A
DIFFERENT KIND OF KING
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37
We celebrate the Feast of Christ the King today. The title
is memorialized in the name of the Lutheran Church in whose space we
meet as it is in the name of many other churches. A
Google search for Christ the King Episcopal Church turns up 252,000
hits, CTK Lutheran, some 1,440,000 hits; and for CTK Catholic Church,
14,600,000 hits. The Feast Day of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King
is relatively new, instituted in the Roman church in 1925 by Pope Pius
XI on the Sunday immediately before All Saints’ Day. In 1969,
Pope John XXIII moved the celebration to its current observation on the
last Sunday of the season after Pentecost.
We don’t usually focus on the historical background of a liturgical
celebration – most are apparent - but in this case, I think there is
reason to do so. Try to imagine - very few alive today would
remember it well - try to imagine life in the 1920s. The World
War had just ended – the War to end All Wars – with its 15,000,000
dead. A pandemic known as the Spanish flu was winding down.
It enveloped the world from 1918 until the early 1920s, killing from 50
to 100 million people. Communism had successfully gained the
upper hand in Russia, the czar was no more, and all monarchies were
vulnerable. The powerful Weimar Republic lay in shambles after
the Treaty of Versailles and an outspoken group of activists under the
leadership of an Austrian was hero named Adolph Hitler was attracting
attention in Germany. A fascist by the name of Benito Mussolini
rose to power in Italy and reestablished, by means of the Lateran
Pacts, a positive relationship between that nation and the Church of
Rome. The world was standing on the precipice of change, kingdoms
were falling and being replaced by political systems of uncertain
value. In the US, the Protestant Episcopal Church was in the
throes of controversy as she charged into modernizing the Book of
Common Prayer; an effort culminating in the 1928 BCP. That change
would bring many to leave the church. The upper levels of church
authority felt threatened and sought to strengthen the political system
of organization that had more or less prevailed from the Middle
Ages. All of which reminds us of the deep ways that our religious
worship both reflects and influences our culture and its norms.
For us, people who have lived in a representative form of governance
for over two centuries, the role of king is something of which we only
have vicarious knowledge. Our British cousins regularly argue
over the continuing role of the monarchy as one of the few developed
countries that retain a semblance of that system. Monarchy or no,
king or queen or no, we are aware of the uneasy relationship between
the church and the state, between those who hold power politically and
those who seek to follow God. That uneasiness is reflected in the
exchange between Pilate and Jesus in the reading from John’s
Gospel. This is an incomplete pericope intended, undoubtedly, to
focus on the kingly aspect of Jesus’ ministry.
The Sanhedrin who, under the administration of Herod, were responsible
for maintaining orderliness in the social structures of Judea sent
Jesus to the prefect, Pilate. His chief responsibility was
collecting taxes and secondarily for providing oversight and
maintaining order in the region. Unable to justify Jesus’
execution under their own law, never the less, the Jewish court wanted
to finally rid themselves of this man who presented a problem as he
stirred the people to worship independent of the religious power
structure. Sending him to Pilate implies that he was pressing a
revolt against Rome by encouraging non-payment of taxes, a crime
punishable by death. Our reading from John’s Gospel opens
at Pilate’s seat of authority in Jerusalem.
There, Pilate opens the judgment with an interesting question, “Are you
the King of the Jews?” This is the title which Herod the Great
held until his death at about the time of Jesus’ birth. His
kingdom was divided at his death and Herod Antipas became a tetrarch,
ruler of a quarter, over Galilee and Perea. There was no king of
the Jews as such. Luke records that Pilate tried to push
the judgment of Jesus off on Antipas but that move was rejected.
So Pilate is asking if this man standing before him (by now physically
showing the signs of abuse, lack of sleep, and mistreatment); if this
man is trying to gather the whole Judean kingdom back together under
his rule. Jesus, of course, sees more deeply than does his
examiner.
Hold that image for a moment as we think back over the characters we
met in the lessons of the past several Sundays from Mark’s gospel: the
rich young man who is seeking assurance for his future, blind
Bartimaeus seeking restoration of his sight, people who show up in the
temple to offer their prayers and the sacrifices and oblations of their
labor, the disciples, awed by the stature and grandeur of the
Temple. Jesus saw that the young and wealthy man was trapped by
his wealth and told him to give it all away; he asked Bartimaeus what
he wanted, whether he was willing to face the demands of life as one
who is physically whole, without excuse. He diagnosed false and
recognized true worship by seeing into the hearts of those whose
offerings and prayers were presented in the temple and he cautioned the
disciples against attachment to the externals of worship.
Now he hears the uncertainty in Pilate’s voice, he sees the darkness,
the shadow in his spirit and tries to break through that. “Here
is your opportunity Pilate – what you seek is truth and I am
truth. I am that which you seek, the word that stills the mental
turmoil that comes from trying to please everyone, from holding
authority at the whim of another whom you feel you must always
gratify.”
Jesus is doing, of course, what a king does – or should do.
Ideally, a king leads the way, takes responsibility for the well being
and growth of his subjects, encourages the downhearted, protects the
weak, orders the disorderly, and oversees the well-being of the
kingdom. But even the best of kings, the greatest of kings, has
boundaries, limits to the ability to rule.
I was still a young engineer in a large company. I was somewhat
yet in awe of “upper management” – this was back in the days when white
shirts, dark slacks, and necktie were essential elements of the
professional uniform, even on sweltering summer days in the Texas
heat. I have never forgotten the words our chief engineer said in
a meeting: “I am totally dependent on you. I am the chief but
your work, your ideas, your cooperation determine what happens,
determine our success or failure.” I found those words to be a
sort of metaphor for life – in this world and in God’s kingdom.
It is exactly what Jesus’ words and action reveal: the least is the
most important; to ascend to the role of leader requires one to develop
the attitude of a servant; to find life, one must let go, turn loose,
die to self.
His is no ordinary worldly realm. Christ is king of an
upside-down kingdom. Traditionally, we hold the idea that the
king is honored by bowing and scraping, by giving in to his every whim,
by placating his anger. And, I fear, for many that is the
Christ the King they envision. But I have met a different kind of
king – one who probes my deepest shadows, shining the light of truth
into the dark corners and offering the embrace of forgiveness and
reconciliation. This is a king I can follow with joy, even into
trial and testing.
When faced with the angry crowd and the calls of crucify him – the very
crowd that only days earlier had so eagerly cried hosanna and crowded
around him to hear his words – he looked out with compassion.
Recall the healing words from the cross: “Father, forgive them for they
do not know what they are doing.” I think his forgiveness was
less about what we did to him on the cross than what that action
revealed about what we do to one another and to ourselves.
Hear the end of the conversation with Pilate:
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact,
for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to
testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to
me.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the
Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.”
We tend to be like the rich young man, like the Pharisees and scribes
who heard but could not accept, trapped by our desire for security, our
need for love and acceptance, our fear of losing what we have - all
garnered and protected by greed and violence. We, like Pilate
ask, “What is truth?” But, like Pilate, comfortably if not
joyfully enslaved to Rome and to error, we pull the shade to block out
the light and close our ears the truth.
There is great wisdom in the words of the collect:
Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by
sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule.
May we continue to grow in our walk as did the story of John. The
exiled John of Patmos seemed to see more clearly in his old age and
with his failing eyes than the young fisherman tailing a radical rabbi
around the Galilean countryside.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made
us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory
and dominion forever and ever.
Amen.
John Dryden Burton
November 22, 2009
All Saints’ Episcopal Church
Bentonville, AR