Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.” So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say 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.” (John 18.36-37)
A superb and serious writer, Sister Joan Chittister, in her book, Welcome to the Wisdom of the World, shares a story about a synagogue in a small village that was served by a rabbi beloved by his people. On one occasion, the villagers became concerned because the aged rabbi began to disappear from the synagogue after the opening of the service for the Sabbath.
Some thought he was failing in his responsibilities, while others thought he was breaking the Sabbath. Still others proposed that the rabbi was being spirited up to heaven by Elijah himself to discuss the Pentateuch in the presence of the Most High God. None of the answers satisfied the curiosity of the congregation, so one of the group was told to follow the rabbi the next Sabbath.
As the man watched, after the candles had been lit for the service, the rabbi slipped out of the synagogue, walked down a path that led through the woods and up a high hill. Following at a distance, the man from the village was careful not to be seen, watching intently as the old rabbi finally entered a small cabin.
Spying through a window, the man observed an old Gentile woman lying on a cot, her breathing slow and her face sunken. The rabbi greeted her warmly and then began to sweep the floor of the cabin. Next he chopped wood and fed the embers in the small fireplace. He brought water from the well to give to the old woman.
Then the rabbi made a bit of fresh soup and placed it on a table near the woman’s cot so that she could reach it. Sensing that the rabbi was leaving soon, the man from the village ran down the mountain and back to the synagogue where the rest of the villagers waited, wondering about his delay. “Well,” they asked, “did the rabbi go up to heaven?”
The man sent to spy on the rabbi was silent for a second or two. Then, with wonder and respect in his voice, he said to the people, “The rabbi did not go up to heaven. Our rabbi went much higher than that.” The people were left to wonder what he meant.
Today, as the liturgical year comes to a close, we are presented with the picture of Rabbi Jesus standing in the courtyard of Pilate, the Roman governor of Palestine, who interrogates him, wanting to know who and what he is. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he asks the Rabbi, brought before Pilate by the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem, who believe that the Rabbi is a threat, thinking his followers are itching for a fight with the Roman soldiers garrisoned in Jerusalem, not to mention Rabbi Jesus’ assertion that the temple would be destroyed, a cataclysmic event were it to happen.
Hearing Pilate’s question, Rabbi Jesus’ answer is neither yes nor no, but simply, “My kingdom does not belong to this world, making a clear distinction between Pilate’s understanding of kingship, one based on Roman rule, complete with power, position, and privilege, and his own, where none of those things are present, but the opposite.
“If my kingdom did belong to this world,” he explains to Pilate, “my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here,” drawing again a contrast between a king with an army to do his bidding and his own followers, who are not waging any war against Rome or against anybody else.
My kingdom is not here. Those are the words we are left to consider, finding in them both a call and a challenge for those who would want to follow the teachings of Rabbi Jesus, calling us to another way of living in the world, challenging us not to confuse the ways of God with the ways of humanity. As the Rabbi will make abundantly clear in a matter of days, as he is crucified upon a cross, with a plaque nailed to the top of the cross that heralds him as “The King of the Jews,” kingship, in the eyes of God, is not based on power, but on powerlessness, not on privilege, but on privation, not on high position, but on poverty.
It is a vision alien to the world, where kings are served, sucked up to, and in every way treated as superior to others, the crucified Rabbi on the cross, despised, scorned, and jeered, about as far away from royalty as imaginable, signaling the great divide between heaven and earth, between good and evil, between justice and injustice.
A pastor tells the story of a professor who greatly influenced him when he was a student in the seminary. Attempting to explain the kingdom of God to his students, the professor said that the better way to understand what the Galilean Teacher was expressing was to think of Jesus as saying, “Imagine a world.” Then the professor continued, offering examples from the Rabbi’s mission and ministry in the world.
“Imagine a world where a rich man throws a party and invites the outcasts of society to come and to enjoy his bounty. Imagine a world where a Samaritan goes out of his way to help the man who held him in contempt. Imagine a world where a son, who walks away from his family and curses his father’s name, is welcomed back with open arms.” That, he said to them, is what the kingdom of God looks like.
