King Jesus

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

November 26, 2006

Text: John 18:33-38

CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY

Today is the last Sunday in the Christian year. Next week we begin the journey again with Advent. Today is Christ the King Sunday.
 
KINGS IN OLDEN TIMES

Most of us don’t have much first-hand knowledge of kings. The Wizard of Id may be our most frequently noticed example. In ancient times, however, most peoples looked to kings as we may look to our elected government officials. Though in old times, all of the functions were combined in one person. They were dependent on the character and wisdom of the monarch. “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising in the morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.” (2 Samuel 23:4)

If the king could not keep order, the strong preyed on the weak. If justice could not be enforced in the courts, the poor would be at the mercy of the rich. If the people could not be protected from invasion by raiders and looters, normal, ordinary life was impossible. To have a just and righteous king was a great blessing. To be ruled by the opposite was hell on earth. Though we today may fanaticize about the virtues of unlimited freedom, no group of people can long survive without law and order.

KING DAVID AND MESSIAH

Hence all of the psalms of thanksgiving for King David: In Psalm 89, for example, the psalmist says he will “sing the faithful love of Yahweh forever….” And then God says that David has “been anointed…with my holy oil….My hand will always be with him, my arm will make him strong….My constancy and faithful love will be with him, in my name his strength will be triumphant.” God is praised because God has chosen David to rule, to shepherd his people justly and strongly, here on earth. David represents God’s power.

Remember that this is the same David whose mortality and frailty is displayed for all to see in the events leading to the death of Uriah so that David could take his wife as his own. He is mortal, not divine. But he is chosen, nevertheless, to exercise leadership over God’s people. He would lead the army, fight battles, uphold justice, protect the rights of orphans and widows, and adjudicate disputed cases.

Remember that the people of Israel in Jesus’ day longed for a king in the lineage of David. Remember, too, that the New Testament goes to great pains to say that Jesus is a descendent of David. The word “Christ” or “Messiah” means “the anointed one,” the one chosen by God to rule over God’s people.
JESUS BEFORE PILATE

So, when Jesus is brought before Pilate, it is because the word has gotten out that Jesus may be this promised king.

       The angel tells Jesus’ mother, even before Jesus was born, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 1:32-33)

       After Jesus’ birth, wise men from the east came asking, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:2)  When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his followers were reminded of the words of the prophet, “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey.” (Matthew 21:5)

The Hebrew leaders however were not persuaded that Jesus was the anointed one. They were offended and threatened by the commotion regarding this man who had such a following. Jesus did not fit the pattern they had in mind for a David-like king.

Pilate, a Roman, did not want to get caught up in disputes among the Jews. He was there to represent Caesar and to keep order. But when Jesus is brought to him, he had to do something. His interrogation of Jesus is interrupted by going in and out of his headquarters to consult with the religious leaders.

“Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus answers with a question: “Do you ask this for yourself, or because others have said this about me.” Pilate: “I am not a Jew.”

“Your people have brought you to me. What are you guilty of?” Jesus, again, not answering directly, says that his kingdom is “not of this world. If it had been of this world, I would behave like a proper king and my followers would have come to my defense.”

 Then, “my kingdom does not belong here.” Pilate hears that word “kingdom” and seizes upon it. “So, then, you are a king?”

Jesus replies, “It’s you who say I am. I was born for this: to bear witness to the truth; those who are on truth’s side listen to my voice.” Pilate: “Truth? What is that?”

You know the rest of the story. Pilate, though he finds no crime, bows to the pressure of the religious authorities and the mob and has Jesus executed.

Pilate was trying to figure out where Jesus fit into the scheme of things. Pilate’s power was obvious and impressive. Pilate saw Jesus as powerless, but was he? Was he going to go into competition with him for power to rule? He could not tolerate that. If he was the disputed leader of a local religion, he could be tolerated so far as he was concerned. Just so he did not stir up the crowds. But this talk of “truth” is puzzling. You can almost hear Pilate scoffing, “Truth? What in the world is that?” (We will never know what might have happened if the conversation could have continued, if he and Jesus had sat down together for a late night talk about what Jesus meant by truth.)

TRUTH? WHAT IS THAT?

It may be that the key to understanding Jesus’ kingship is his claim to be the bearer of the truth.

 “For this I was born, I came into the world for this, to testify to the truth,” Jesus says. That is strong!

King Jesus is armed with….truth!
It sounds so unrealistic, so naïve to us, too. We have all learned to say that truth is relative (even when we don’t believe it). Is there anything quite as superfluous in the face of military power as “truth?” Pilate has the power to execute him, and Jesus says that his main mission is to tell the truth to people.

 What could Jesus possibly mean by this?

In John’s faith-inspired portrait of Jesus,and his letters, the word “truth” appears 45 times, almost half of the occurrences in the New Testament. It is obviously a favorite term for him.

Jesus is not offering a course in philosophy. He is more earthy and practical than this. Truth is not an abstraction, a topic for late night bull sessions. Jesus’ understanding of truth is rooted in his Hebrew heritage.

