Pilate said to Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I?” Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” 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 18.33-37)
As most of you are aware, the liturgical or church calendar ends a month or more before the so-called Gregorian calendar, the yearly calendar that we use. The discrepancy causes some confusion for sure. Whereas we always start the New Year a week after Christmas, the liturgical calendar starts four weeks (sometimes a few days less) before Christmas.
We can assume that the liturgists wanted the church’s new year to begin with Advent, the season that anticipates the coming of the Lord Jesus. In some ways, it makes sense. The life of a person follows the trajectory that is laid out from birth to death. In other ways, it doesn’t make sense because we celebrate the death of Jesus on Good Friday, usually just a matter of months after Christmas, with the greater part of the liturgical year still ahead.
However, the calendar, as it is, allows us to follow the movement of Jesus as recorded in the sacred texts from his birth to his public ministry to his execution, ending with his resurrection. So, in effect, our time table is consistent with the gospels. Again, more or less. There is nothing necessarily tidy about the liturgical calendar.
So, today we end one year and next Sunday we begin a new year. The liturgical calendar always ends with a special feast known as the Solemnity of our Lord Jesus Christ the King. The purpose of the feast is to recognize the kingship of the Risen Lord over heaven and earth. It is always good to end on a high note. And honoring the Lord Jesus as the king of the universe is about as high as it gets.
However, as we see today, the gospel for Year B does not present Jesus in all his honor and glory. Instead, Jesus is standing before Pontius Pilate, his execution right around the corner. In other words, this is not a kingship we recognize. (Year A ends with Jesus’ prediction of the final judgment of the nations; Year C ends with Jesus on the cross, to his left and to his right two thieves.)
That difference in kingships is brought home as we hear Pilate ask Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” to which Jesus answers, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” With that answer, Jesus has drawn a distinction between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God, and, as time has shown, the difference is greater than the space between the heavens and the earth.
Should we need a reminder–and there is great need for one in these times–the kingdom of God is a kingdom of goodness and generosity, not evil and greed, a place where all its citizens are brothers and sisters, not enemies and opponents, a kingdom ruled by a loving and gracious king who gives generously to all, not by despots who take as much as they can from others.
The passage that we have today is part of a much larger dialogue between Pilate the Roman governor and Jesus the innocent victim. The evangelist John extends the inquiry much longer than do the writers of the synoptic gospels. Part of the reason seems to be that John wants to make it clear that Pilate concludes that Jesus is innocent.
On at least four occasions, Pilate goes outside where the Jewish leaders await his verdict to tell them that he finds Jesus to be innocent. He says to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no guilt in him.” Scholars often refer to this back-and-forth between Pilate and the religious leaders as the “indoor-outdoor” exchange. When Pilate is indoors, he speaks to Jesus and concludes that he has done no wrong. When he goes outdoors to tell the leaders the same, they challenge him, insisting that Jesus should be put to death.
There is ugliness aplenty in this gruesome display of wickedness and injustice, but surely one of its high tides is when Pilate, exasperated and at wit’s end with the chief priests, brings Jesus outside and seats him on the judge’s bench. Jesus has been scourged, mocked, and a crown of thorns placed atop his head. He says to the chief priests, “Behold, your king!”
The leaders of the Jews cry out, “Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!” Pilate asks them, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered him, “We have no king but Caesar.” With those damning words from the religious leaders, Pilate hands Jesus over to the executioners. The bloodthirst and the hatred of the chief priests are evident in that statement. It was unimaginable that they could say that Caesar was their king, the words blasphemous and political suicide for any Jew, but they nonetheless say them, willing to sell their souls to see Jesus crucified.
That is the statement that should haunt all of us who consider ourselves to be loyal and faithful followers of the Crucified Lord. As it damned the religious leaders, showing their cowardice and the evil in their heart, it has the possibility of damning us as well if, in fact, we say the same, “We have no king but Caesar.” Of course, we rush to disclaim and deny any such ridiculous assertion, but just because we don’t say the words with our voices does not mean that we don’t live them out with our actions.
