Christ the King John 18:33-37 Revelation 1:4b-8

The last Sunday in the Church’s year is Christ the King, and as such concludes the cycle of Jesus first coming into the world as a baby and moving into his ministry and work of salvation that sees him enthroned as King of kings and Lord of lords. In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, we find him standing before Pilate. He has been handed over to Pilate by the chief priests, possibly on the hint of Jesus claiming to be king. In those days, more than now, a king was all-powerful. He (for now we focus on kings, not queens) had absolute power and ruled over people as he wished. Violence was often a means to get what he wanted. If he wasn’t on the throne through the family line, he would have got there by means of the sword. So when Pilate finds Jesus in front of him, he is wondering along those lines: either this very common looking man is deluded or he has a following that could upset the status quo with Herod as Rome’s puppet-king and threaten Pilate’s own authority. He asks Jesus: ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Jesus, as he does so often, answers with a question: ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ In other words, is this your own idea or not? It is actually an important question. If Pilate had known something about Jesus through his works, he might have come to the right conclusion: yes, Jesus is a king – if not like other kings of the world, at least a king of some sort. But Pilate is going only by his own experience of kings and doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know all the ins and outs of Jewish life. For, as Jesus also says, the Kingdom that Jesus is referring to is not from the world, even though it is for the world.

In the passage from Revelation, we find this confirmed, when the Apostle John writes about the second coming of Jesus Christ, ‘with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.’ John calls him, ‘the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth, […] who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.’ Standing in front of Pilate, Jesus points out that the nature of his kingdom is different, as it is not from this world. For, if it had been from this world, his followers would have been fighting to keep him from being handed over. His final words to Pilate are a statement about truth: ‘You say that I am a king. 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.’ Pilate, who sees things only through his worldly lens, only says, ‘What is truth?’ This is indeed also something that the disciples had to learn, through the resurrection. Truth is not made in a laboratory, or worked out through mathematics. It is a gift that Jesus alone brings into the world, as God’s living Word of life. Pilate only knows about political ‘truth’; the one that is forced on by the sword. But Jesus is the truth that sets people free through his death on their behalf. It is the truth of the meaning of the cross. The Truth is the person standing in front of Pilate. Nobody else can do what Jesus does: face the power of sin and evil, and destroy it. Grace and peace come from him. He alone can set us truly free. Us, Barabbas, the people of Israel, and Pilate. For Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Amen.