John 18:33-37--What Kind of Kingdom Is This?

The scene in that plays out in John 18:33-37 is as close to the halls of power and influence that Jesus of Nazareth ever came in his lifetime. According to all four gospels in the New Testament, after Jesus was arrested, he was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, at Pilate’s official residence in Jerusalem. You could say that we cannot overestimate the importance of this encounter between Jesus and Pilate. For one thing, it involves a biblical clash of titans: the religious authorities of Jerusalem, the civil authority of the Roman empire, and a reputed king of the Jews on trial for his life. For another thing, what transpires in Jerusalem after Pilate authorizes the execution of Jesus of Nazareth changes the course of human civilization. If that statement sounds to you like homiletical hyperbole—a preacher’s outrageous exaggeration, then remember that is only after Jesus’ death and the reports of his resurrection that spread among his disciples that the small and mostly Jewish movement that grew up around him in Palestine exploded into the most widely influential religion that the world has ever seen, before or since. So, you could say that we cannot overestimate the importance of this encounter between Jesus and Pilate.

But I think that we often do, and I think we especially are inclined to overestimate it on “Christ the King” Sunday. I confess to you that of all Sundays in the Christian calendar, “Christ the King” Sunday is my least favorite of them all. Since I was called to preach here in 2001, I tried to ignore it, but Glen Adkins won’t let me. I’ve tried to rename it “Global Missions Sunday,” but it comes too late in November to highlight our Global Missions Emphasis. Christ the King Sunday is my least favorite Sunday in the Christian calendar for two reasons. First, it’s not one of the ancient feast days of the Christian church. Unlike Easter and Advent, Pentecost and Lent, Epiphany and All Saints, whose practice in the church’s worship can be traced back for centuries among Christians the world over, Christ the King Sunday was not invented until 1925, when Pope Pius XI instituted it in a papal encyclical. We have members of this congregation who are older than “Christ the King Sunday,” for heaven’s sake! It was Pius the XI’s intent it should be celebrated on the last Sunday in October every year, a Sunday which, by the way, many Protestant churches already celebrated as Reformation Sunday in commemoration of the occasion of Martin Luther’s nailing his famous 95 theses for reform on the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. So, while Pius XI’s pious institution of Christ the King Sunday is championed in the church as targeted at the rise of atheistic communism, secularism and individualism, the timing of the thing suggests that it was equally aimed at Lutherans and Presbyterians and Methodists and Baptists and other purveyors of Protestant heresy.

My second reservation about Christ the King Sunday is more important. It seems to me that this newfound feast of the church encourages exactly the kind of triumphalism and authoritarianism that has crippled the integrity of the church’s witness down through the centuries to a crucified Christ. The church has always been tempted to replace the cross with a throne, in spite of the fact that in the gospel of Mark, Jesus said, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:42-45). “Christ the Servant” Sunday would make more sense to me if the teachings of Jesus were our guide.

When Pilate asks Jesus if he is a king, Jesus replies, “Who says so—you or someone else?” When Pilate says, “So you are a king?” Jesus responds, “You say that I am a king” (John 18:33-37). One thing Jesus did not do in the presence of Pilate is what Pius XI did in his encyclical when he called all other authorities in the world to submit to the authority of Christ (and to the authority of the church as well), and there you have one of the crucial differences between Christ and so many of the viceroys of Christ on earth in every generation. In the end, Christ the King Sunday was instituted not so much for the sake of Christ—after all, every Sunday is already “the Lord’s Day”—but for the sake of the power and influence of the church in the world. Would that Pius XI had called it “Christ the Servant” Sunday and called on the church universal to celebrate annually on that Sunday its commitment to serving the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the outcast, the marginalized and the disenfranchised—including especially those who are disenfranchised, marginalized, and outcast by the church. Then we’d have a festival of the church that would enhance and expand the church’s integrity and its witness in Jesus’ name instead of calling its motives into question. “My kingdom is not from this world,” said Jesus; “my kingdom is not from here” (v 36). Jesus’ kingdom is not about an ideological war against communism, secularism or individualism—or capitalism, spiritualism or collectivism either, for that matter. Our problem with the kingdom is that we want so badly for it to be from this world and from here on our terms in our time that we turn Christ the so-called King into Christ the mascot of our cause and our culture and our ideology.

For example, classical Christian liberalism at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century wanted so badly and worked so hard to build the kingdom of God here and now through social activism on the left and legislation and public education and unionization. They prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” full well believing that it was a liberal kingdom that was the kingdom of God that they were building on earth. The successors of classical Christian liberalism in this country are the religious right who at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century have wanted so badly and worked so hard to build the kingdom of God here and now through social activism on the right and legislation and dismantling public education and anti-unionization. They have prayed, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” full well believing that it is a conservative kingdom that is the kingdom of God in the here and now that they are building on earth. But Jesus said, “My kingdom is not from this world; my kingdom is not from here.” “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” (v 37).

This is not the first time in the gospel of John that Jesus talked about those who listen to his voice. It was back in chap. 10, when Jesus spoke of himself as the good shepherd, who “calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. . . . and the sheep follow him because they know his voice” (10:3-4). “I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (v 11). Of his impending death he said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (v 18). Jesus said “No one has greater lover than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:12-13). Why not “Christ the Good Shepherd” Sunday, the one who laid down his life for hose who listen to his voice. Then we’d have a festival of the church that would enhance and expand the church’s integrity and its witness in Jesus’ name instead of calling our motives into question.

Again and again we call on Christ the King to play a cosmic Mr. Fix-It. “The world’s in a mess, Lord, fix it,” we pray, instead of praying, “Here am I, send me,” as Isaiah prayed in the temple (Isaiah 6:8). “Make all things right,” we pray—or “make all things left,” depending on our persuasion, instead of praying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord,” as Mary the mother of Jesus prayed (Luke 1:38). “Make them all serve you as King,” we pray, without noticing that Jesus said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” You see, one of the fascinating things about Jesus of Nazareth in this morning’s gospel lesson is that he never even came close to the halls of power. Pontius Pilate was a pawn—he wasn’t even a knight or rook—in the Roman empire. His governor’s residence in Jerusalem was more than 1,200 miles away from the seat of imperial power in Rome. Neither Pilate nor Jesus was even close to the halls of power and influence. And as for those authorities in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish culture, its highest intellectual and religious expression in Jesus’ day, was not Jerusalem at all but Babylon, more than 600 miles away, where the descendants of the exiles from centuries before were cultivating the best of Jewish tradition that would result in the Babylonian Talmud, the preeminent collection of Jewish learning, law and interpretation of Scripture. Neither the authorities in Jerusalem nor Jesus were even close to the halls of power and influence.

This morning’s gospel lesson reveals that whether we realize it or not, the kind of kingdom we pray for when we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” never has been a kingdom of “command and control” of political and social and economic power and influence. It is a kingdom where the king is servant of all, where the shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, where the first are last and the greatest are slaves, where lives of repentance are lived, where forgiveness is freely offered, where the mighty are brought low and the lowly are lifted up, where the hungry are fed, strangers are welcomed, the sick are cared for, the imprisoned are visited, the outcasts are taken in and sinners are reconciled to God and to one another. Don’t look for all that to happen any time soon in the halls of influence and power. It’s not that kind of kingdom. Instead, look for it now as it happened then—and become a part of it now as others before us became a part of it then—wherever the voice of Christ the Good Shepherd is heard and followed, wherever Christ the Servant is accepted into hearts and emulated, not in command and control but in service and sacrifice, because that is the kind of kingdom it was and is and ever will be, world without end. Amen.

This material is Copyrighted © 2006 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.