So here we are, the
last Sunday before Advent, the season that begins with the fourth Sunday before
Christmas and ends Christmas Eve, and our reading is from the middle of the
passion narrative, of all things. You know the passion narrative, don’t you?: The
story about the trial and death of Jesus Christ? And it’s relevant because it’d
also Christ the
King Sunday, and contains a discussion of what makes a monarch in the Kingdom
of God. And the very fact it’s from the passion narrative lends it a poignant
irony over and above any words that might be said, because the first thing
anybody would ever ask about Jesus, who was
nailed to that tree, is what kind of ruler, what kind of sovereign, what kind
of king gets drug
through the streets of Jerusalem, poked and prodded and jeered at, and then
hung up to die on a cross? And, by extension, what kind of religion is bult around such a thing?
Because make no mistake, Christianity is as much about the crucifixion as it is
about the resurrection, as much about the crash of winter as the coming of
spring.
It was early in
Christianity that Christians started calling Christ their king, right along
with calling him Lord, which befuddled Jews and Greeks and just about everybody
else in the Greco-Roman world, because getting killed made one kind of a
failure, didn’t it? It made one kind of a loser,
and less kind individuals would have gone around making the L-sign on their
foreheads, if English had been invented, which of course it hadn’t. Losers
weren’t any more respected by the general populace in those days any more than
they are today, and a guy who got himself killed definitely wasn’t a winner in their books. The
guy had done all kind of miracles, all kinds of signs, and shown power over
life and death,
for St. Peter’s sake, but cracked like a soft-boiled egg at the first sign of
Roman opposition. He wouldn’t even save his own life. Was it any wonder his
disciples had scattered like quail?
And here he was up
before Pontius Pilate, Roman governor of Judea, who would not have made anybody’s most-cuddly list.
History would remember him as a ruthless, vicious
ruler, who’d keep the Roman peace at any cost, who ate scruffy revolutionaries
like Jesus for breakfast. In fact, he had a some-time insurrectionist named
Barabbas just waiting
for the right moment to string up, which apparently would be right after he got
done with Jesus. Now Jesus had been brought to Pilate because the Israelite
religious authorities could sentence anyone of anything up to, but not
including, death, and they wanted Jesus dead. But Pilate, despite his cutthroat
virtuosity, is hesitating. And this has always puzzled biblical scholars,
because it was way
out of character for him, so the more liberal amongst them proposed that the
Gospel writers, ah, embellished
the scene, trying to curry favor with the Romans by blaming the Jews. See,
they’d say, we’re good Roman citizens, we don’t blame y’all for Jesus’ death,
it was those evil Jews!
But you know, I wonder
if it’s something about Jesus that gave Pilate pause . . . after all, we know
that the disciples only had to see
him and hear his voice
to up and leave everything and every one
to follow him. Jesus seemed to radiate, to exude
something that wasn’t of this world, at least any world that anybody in this one’d ever seen.
Cynthia Bourgeault calls it a “recognition event,” that people recognized something in
Jesus that resonated
with them on a deep, and not-particuarly-rational, level. And perhaps that’s
what we’re seeing here, that the Pilate historians know would even twitch at putting a rabble
rouser down may be a testament to Jesus’ magnetic and holy presence.
Well. Our passage tells
of Pilate’s final confrontation with Jesus, and to me, it looks he’s just
trying to get a handle on it all. “Are you the king of the Jews,” he asks, and
he knows full well that that’s what Herod styles himself as, king of the Jews, and perhaps
Pilate is trying to get Jesus in trouble with the Romans’ pet overlord, but
more likely he’s just trying to find out what he’s being charged with. Because
in fact, he hadn’t been told.
The Sanhedrin had just hauled him over and dumped him off on him, saying “If
this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” What
kind of trial is this that the judge doesn’t even know the charges?
So Pilate is trying to
do his job, and to do it he needs to know what the charge is, and so he asks
“Are you the King of the Jews?” Cause if he thinks he’s the king of the Jews,
then he’ll know what’s up. And Jesus’ answer—“Do you ask this on your own, or
did others tell you about me?”—has been taken to be kind of smart-alecky, like
“did you figure that out all by yourself, or did you get help?” But I don’t
think it’s meant as an insult, I think he really wants to know. We already know
that Jesus makes a sharp distinction between what comes from the inside versus
what comes from without . . . remember? He says it’s not what comes from
outside that defiles, but what comes from inside.
