the God of truth!”
The people acclaim Zerubbabel’s answer
and king Darius must grant his request
that he be allowed to return to Jerusalem 
and rebuild the temple.

Was Jesus thinking of Darius as he stood before Pilate?
Pilate too sees power as the capacity
to tell men to kill and have them kill,
to tell them to lay waste and have them lay waste,
to tell them to build and have them build.
For Pilate, it is the power of Caesar that defines the truth,
for with his armies and his wealth and his empire
Caesar can make you bow before him
and worship him as a god.
Caesar’s word is truth because…well…
he is Caesar and he can kill you.
When Pilate asks Jesus, 
no doubt with a sneer in his voice,
“Are you the king of the Jews?”
he is really asking, 
“Where are your armies, Jesus?”
“Where is your wealth?”
“Where is your empire?”
Because, for him, these are the things
that display one’s power;
these are the things that will make people
believe the words you speak are true;
these are the things that will make people 
bow down and worship you as a god.

And when Jesus replies,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world”
he is saying, my power is not the power of armies;
my power is not the power of wealth;
my power is not the power of empires.
My power is the power of truth,
the truth of righteousness,
the truth that can never pass away. 
You may have the power to destroy my body,
but I have the power to take my body up again,
to rebuild the Temple of God’s dwelling 
that he has pitched in the midst of humanity.
Because “For this I was born 
and for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.” 

This exchange between Jesus and Pilate
should make us pose for ourselves 
the most fundamental political question:
is truth defined by power
or is power defined by truth?
Is truth stronger than kings,
stronger than armies and wealth and empires?
If Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega—

the truth of our beginning and the truth of our end—
and if he “has made us into a kingdom, 
priests for his God and Father,”
then we are to be like him 
faithful witnesses to the truth

in a world of lies.

We are today constantly confronted
by assaults on truth,
particularly in the realm of politics.
Typically, our politicians don’t ask us 
to bow down and worship them as gods,
but they do behave as if the power they wield
allows them to bend the truth to their will.
This sometimes takes the form 
of blatant and obvious lies,
which would be almost comical 
if they were not so widely believed. 
But it also takes the form
of more subtle assaults on truth
that employ euphemism and inuendo.
A dead civilian becomes “collateral damage”;
doctors killing patients becomes “death with dignity”;
torture becomes “enhanced interrogation techniques”;
the nascent heartbeat of an embryo becomes “cardiac activity.”

If we are to be servants of Christ the King,
if we are to be bearers of his truth,
then we must resist lies both blatant and subtle.
Like Jesus before Pilate,

we must hold fast to the power of truth,
and we must be vigilant where truth is undermined,
particularly where this threatens those 
who are most vulnerable.
We must trust that the dominion of Christ,
who is the way, the truth, and the life,
is an everlasting dominion,
because truth is stronger
and truth will triumph.
May God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.

Christ the King

Readings: Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37

Do you think that Pilate, the Roman governor,
breathed a sigh of relief
when Jesus said,
“My kingdom does not belong to this world”?
Did he perhaps think that Jesus
was taking himself out of the game
and saying that his kingdom had
no real-world relevance?
Was this why he would shortly go out
and tell Jesus’ accusers, “I find no guilt in him,”
because he now thought that Jesus was no threat,
that Jesus was the king, at best,
of some fantasy kingdom in the sky?

But of course Pilate misunderstood Jesus’s words.
As St. Augustine pointed out,
when Jesus said that his kingdom did not belong to this world,
“he did not say: ‘My kingdom is not in this world,’
but ‘is not of this world’” (Homilies on the Gospel of John 115.2).
Jesus’ kingdom is very much in this world,
because it is present in his life and words and deeds.

So what then does he mean when he says
that his kingdom does not belong to this world,
that although it is in this world
it is not of this world?
He is saying that that his kingdom does not grow from
the forces and motivations
that produce kingdoms and nations in our world.
It is a sad fact
that our nations and political allegiances are based
on a fundamental division of the world
into “us” and “them,”
and a desire to make sure that
by banding together
we can protect ourselves from the threat of “them.”
The kingdoms and nations that are of the world
are mechanism of control
marked by what St. Augustine called
the libido dominandi,
the lust for domination,
a desire that grows from the fear
that the lives we have made for ourselves—
our families and friends,
our possessions and pursuits,
our safety and security—
hang by a thread of fortune
and can be swept away in an instant.
This fear turns everyone who is not us
into a threat to be managed or eliminated.
We still hope that somehow,
if we can just accumulate enough economic clout,
if we can just strengthen our boarders with a higher wall,
if we can just kill enough of our enemies
fortune might be controlled,
fate might be fooled,
and we might finally have peace of mind.

So much of our political discourse is driven
by this fear and desire for control.
But Jesus says that his kingdom is not like this;
his kingdom, though it is present in this world,
does not spring from a lust to dominate,
his kingdom is not a regime of risk management
in which we trade liberty for security
and compassion for control.
Christ’s kingdom is not of this world
because it operates outside of the tyranny of fear.
It is a kingdom that spreads forth from Christ’s empty tomb
and its promise that no enemy,
not even death,
can take from us
the one possession that ultimately matters:
the love of God that comes to us through Jesus.
For he is the one,
as our reading from the Book of Revelation says,
who is “the firstborn of the dead
and ruler of the kings of the earth…
who loves us and has freed us from our sins
by his blood,
who has made us into a kingdom,
priests for his God and Father.”
In his kingdom we find true freedom,
true liberty,
because he has freed us from sin
and the fear of death;
and in doing this he has made us free
to love God and neighbor,
He has made us free to see as our neighbor
not simply those who look and live like us,
or those whom we can control and dominate,
or those whose threat we can neutralize,
but each and every person God has made,
particularly those who are most vulnerable
and in need of our love:
the poor, the defenseless, the stranger.

It is not that Christ’s kingdom
has no enemies or faces no threats.
How could we think that
when we hear in our Gospel today
of Jesus facing the man who would order his death?
But it is a kingdom that does not let itself be ruled
by fear of enemies
and calculation of risk,
but continues in the face of all this
to witness to the truth.
Christ our king is risen
and we have been set free
to live lives of generosity and mercy,
lives that befit the citizens of his kingdom:
“a kingdom of life and truth,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace”
(Preface for Christ the King).

Of course, because we are still journeying
toward the fullness of Christ’s kingdom,
we continue to live in this world
with its kingdoms, nations, and tribes.
We struggle to discern God’s will,
and might disagree among ourselves
regarding how best to live out concretely our call,
as citizen’s of Christ’s kingdom,
to live lives of generosity and mercy.
But the one thing we cannot do
is to let the Pontius Pilates of this world
breathe a sigh of relief
because we live our lives
as if Christ’s kingdom were irrelevant in this world,
as if it were merely an ideal
for some other world,
some other life.
Because if we do not live
as if the defeat of sin and death
in the resurrection of Jesus
makes a difference here and now
then we may need to ask ourselves
if it is really the resurrection of Jesus
that we believe in.
If we persist in living lives ruled by fear
and the desire for control
then perhaps we have misunderstood the one who is
“the Alpha and the Omega…
the one who is and who was
and who is to come,
the almighty.”
To celebrate Christ as king
is to say to the kingdoms of this world,
the kingdoms driven by fear and exclusion,
that they do not have the final word,
because Christ’s kingdom
is present now in our midst
beckoning us to enter.