Listening to this passage, it should become clear to all of us that, truth be told, Jesus is not the one on trial. We are the ones on trial. John goes to great pains to show that Jesus is innocent and that the religious leaders have trumped up empty charges for his death. Their malice is exposed each time Pilate steps outdoors. As he challenges them, they become the ones on trial because Pilate points out the obvious contradictions in their arguments, epitomized in their acclamation, “We have no king but Caesar.”
Yet, are we any better? That is the question before us today as we gather to publicly proclaim that the Crucified Lord is our king. Do our lives truly reflect his kingship over our daily actions and the decisions that we make? Or do our lives prove the opposite, that is, that we have no king but Caesar, our lives in lock step with the ways of the world, not with the ways of Jesus.
“My kingdom is not of this world.” That statement by the condemned Jesus becomes the litmus test for us who claim to be his followers. It puts us on trial and it either condemns us or proves us to be innocent as he was. Sadly, there is no middle ground as Simon Peter shows us as he waits in the courtyard by a campfire, the first called by Jesus to follow him and the first to say as Jesus is handed over, “I am not one of his disciples.”
Standing as we do, then, each of us on trial, forced to face our own actions or inactions, will we find ourselves with Jesus who says “my kingdom is not of this world,” or will we find ourselves with Peter who says, “I am not one of his disciples.” I would like to think that we would pass the test with flying colors, proving ourselves to be faithful followers of the Crucified Lord, but I am not so very sure, our world looking each day more and more like one that would say, “We have no king but Caesar.”
Perhaps, in this moment of scrutiny, it would benefit us to look closely again at the differences between the kingdom of God and the kingdom where Caesar reigns. The kingdom of God, as Jesus’ life proved, is a place of refuge for the sick, for the outcast, and for the penniless. Meanwhile, Caesar lets the sick fend for themselves, pushes out of sight those without either roof or table, and ignores the cries of the poor, left without means and without help.
The kingdom of God is founded on the belief that every person, regardless of state, status, or station, has dignity while the household of Caesar believes dignity is the right of the powerful, the privileged, and the prosperous. The kingdom of God is a place where the door is always opened to the person in need, regardless of nation, nature, or natural skin color, whereas in the kingdom of the world the door is slammed in the face of the foreigner, the forgotten, and the forlorn.
The kingdom of God is ruled by love, unlike the kingdom of the world where the rule is based on hatred. And whereas the kingdom of God strives always to bring people together, finding common humanity, common purpose, and common bonds, Caesar’s kingdom wants to divide people against each other, the haves against the have nots, the rich against the poor, the powerful against the powerless.
So, the question to ask ourselves is in which kingdom have we decided to live. Do we want to live in a kingdom in which compassion is the ruling force or do we want to live in a kingdom where callousness is the ruling force; a kingdom where everyone sits at the same table, passing the platters of food from one to another, or a kingdom where the privileged eat at the banquet dinner while the poor eat crumbs off the floor; a kingdom in which even the lowliest feel calm and confidence, or in a kingdom in which the least and the last cower in fear and dread.
In the end, our citizenship is clear. Our allegiance does not hide in the shadows. We choose our king and we choose our kingdom, our voices and our votes as loud as those of the Jewish religious leaders outside the praetorium. We find our home in one or the other, in the kingdom of God or in the kingdom of the world. Put side-by-side, Jesus and his way of life, or Caesar and his ways, which one have we chosen to rule us? It simply cannot be both. Jesus has made it impossible by his words, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
Today, when the calendar calls upon us to celebrate Christ as our King, we do well not to go through the motions if, in fact, the king we follow is opposite Jesus in every way. It serves us better to stay at home, our honesty at least to our credit, rather than sitting in church where our hypocrisy is on display. Even the religious leaders in Jerusalem, when forced to choose, admitted out loud, “We have no king but Caesar,” their choice made perfectly clear as Jesus sat in front of them, whipped and beaten, denied and denigrated.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 