Similarly, Jesus is asking whether Pilate’s question comes from within Pilate,
and thus is sincere,
or whether he’s parroting what he’s heard.
We live in a time where
it’s an important distinction, don’t you think? We’re constantly bombarded with
information and opinions, squabbling talking heads and news that is of doubtful
provenance and veracity (notice how I didn’t call it fake news?). If we let
ourselves be swayed by everything that comes from without, from everything we
are told, we’ll be like those bulrushes over in Isaiah, but instead of our
heads being bowed, they’ll be whipping around like bobbles on a spring.
But how does our
dependence on all these outside influences dovetail with Jesus’ teaching that
it’s only what comes from within that defiles? All those buffeting viewpoints
can’t defile, can they? After all, they do
come from without . . . Well, Buddhist psychology puts it this way: in everyone
there are seeds: seeds of violence, seeds of compassion, seeds of fear, seeds
of joy . . . every human emotion, every human behavior is within us in embryonic form. For
fans of Western psychology, it’s akin to C.G. Jung’s collective unconscious,
where human behaviors are represented by common archetypes. In the Buddhist
metaphor, these seeds—of violence, evil, compassion, joy—lie dormant until they
are “watered” by something from the outside. Thus, watching or participating in
violent activities water the seeds of violence, watching or participating in
deeds of compassion water seeds of compassion, and the person grows
increasingly violent or compassionate. Does it mean they will be actively
violent or compassionate? No. But, according to Buddhist thought, their
tendencies, their propensities for them will increase.
And so, according to
this thinking, outside influences—news, movies, political rallies, and the like—can
actually change
how we are on the inside, and therefore, as Jesus would say, come from inside
and defile—or make better, for that matter. And so, when Jesus asks whether the
question about his kingship is asked on his own, he is taking Pilate’s spiritual
temperature, speaking from a far different spiritual place than was Pilate.
Jesus is trying to see into his psyche, Pilate is just interested
externalities: “I am not a Jew, am I?” he says, “Your own nation and the chief
priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” And in fact, Pilate doesn’t know, they haven’t told him,
So we have Jesus being Jesus, plumbing spiritual
reaches, and Pilate being Pilate, just trying to figure out just what is going
on. And Jesus makes it clear that he’s interacting with the governor on a whole
other level: “My kingdom’s not of this world. If my kingdom were from there, my
followers would be fighting to keep me free. But as it is, my kingdom is not
from here.” And there it is: Pilate is speaking of worldly things—things of
this realm—and his notion of kingship is based there. Jesus, of course, is
speaking of the Kingdom of God, his natural habitat, and his notion of kingship
is based there.
And Pilate takes one
more stab at understanding this enigmatic man with the entire universe in his
eyes: “So you are a
king.” And once again, Jesus reply is from another realm: ”You’re the one who says I’m
a king. But here’s the reason I was born and the reason I came into this world:
to testify to the truth.” He may be on trial in this temporal realm, but his
testimony isn’t about that. His testimony is about the eternal, it’s about
truth. And whoever belongs to that truth listens not to the things of the world, but to his voice. But
once again, Pilate hears things from his own perspective: “What is truth?” he
asks, shaking his head as he walks away.
And of course, that’s
the problem: Pilate is talking about the truth of the powers that be, the
powers and principalities, as Paul would call them. Political truth, that
shifts with the wind; human truth, which blows around like those bobble-head
bulrushes. That truth is tied to authority, to whomever is in power, who holds
the reigns of the media, who can control the dominant narrative. The truth of
which Jesus speaks is a more basic truth, a more fundamental truth, a truth that doesn’t vary,
that doesn’t budge. It’s a truth that underlies reality. And this is John,
remember, where Christ’s own self
is that word of truth, so Jesus testifies to himself and God, the ground of
being that sent him.
And those who belong to
that truth listen
to that truth, they listen to him.
which shouldn’t be hard to do, because they—we!—are intimately connected to him, as
branches to a vine. In fact this Word, this truth
abides in us, and we in him. It is our center, below any Buddhist seeds, more
fundamental than any Jungian archetype. And we are fundamentally grounded to
this truth, and have recourse to it, if only we will, when the chaos and
confusion and obfuscation of modern existence seems too much to handle.
Sisters and brothers,
this is the kind of king Christ is, one who points to truth, one who is that truth, available to
us through scripture and through his own indwelling self. All we have to do, as
the old hymn says, keep our eyes on him. Amen.
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