The Rev. Joseph Farnes
All Saints, Boise
Christ the King, Year B
“My kingdom is not from this world.”
Standing in front of Pilate, the governor, the emissary of the Emperor of Rome, Jesus stands a start contrast. Jesus is not surrounded by a battalion of loyal soldiers ready to subdue his enemies. Jesus is not swarmed by court officials wanting to curry favor with him. Jesus is not a king wearing glorious robes, or an oligarch with wealth beyond compare. Jesus is not aided and abetted by astute politicians and lobbyists who can get their way if they just bend Jesus’s ear.
In the Passion narrative as we would normally meditate on the holy significance of Christ’s death on the cross, we often miss this moment of confrontation. By simply standing there in the fullness of his person, Jesus is lifting up a mirror to Pilate. Pilate is toe-to-toe with this itinerant Jewish rabbi, a carpenter’s son, a preacher and healer and prophet whose words and deeds have upended this little backwater province that the Roman Empire had conquered. Pilate has legions of soldiers ready to strike down his opposition, anyone who upsets the “Peace of Rome.” Pilate has titles and power and honor. But, in the presence of Jesus Christ, all of that seems to recede into the background. The cosmos shrinks down to these two.
Pilate keeps clinging to the earthly models of power. He has the power. He has the authority. He has the say on whether this backwater bumpkin lives or dies.
But in the presence of Christ, those things seem to get stripped away. Pilate keeps grasping at them, but Pilate is only human. Just a human being. Only a human being. All that power and authority is not even his – delegated, for a time, as long as others grant him the power. Pilate, the powerful governor, is still only flesh and blood. The whole imperial order is upended once you recognize that it’s only a bunch of human beings vying for power, wealth, and control. It would be a laughable farce, if it didn’t have deadly consequences. Those who climb the ladder may find their aspirations ended at the sharp end of a dagger – and those crushed at the bottom too often fantasize about climbing the ladder themselves instead of getting rid of the thing!
Christ the King is not robed in majesty and glory in emulation of emperors and senators and governors. What need does the Alpha and the Omega have of custom-made suits, gold, silk and crowns? Jesus Christ, the Eternal Word made flesh, the Son of God and God the Son, through whom all things were made, what need does he have of earthly forms of power?
And, almost as important, why would anyone who claims to follow Christ lust after power like Pilate? Why would Peter, James, John, Mary Magdalene, Martha, why would any of them clamor for robes like the emperor’s, covet a crown like a medieval king, fantasize about getting their way imposed on others at the end of a sword or a gun?
Ever since the Roman Emperor Constantine had his “conversion” experience, we Christians have been befuddled on what to do with power. As Christianity suddenly went from persecuted minority to tolerated communities to the Religion of the Empire, we Christians have been split apart on what to do. Some bishops like John Chrysostom and Gregory were quick to call out the rich and powerful for ignoring the needs of the people, and Gregory sold off lands the Roman Church had acquired in order to feed the poor and refugees who had come to Rome in the midst of wars and upheaval – Gregory did not wait for the new imperial court at Byzantium to do anything because he saw the need in front of him. Other bishops, however, were happy to wear their robes and take up disputations in the new imperial court at Byzantium to gain favor with the Emperor – they knew on what side their bread would be buttered. For much of European history, bishops were often sitting at the king’s right hand – close to power. Still today, the bishops of the Church of England are formally appointed by the crown. The next Archbishop of Canterbury will be decided by King Charles III.
In the Protestant Reformation, the relationship between Christianity and politics exploded. In Geneva, Switzerland, John Calvin and the Reformed tradition established theocratic governance – the church elders were also the political leaders of the town. This model would be replicated in the early Massachusetts Bay colony; the Puritans and pilgrims wanted their government free of any religion but their own, and so their church elders were in charge. Their new colony in North America was to be a shining city on a hill – free of anything that didn’t accord with their theology. Fun fact: the Congregationalist Church that the pilgrims founded was the official church of Massachusetts until 1833. This view that Christianity must be commingled with politics and morality must be legislated for all is a recurring theme in America, it seems.
German Protestant reformer Martin Luther in the 1500s advocated a different view of Christian politics. He leaned more strongly on the idea that church should just be focused on spiritual matters, and the state on earthly ones. It seems like a nice, neat tidy division between church and state, one that would meet with polite approval. But we recall that Martin Luther was aghast when German peasants began to revolt because of oppression at the hands of their lords – and Martin Luther told the peasants that they deserved to die for stepping out of line, and he would not raise a hand to stop the German lords from massacring them. In the 20th century, martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr, and Oscar Romero proved that the social-political order doesn’t get a free pass to do whatever it wants because it has earthly power, and that the church’s spiritual authority cannot be silent when people are harmed out of some desire to remain “polite” and “quiet” and “spiritual.”
So, then, what do we as Christians do? If we sit at the emperor’s right hand, we might lose the call to love and care for all as we sit in nice palaces. If we seize the power, then we will be corrupted and our holy vision will become a nightmare. And if we abdicate all power to the world, much harm can be done in the name of “law and order” – and our polite silence will condemn us.
So, what do we do? No concise political theology from me. I’m not a systematic thinker like that. But I see three things we must always hold onto: Truth, Humanity, and Love.
Truth: Jesus in his confrontation with Pilate proclaims that he was here to speak the truth. Our world needs it. And we need to be ready to hear it twice as deeply as we are to speak it. In the morass that is American politics, it is far too easy to dispense with truth in order to feel comfortable with our own vision of things, the way “our” side sees it. Be fearless for truth. And be discerning – we need to find the truth, not what we wish to be true. We must be ready to be prophets of God, speaking truth and listening always for God. Read the prophets of the Old Testament.
Humanity: Jesus in his confrontation with Pilate stands there as a human being with a human being. Jesus has taken on the fullness of our humanity, and here he is with Pilate, another human being. Could you be in a room with your enemy, and still see their humanity? I don’t mean be silent and pretend everything is all right – Jesus was deliberate in his words with Pilate, but not polite! And remember – Pilate had the power to harm Jesus, and that is exactly what Pilate did. An enemy might not recognize my humanity at all – but I will recognize their humanity, I will honor my own humanity, and this makes all the difference. Christ shares in our suffering and death, and we share in his resurrection.
Love: Of course that’s part of it. It has to be. Love is supposed to be something Christians are exemplars of, and yet that’s not been the case for centuries. As St Paul says, “If I do not have love, I am nothing.” As Jesus in the Gospel of John says: “Love one another as I have loved you.” As the other Gospels say: “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” Love is absolutely part of it. If we are so naïve or cynical as to think that love is irrelevant to politics and economics and culture and all these earthly things, then why would we claim to follow Jesus Christ the Lord, the Savior – to use the words from the book of Revelation today, the one “who loves us and freed us from our sins with his blood”? Jesus Christ the King and Lord of all creation, Jesus Christ is Love. If we are to follow him, we must follow him completely with all our hearts and all our lives. Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world. It is divine – it is love – it is the Kingdom as creation was meant to be, is called to become, and will by his grace one day be. Amen.