Christ Lutheran Church

1701 Arroyo Chamiso

Santa Fe, NM 87505-4775

(505) 983-9461

church@clcsantafe.com

  

 

November 22, 2009

Christ the King

 

(Click HERE for a PDF version of this Sermon)

GOSPEL: John 18:33-38

 

This translation is from THE NEW TESTAMENT prepared by Norman A. Beck, Poehlmann Professor of Theology and Classical Languages, Texas Lutheran University, Seguin, Texas and is in his words: “A new translation and redaction that dares to be sensitive, sensitive to anti-Jewish polemic and to sexism, and dares to be innovative for our time by moving back into the past of early church development and forward into the future of the church that is to come.”

³³Pilate entered into the praetorium again and said to Jesus, “Are you trying to be the king, the political ruler of your people?”  ³⁴Jesus answered, “Are you saying this based on your own observation, or have others said this to you about me?”  ³⁵Pilate answered, “Am I one of your people?  I certainly am not!  Your own people and your chief priests have delivered you over to me.  What have you done?” ³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not authorized from within this world.  If it were, those who serve with me would have fought to try to prevent me from being delivered over to Annas and Caiaphas.  But, my kingdom is not from within this world.” ³⁷Then Pilate said to him, “So you are trying to be a king, a political ruler of your people?” Jesus answered, “You are saying that I am trying to be a king.  I will tell you the reason that I was conceived and the reason that I have come into this world.  I was conceived and I have come into this world in order that I may testify to that which is the truth.  Everyone who is conceived from the truth hears my voice. ³⁸Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

The Reign of God's Justice and Love

 

+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

 

We have four traditions of the last days of Jesus’ life in our Christian Scriptures – in chronological order (not the order we find them in our Bibles) they are know as the Gospels according to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

The earliest of these four (Mark) was composed during the Jewish-Roman war that resulted in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE.  This story of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection being written down some 40 years after Jesus actually lived and died.

The latest of these four Gospels (John) was composed somewhere near the end of the 1^st Century (scholars date it in the last 10 years of the 1^st Century, as early as 90 CE and as late as 100 CE).  This story of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection being written down at least 60 and perhaps 70 years after Jesus actually lived and died. One entire lifetime had passed before this Gospel was recorded, and those who had known Jesus, who had walked and talked with him, both followers and observers were long deceased.

I mention this because sometimes we think of the Gospels as four books which give us historical fact and narration, like we were reading the headline story from today’s newspaper or seeing a report of an incident on the evening news.  But rather Mark, Matthew, Luke and John are testimonies of faith and belief, they are stories written over a period of 30 years and from four perspectives and for four different types of readers (or audiences as biblical scholars like to say).

Each of the later storytellers borrows from the earliest, but how they tell the story, how they arrange or rearrange the details, and where they add pieces from other stories about Jesus … that is their own doing, and I would say their own unique beauty.  And how they embellish … stretch and imagine and even create parts of the story … that is the delightful wonder when one sits down to read or listen to the four Gospels.

And, when reading or listening to the Gospels, it is most important for us to remember to look at the story itself, to learn what the Storyteller is trying to say to his 1^st Century audience, and by extension … to us.  What is the important thing about Jesus and his life?  What does his death mean?  And what does it mean to become one of his followers?

That is what is before us this morning as we read the account of Jesus before Pontius Pilate who was the Roman Governor of Judea from the year 26 to the year 36 CE.

Pilate appears in each of the four Gospels, but again it is like looking at four artists painting four canvases of the same scene: in Mark (the earliest) who depicts Jesus as innocent of plotting against Rome, Pilate is extremely reluctant to execute Jesus; in Matthew Pilate “washes his hands” of Jesus and reluctantly sends him to his death; in Luke, Pilate not only agrees that Jesus did not conspire against Rome, but Herod Antipas (the Ruler over Galilee) also finds nothing of treason in Jesus’ actions; and in John, Pilate again finds “no fault in this man”.

The common theme through each of these encounters between Pilate and Jesus is that Pilate does not find Jesus guilty at all.  The uniqueness of the Gospel of John is that in it the author embellishes the encounter quite a bit … and it is in the embellishment that we find the thrust of what John wants to tell us about Jesus and his followers.

Thirty years earlier (in the Gospel of Mark) Pilate asks Jesus “Are you the king of the Jewish people?” … Thirty storytelling-years later Pilate not only asks Jesus the same question, but engages Jesus in a political-religious dialogue about kingship itself.

In this expanded conversation comes the understanding that it is not about power in this world as with most kings and kingdoms which move upon the earth with the instruments of war and punishment and greed and avarice … taking and accumulating (in the time of the 1^st Century we might say – in terms of the Roman Occupation of Judea – it was Caesar Seizure!)

Jesus, at his trial, in John’s end of the 1^st Century interpretation, insists that such is not the nature of a king or a kingdom, but rather has to do with God, the Creator of the Universe.  Where God is concerned, it is all about the Reign of God’s Justice and Love, where giving and not taking are the rule, compassion and not punishment are the principles, and welcoming not excluding are the actions that depict such a ruling.

Furthermore, Jesus points out in this dialogue and scene, that it all has to do with the truth … kings must be authorized by the truth, speak the truth, live the truth … and kingdoms must be the same.

It is at that moment that Pontius Pilate, the foreign Governor, appointed by Caesar, who is become more and more in trouble with Rome because of the political unrest in Judea … it is at that moment that Pilate muses the words that will be remembered for centuries beyond his Governor’s Palace:

… as the author of the Fourth Gospel wrote it: τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια; (Ti estin aletheia?)

Or as Pilate would have said it in his own language: Quid est Veritas?

“What is Truth?”

We who have been reading the words of John’s account know that truth is truth only when it is linked to grace.

It is not the hammer of judgment that comes rushing out of the Gospel (of any of the Gospels) … rather it is the embrace of compassionate grace that flows gently from the Story and the stories.

The Feast of Christ the King is the last holy Sunday in the Calendar of the Western Church.  It began actually in 1925, as a special day, and was instituted by Pope Pius XI who declared that the Church should remember the meaning that comes flowing from the Gospels in light of a growing nationalism in the first part of the last Century.

For us who follow Jesus within the liturgy of the Church and look to the order of our Calendar, we end the Church Year on this Sunday.  New Year’s Day will on the Secular Calendar we all follow be the day when 2009 becomes 2010; but for the Church, it all concludes this Sunday and begins anew next Sunday (The First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the New Church Year).

For us who follow Jesus within these stories and hymns and prayers and baptisms and suppers and healings that are regimented within what we might call a holy calendar … we find ourselves on this Sunday proclaiming Christ as the Ruler of God’s Intentionality … the gentle reign of love and grace and peace and hope that comes from his side as he dies.

It is a different way of looking at things, it is not a view of power and hurt at all.  The Reign of God’s Justice and Love comes into being when those who follow Jesus … follow Jesus … moving beyond the individual and even the community into the world and into humanity itself for the healing, the mending, the up-building, the embrace of what God has created and what God asks that we love.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.
Powerful God,

    when we are at our most vulnerable

    help us rest our hope in you.

Remind us that strength

    may be used for hurting or for love,

    and that when you are the source of our strength

    no hurtful power can overcome it.

Make us more loving, more kind;

    but never let us stop striving

    for the establishment of liberation and justice

    in your righteous reign.

Amen.