John 18:33-37
Although it might seem like forever-ago, it’s been just a few weeks since we had a very contentious midterm election in this country. It dominated the news for weeks beforehand, and even after. Many Americans needed to take anti-anxiety meds or practice their yoga breathing just to get through it – especially on election night while we watched the odds-makers continually revising their predictions about who would win.
Mid-term elections have become more like presidential year elections, in that they have taken on a national tone. People don’t just care about their local and state representatives – they care deeply about everyone else’s representatives. People make donations to high profile candidates in states far away from their own, all because governing this country has become, for a great many of us, a cosmic showdown between the forces of good and evil. Our guys are good, while the opponents of our guys are evil.
And this year there are lots of people giving advice on how to talk to your relatives at the thanksgiving feast. Because it has become a given that some of the people in your family are on the side of evil. And, horror of horrors, you might have to sit across the table from and pass the gravy to the enemies of all that is good and right and pure.
Politics today is a zero-sum game, and if your enemy wins that means you lose. Just the fact that we have begun using the word enemy when we refer to our opponents speaks volumes about how we view political power.
I hope that someday soon we will pass through this particular phase of our political life and move toward something more civil and compassionate. It will be interesting to see how history deals with this phenomenon. And I imagine that there will probably be more than one view. History is usually written from some personal perspective.
I am thinking about this as I consider the historical perspective of the gospel we read today.
I want to be careful of talking about history and gospel in the same sentence, because most biblical scholars would tell you the gospels are not history. The gospel writers did not intend to give us a historical account of first century Palestine. They wanted to give us the good news, that’s all. And so whatever history we glean from it, we need to ask how it serves the agenda, the purpose, of the gospel.
The character of Pontius Pilate has been a fascination to Christians throughout the life of the Church. He played a very important role in the gospel, and because of that he has been elevated, historically, to an outsized role.
In some Christian accounts Pilate has been nearly elevated to sainthood because he was the instrument of the death that led to the world’s salvation. I think that’s a little twisted, but that is the logic, nonetheless. There are others who do not go that far, but they want to impose certain sympathetic qualities on him that flesh out the story in a pleasing way. They give him a conscience. They make him doubt the goodness of what he is being asked to do by the Jewish authorities.
In fact, the gospel of Matthew tells a story in which Pilate has grave reservations about crucifying Jesus. His wife begs him not to do it because of a terrible dream she had. Pilate then turns to the Jewish crowd and asks them to make the decision for him. He asks them more than once, wanting them to change their answer, but they persist in wanting Jesus killed. Finally, Pilate washes his hands to symbolize his innocence and tells the crowd his death is their responsibility, which they gladly accept.
Yet this is in all likelihood a very misleading portrayal of Pilate – not to mention the absurd prejudice against Jews. By most historical accounts, Pilate was the worst, most cutthroat governor Jerusalem ever had. He was ruthless, cruel, heartless. By any accounts outside the gospels, he had no qualms about killing Jews. None whatsoever.
In a world where there are all kinds of power, Pilate liked the violent kind. He was a very practical man, who would have had little patience for philosophical discussions. He would rather cut straight to the point: are you a problem for me? If so, I will get rid of you. If not, stop wasting my time.
We see shades of this in John’s account of how Pilate deals with Jesus. It all starts with the Jewish Priests. They feel Jesus is a threat to the well-being and peace of Jerusalem. And Caiaphas, the Chief Priest, says, “It is better for one person to die for the people.” So they arrest Jesus and try to trick him into self-incrimination. But you know how that usually goes. Apparently, they lose patience with him and take him over to Pilate’s headquarters. They want the Roman Governor to deal with him, because he is the one with the power of crucifixion.
So Pilate takes Jesus inside with him and attempts to dispose of this problem expeditiously. “Are you the king of the Jews?” Do you call yourself a king? Do I have a reason to execute you?
Jesus wants to know who is asking this question – is he asking on behalf of the Jewish authorities or Rome? Because the answer depends on that. To the Jews, who would understand the kingship of God and the messianic promise, he might say one thing. To Rome, who only understands other kings as a challenge to the authority of the Empire, the answer would be different.
Pilate is like, just cut the bull. I don’t care about your internal disputes, but your people handed you over to me so I need to deal with you. Tell me, what have you done?
We have here what we might call a clash of empires. The distance between Jesus and Pilate is so enormous; they are speaking on entirely different planes, they understand the world and power in completely different ways. Jesus and Pilate each have power, but their powers are entirely different in terms of where they come from, what they look like, and how they impact the world.
Jesus responds to Pilate, finally, saying that his kingdom is not from this world. And Pilate lights up, “Ah, so you do call yourself a king then!” Jesus replies, “You say that I am a king.” That’s your word. It is the language of people like Pilate who see the world as a zero-sum game.
For Pilate and those like him, power only comes in one form – power is force. Power is winning. If I win you lose. If you win that means I lose, so I cannot let you win. In Pilate’s world, everyone who is not supporting him must lose.
Pilate will never understand the power of Jesus Christ.
Today is The Reign of Christ Sunday. We used to call it Christ the King Sunday, but it was renamed because we’re not that comfortable using the language of kings and kingdoms – it confuses us a bit. Today we are asked to reflect on power – as we understand it in this world, as we are taught about it through our faith – and what kinds of power we will choose to embrace in our lives.
Part of it hinges on how we interpret Jesus’ words when he says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.”
Some Christians choose to hear this as, “My kingdom has nothing to do with this world.” They choose to compartmentalize their faith, guarding it from the secular world where “real-life” decisions are made in a practical and efficient way. To put Christ in a corner and live the rest of their lives like Pilate.
Other Christians choose to hear this as, “My kingdom has come from somewhere else in order to take over this world,” overruling the powers that be. So, therefore, it is their duty to put people in power who will rule according to what they see as God’s law. They might even, in fact, lift up rulers who look a lot like Pilate as long as they say the right things and pass their litmus tests.
Even though these two positions appear to be opposite, they can end up being a lot alike. In both cases, Christians end up surrendering to the powers of this world, the power of empire. The power of Pilate.
It goes back to the tendency we have to divide the world up into good guys and bad guys. My guys and the other guys. White hats and black hats. But the world isn’t like that.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote, “the line separating good and evil does not pass through states or classes or political parties, but right through every human heart.”
Jesus tries to tell Pilate that his power – his kingdom, if you will – is truth. Truth. And I can hear Pilate snorting with disdain as he replies, “What is truth?” Pilate is not a man who has time for truth. Pilate is not a man who sees any value in truth, whatever that is. Therefore, Pilate does not recognize the power that Jesus holds within him.
I wonder. Will we recognize it?
The power of Christ is the power of truth, and it rules over all things. It is the journey of a lifetime to seek it. It ultimately will rule over this world – but not yet. It may be entrusted to the hands of individuals at times, but men and women will never be the repositories of truth. That lies solely in the domain of God.
Although Christ’s power came from somewhere outside of this world, there is not an inch of this world that is not claimed by him. All life on earth is made to serve him and glorify him. May we be guided by this truth.
May you live always in obedience to Christ, seeking his truth in every facet of your life,
May you embrace the power of this truth, and recognize falsehood, even when it is spoken by the “good guys,”
May you speak the truth. What is truth? Life and love.