FIRM, SOLID, TRUSTWORTHY

 Truth is something firm, solid, trustworthy and reliable; something worthy of our confidence or someone faithful to their promises. Words are true if they are solidly founded. Our lives are true if they are faithful to God’s ways. (Raymond Brown, The Gospel of John) It would be fair to say that truth is something you become persuaded of, based on your experiences over time.

JESUS IS THE TRUTH
Here is the challenge that Jesus makes: he is claiming that he is revealing and personifying accurate knowledge of the nature of God and how to live wisely and well. Do you remember Jesus’ words is John, “I have come that you may have life and have it abundantly?”

The freedom that is related to the truth is that we are created in God’s image and our “hearts are restless until they rest in God.” (Augustine) Jesus has come to make this God known and to give us freedom from the sin which enslaves us—the freedom to be your God-created self.

The conversation between Jesus and Phillip in chapter 14 says it well. Jesus has said to the disciples that they should not be troubled because they know where he is going and he will prepare a place for them. Thomas the Doubter says, Lord, we don’t know where you are going; how can we know the way?  Jesus says “I am the way, the truth and the life… If you know me, you will know my Father. Phillip then replies, “show us God and we will believe.” Jesus says, “Phillip, I have been with you all this time, and you still don’t know me? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

IS THIS POWERFUL?

Now, is this powerful? Is there enduring power in this life that Jesus describes and demonstrates? Is Jesus a king who has power?

William Sloane Coffin wrote:

“Faith is being grasped by the power of love. Faith is recognizing that what makes God is infinite mercy, not infinite control; not power, but love unending…..Love measures our stature: the more we love, the bigger we are. There is no smaller package in all the world that that of a person all wrapped up in themselves.” (Credo)

I submit to you that the most powerful man standing there in that conversation in the Roman headquarters was not Pilate, but Jesus. By the grace and mercy of God, the one who was put to death by the power which Pilate exercised is the one who God raised up and who, through the Spirit bearing witness to our spirits, re-shapes lives every day, every hour, somewhere on the earth.

So, is Jesus a king? Kings usually rule over some geography or some ethnic group or nation. Though some kings have used the kingship of Jesus to derive their authority over nations---to rule in the name of Jesus over people---this is hardly what Jesus had in mind.

But Jesus Christ has made of us, scattered over the globe into one people (as divided and tacky toward one another as we are in the Christian family.) We are his people. He is our sovereign.

WHOSE PEOPLE ARE WE?

In the county where I grew up, it was important to know who someone’s people were. Let’s say my granddad, Eddie Earl Elliston, wanted to take Shirley Moore out on a date. The first question Eddie’s parents would ask would be “Who are her people?” You would say, “she is one of the Moores from out on Turkey Creek.” And with that identification, she is identified. “Oh yeah, I know her Daddy, John. He has 12 kids, farms on the old Belden place. He goes to the Salesville Baptist Church.” Images come to mind of the Moore family, her brothers, her mother and father, their place, their jobs, their bearing, their history.

In an similar way, if we live in the family of Jesus, we are identified, “Oh yeah, she belongs to Jesus, the one who stood before Pilate and testified to the truth, the one who said he was the truth, the one who healed the sick, empowered the poor, the one who changed Paul from a ‘hatchet man for the Pharisees to a fool for Christ.’’” (Credo)  We belong to King Jesus; we live under his influence and protection.

Those of us who are “baptized in Christ Jesus are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.”

We enter this kingdom, this family one at a time. We are free to receive or reject this Jesus; free to jump in or wade in. Jesus as truth is not coercive. We either see the truth in him or not. To those who will, Jesus draws us into the community called by his name. We come in and we test the waters. As the old saying, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.” When we crown him in our hearts, it is a private coronation, but it is not a private faith. We are set in a loving family which nourishes our faith; and we are witnesses through word and deed in the world around us.

But the kingdom” of Jesus is boundless, “not limited by race, nation or ethnicity.” And we do not elect Jesus or hire him or contract with him. We are the “subjects” of King Jesus, his dependents. We look to him and we see God. Our lives are in God’s hands.
One early Christian summarized this relationship this way:

EARLY WITNESS
“Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity either in locality or in speech or in customs. For they do not dwell off somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor do they practice an extraordinary style of life….But while they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians as the lot of each is cast,….the constitution of their citizenship is nevertheless quite amazing and admittedly paradoxical. They dwell in their own countries, but only as sojourners….Every foreign country is a fatherland to them, and every fatherland is a foreign country.” (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Illustrated Jesus Through the Centuries, page 52.)

After living through another cycle of the church year, traveling with Jesus, mostly though the Gospel of Mark; after burying our dead, baptizing our babies, confirming our youth, comforting our sick, commissioning our missionaries, struggling and thriving, today we can “lay it all back at the feet of Jesus, the one enthroned [as king] on the cross, giving thanks.

 It is great to be a people ruled in love and mercy [and truth].” (Mary Anderson, Pastor, Incarnate Lutheran Church in Columbia, South Carolina, in the Christian Century of November 15, 2003)