As we hear the professor’s words, we can’t help but think of political commentators often evoking the phrase “failure of imagination” when attempting to explain why leaders were not able to foresee or forecast some of the horrible wrongs done by evil men, such as the attackers on 9/11, the phrase meant to exculpate leaders because they simply couldn’t comprehend the depths that evil will go to to gets its way.
As an attempt at explanation, it probably works. At the same time, we never hear the same phrase used to explain the failure to do good. When the injustices of racism, sexism, or elitism are on full display, no one explains it away as a failure of imagination, as if we cannot imagine a just world. When the plight of the impoverished is ignored, no one excuses the lack of remedy as a failure of imagination, as if we are incapable of imagining a world where poverty is eradicated. When wars are waged and hundreds of thousands of lives are sacrificed on the battlefield, no one proposes that warfare is a failure of imagination, as if we simply cannot imagine a world at peace.
And yet, that is exactly what Rabbi Jesus was proposing when he spoke of the kingdom of God, urging us to imagine where justice, equality, and harmony were possibilities, not forgotten rights or fantastical thinking. The Galilean showed at each turn of the road that these human rights were possible, as he fed the hungry, healed the sick, and sat at a table with outcasts. By these actions alone, he said, “This is the kingdom of God.”
One look around us and it is clear that the kingdom of God has not yet arrived in the world and the reason why is simple enough. We have failed to imagine a world where God’s ways are lived, instead opting for a world where the ways of wrongdoing are enthroned and sanctioned. So long as our world is shaped by this colossal failure of imagination, there will be no justice, no peace, no reign of goodness.
Occasionally, one among us stands out as imagining a different world, as did Rabbi Jesus, people such as Gandhi or Dr. King or Mother Teresa, each one trying to convince us that there is a better way to live in this world, the right way, the way of God, asking us not to be seduced by the propaganda of the world that would have us believe that might is right, that other people’s problems aren’t our problems, that our lives must be dog eat dog.
There is another way and we see that way as Rabbi Jesus, with nothing to his name, stands before Pilate, with all of the power of Rome at his beck and call. “Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks, a ridiculous question as Jesus stands before him without arms, without an army, with nothing to stop personal harm done to him.
While Pilate plays the game of the world, where domination and subjugation and humiliation are the goals, Rabbi Jesus refuses to play, choosing a radically different way, one where fairness, truth, and generosity are the objectives. His mission throughout has been to offer the world a vision of God’s way and he will continue to offer that vision of the kingdom of God to his last breath and his last drop of blood.
One of Megan McKenna’s beautiful stories is well worth repeating today, as we consider the vision of the world that Rabbi Jesus puts before us, a vision that becomes a possibility when others choose the ways of God over the ways of this world. McKenna, in her story, tells of a blacksmith who was respected for his work and generosity.
When the time for his dying came, God sent an angel to bring the man to him in heaven. Seeing the angel, the man said, “Please, might I stay a bit longer. It is time for planting this year’s crops and my neighbors need me.” The angel understood and left. Some months later, after the crops had been planted, the angel returned a second time and, for a second time, the man asked for more time, explaining, “A neighbor is seriously ill and it’s time for the harvest. Could I stay and bring his harvest in so that his family won’t be destitute?” And again, the angel nodded his head and returned to heaven alone.
And so it went, with the angel coming to bring the blacksmith to God and the blacksmith asking for more time because he was still needed in the village. And each time the angel agreed. Years later, old and weary, the blacksmith knew that it was time and so he prayed to God, “If you want to send your angel again, I’d be glad to come home now.”
In a short while, the angel of God appeared to the blacksmith, who said to the angel, “If you still want to take me home, I’m ready to go to God’s kingdom.” The angel chuckled and said to the man, “Where, friend, do you think you’ve been all these years?”
Now, the question before us is an easy one–in which kingdom do we want to live? The kingdom of Pilate, where innocent men are crucified and where armies march and where injustice is an everyday practice? Or the Kingdom of Rabbi Jesus, where the hungry are fed and where the helpless are helped and where the lion rests with the lamb? One thing is certain. Our lives make it clear everyday which king has our allegiance.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 