John 18:33-37

James R. Gorman

November 26, 2000 (Christ the King)

The English comic, Eddie Izzard, has a marvelous routine about how the British conquered and colonized the entire world (a routine which could apply to every colonizing power).

He imagines the day on which the English colonialists showed up on the subcontinent of India, placed a flag on the shore and said, "I claim this land in the name of the great English Empire upon which the sun never sets."

        And the people on the beach said, "Wait just a minute, we're already here."

        "Yes, but do you have a flag? You can't claim any land unless you have a flag."

There is no more radical claim the Church has made than the claim that Christ is King. The idea that Christ is King is subversive and unsettling, both in the realm of our personal lives as well as in our political lives, because, in the reign of Jesus over our hearts, he redefines the whole idea of kingship.

I heard a funny story while in England a year ago. Our hosts, Tom and Jacki Bush, took us to the Exeter Cathedral and to the very spot where the year before on Maundy Thursday, Queen Elizabeth engaged in her annual ritual of washing the feet of the poor. This tradition was supposed to express the idea that the Queen of England, who is also the titular head of the Church of England, is really the servant of all people, just as Christ the King is servant of all. Only England didn't quite get it right.

The Queen, and kings before her, have washed the feet of the poor, but over time the ritual moved from a genuine washing of genuinely poor feet to the washing of selected representatives of the poor (who, as it turns out, were not themselves poor) and then the appointment of an official footwasher to wash the feet of the officially selected representatives of the poor. All done in decency and in order, of course.

I would suppose that in time, in this Internet age, eventually we will have virtual kings and queens washing the feet of virtually poor people in some sort of odd world-wide web instant event.

Kings and queens throughout the history of the Holy Roman Empire, and those kingdoms derived from that Empire, have always known that Christ the King sets the real agenda for what it means to truly reign, but the idea of a servant king is overcome by the practicalities of kingship; war, building up armies, punishing the infidels and the like.

All the great movements of civil disobedience come from this simple and radical claim that Christ is King. In our personal lives, it means that no other claim of loyalty can in any way supercede Christ's claim on our lives. To love as we ourselves have been loved is the highest goal of all our lives. And this King of Love shows us how that is done. In our political lives, it means that no other political leader or political movement can supercede Christ's claims on our lives.

In the earliest days of the Christian Church, to say that Christ is King was to say by implication that Caesar is not my king, and neither are his appointed minions such as King Herod and Governor Pontius Pilate.

Thus the poignant confrontation between Pilate and Jesus, part of which is recorded in this morning's Gospel text. This passage from the 18^th and 19^th chapters of the Gospel of John is often referred to as the "trial of Jesus before Pilate." But anyone who reads this with any sensitivity know that, in fact, it is the trial of Pilate before Jesus. You get a sense from this story that Pilate is extraordinarily uncomfortable and is boxed in by the religious leaders of both the Temple and the Synagogue.

Pilate is in a difficult situation. He doesn't understand (or doesn't care to understand) the religious charge of blasphemy (Jesus is the Son of God). But he does seem to have some vague interest in the technical political charge that Jesus is the "King of the Jews." Because if Jesus means that in a real political sense, then Herod, who has the technical title of "King of the Jews" granted by Caesar, has some competition, and Pilate has some political responsibility to bring such a radical claim under control--and now, since these things have a way of getting out of control.

So, Pilate's first question, after the police brought him to Pilate's headquarters, was, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Which has the implication that "if you are, then I have a problem with King Herod, who says that he is the King of the Jews. Then I have unrest and I can't have that. So, are you, as your followers say, the King of the Jews?"

Jesus answers with a question, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"

Pilate says, "Look, I'm not a Jew. Your own people have handed you over to me. What have you done?"

Jesus says, "My kingdom is not of this world."

Pilate cross examines him: "So, you are a king!" Aha--gotcha!

Jesus says something like, "I am a king who gives testimony to Truth."

Pilate, who may have been trained in a philosophical academy in Rome, then asks a deeply philosophical question, "What is truth?"

I think that one of the reasons we dislike politicians so much in our time may be because we have seen the ambiguous world in which politicians must live and move and have their being. They can't really say what they mean for fear of offending some faction or other. If politics is the art of compromise, at some point it is inevitable that truth must needs be compromised. And, as politicians reflect on their lives, they might well ask Pilate's question, "What is truth?" Not "What is truth as you define it?" (which is the way I've always read this question), but "What is truth?" Is there anything that can be called truth, given the uneasy and heavily compromised world in which Pilate lives?

Evidently, Jesus doesn't answer the question. Except that in the same Gospel of John, in chapter 14, Jesus had already told his disciples, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." But Jesus evidently does not say that to Pilate at this point. It is left for Christians to read that in the dialogue.

Pilate, as you may know, finds Jesus innocent and goes out to the porch to tell the religious leaders so. "I find no case against him," Pilate says. "How about you let me release this so-called criminal as is the custom on such holy days as this," but they cry out, "Don't release this man, but release Bar Abbas the bandit instead."

Pilate the politician follows the art of compromise and hands over a man he believes to be innocent to be flogged and prepared for crucifixion.

Poor Pilate.

He's stuck. He either follows the way of truth by sparing an innocent man, or he risks a political insurrection that he would have to explain to Caesar. He chooses to quell the crowds even while saying two more times, "Look, . . . I find no case against him. If you have a problem with him, crucify him yourself."

In the dilemma of Pilate we can see the life of every politician of every age who must respond to the complex and competing desires of the crowd. Pilate, in John's telling of the story, is a sad character, surely much more "on trial" than is Jesus. He is the archetype of every politician in every age who must live in a shadowy world in which truth is too often compromised to political expediency.

That's why our social world needs the Church, who remembers this story and says and believes that Christ is King. That helps us see a way clear through the very ambiguous nether world of political life. We know how kings and presidents and prime ministers ought to behave because we know Jesus.

I have no illusions about the difficulty of such a loyalty. And in difficult times, loyalty to Christ as King requires an unusual courage. In Nazi Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Neimöller stand out as church leaders and pastors who insisted that Christ is King and not Adolph Hitler. Niemöller understood that truth transcends Hitler's gifted political rhetoric and it also transcends his own particular condition. Reflecting on the war years in Germany, Martin Niemöller confessed his own hesitancy to be obedient to the Truth and the King of Kings by saying:

        They came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not object.

Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not object.

Then they came for the Poles, but I was not a Pole, so I did not object.

Then they came for me. And there was no one left to object.

Christ is King who witnesses to the way of Truth. And the truth which we know in Jesus Christ is one that transcends political expediency and our own particular existential crises.

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