Readings: Revelation 1:4b-5a, 7-8; John 18:33-38a
Just as some of us were surprised last Sunday by being asked to sing an Easter Day hymn in November, we might be surprised again today to hear a Gospel reading focussing on Jesus’ trial before his crucifixion. (Some of you might be wondering whether your aging minister is losing the plot ... has she forgotten the calendar is racing towards December? Has she not heard the Christmas music playing in the Meridian; has she not seen Christmas decorations going up around the city? Hasn’t she been aware of shops counting days down towards Christmas for the last two months? Hasn’t she seen how Easter eggs and bunnies have been replaced with chocolate elves and santas!)
Of course, some of you won’t have been surprised – either last week or this. Some of us have become familiar with the long established patterns of liturgy within the church. We know that at the heart of every Sunday service is an Easter celebration of hope and love overcoming brokenness and vulnerability. We know that on this last Sunday before Advent, Jesus’ reign as King is celebrated. We know the lectionary, which sets down the readings for each Sunday, offers a window into this “Reign of Christ” Sunday ...and the choice of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus as King is most appropriate.
This surprise we may (or may not) have had, provides a useful reminder of the dissonance which rings through our worship today – and most Sundays. The Reign of Christ Sunday is a day of unsettling paradox. This is a day to remind us that just when we think we have our image of Jesus clear, settled and right, it becomes disturbed, uncomfortable and challenging.
“Delores Williams, wise theologian and teacher ... grew up in the South[ern States of America]. [She] remembers Sunday morning [worship] when the minister shouted out: “Who is Jesus?” The choir responded in voices loud and strong: “King of kings and Lord Almighty!” Then, little Miss Huff, in a voice so fragile and soft you could hardly hear, would sing her own answer, “Poor little Mary’s boy.” Back and forth they sang – KING OF KINGS…Poor little Mary’s boy. Delores said, “It was the Black church doing theology.” The answer to the question: Who is Jesus? Cannot be “King of Kings” without seeing “poor little Mary’s boy.”
In her reflection for this Sunday, Barbara Lundblad[1] picks up on the dissonance in these two songs (not unlike the many dissonances we have experienced in our music this morning with images of majestic king intermingling with those of the One who transforms life through love, non-violence and service.) “The images clash” writes Lundblad. “One is big and powerful, the other small and poor. Christ the King Sunday is a dissonant day. Some congregations have changed the name to Reign of Christ Sunday to avoid the male image of “king.” But that doesn’t make much difference if we forget that Jesus is “poor little Mary’s boy.””
Those of us, brought up on the old Apostles Creed, will remember how the ancient church placed Mary and Pilate alongside each other – “almost in the same breath”: ‘I believe in ... Jesus, born of Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate.’ Perhaps this juxtaposition might help as we consider this theme of Christ as King, using John, the Gospel writer’s rich theological text as our window and framework. Standing with John, on the other side of Easter, we contemplate this one we call King of Kings, this one whom we claim has “changed the world’s direction – and can change the human heart.”[2]
John’s description of Jesus’ trial before Pilate is much richer and more developed than Matthew, Mark and Luke’s portrayals. John provides a full stage drama with seven scenes shaped around Pilate moving in and out of his headquarters as he deals with a political nightmare – running back and forth from inside the Beehive to outside into the media scrum in the corridors – from interrogation to appeasement. In Scene 1, religious leaders and political leaders debate: under whose jurisdiction will Jesus be tried. In Scene 2, this morning’s reading, Pilate has drawn the short straw, and so his interrogation commences. For Pilate, Jesus’ kingship is political – he’s dealing with a possible act of treason against the power of Rome. “He needs to know who this Jesus is, because “king” is a political term, and Pilate is a political person...“Are you the king of the Jews?” If so, you’re guilty of treason because the emperor in Rome is the king of everyone everywhere, [whether you like it or not – and that includes all of you] Jews, [including you Jesus].”
Already handcuffed and beaten, handed over as a criminal to the state by his own religious leaders who will soon shout loyally “We have no king but the emperor!” this man, whom Christians declare is King, seems more closely allied to a terrorist than a ruler. “Poor little Mary’s boy”– the Mary whose song is about bringing the powerful down from their thrones, lifting up the lowly, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty. (Luke 1:52-53) The dissonance resounds through the ages.
For Gospel writer, John, Jesus’ kingship is a theological category that redefines the world’s understanding of power. “So you are a king?” asks Pilate. “You say I’m a king,” Jesus replies. “I was born for this, and for this I came into the world, to show the truth.”
And we, like Pilate may well ask: What is truth – “a question left hanging in the air.”
“Was [Pilate] being sarcastic or was he searching for answers nobody else had given him? The answer [confounds, in being neither] philosophical proof nor creedal proposition. Truth was the person standing in silence before Pilate.
[Perhaps unsurprisingly], John’s gospel began with claims that shocked the philosophers. “In the beginning was the Word,” [this Gospel begins], “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The philosophers nodded their heads and pulled their chairs closer to listen. They knew this Word. It was logos in Greek. This was the cosmic, eternal prime-mover, beyond time and space. This was logic they could understand and affirm [....] but they weren’t prepared for the next part: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…full of grace and truth” (John 1: 14).
“No, that couldn’t be! Eternal Word clashed with earthly flesh. [The jarring] dissonance [found] in the beginning [features again near the end of the Gospel].The truth is a person, the Word made flesh. This Word [this Source of all that is,] living, dwelling with us – literally, “pitching his tent” among people of earth.”
And just as those philosophers are stopped in their tracks, so might we be as we consider what it means to follow this paradoxical king with his challenging, alternative approach to life. Our desire to be top dog, our tendency to seek revenge, our refusal to offer forgiveness, our sense of entitlement, all sit much more easily with the kind of king we would like Jesus to be – a king made in our image. King of Kings and Lord of Lords – that’s much easier to affirm – Hallelujah!
Theologian Carter Heywood reminds us that God is likely to meet us often in images [with which we are not so comfortable – images] associated with children, poor women, women [of colour], lesbian women, battered women, bleeding women.... Dark images. Like Mary's poor little boy,” Carter writes, “God is seldom welcome in reputable places. The story is not a nice one. Good theology is not respectable.[3]
Today, Jesus the king, poor little Mary’s boy, is found offering shelter to victims of violence and abuse – he’s there in women’s refuges, binding up the broken hearted. Today, he has pitched his tent with the many people of Haiti who nearly three years after the devastating earthquake still do not have homes in which to live. Jesus the king, stands handcuffed before the Syrian authorities, declared a terrorist in his home county. Jesus the king is the baby born and bombed in Gaza and Jerusalem.
If we are truly to be his disciples, we will go into these places with him ... with our prayers, with our wealth, with our politics, and with the choices we make in our daily lives, pitching our tents with the strange and counter-cultural king...even – and especially – as we end this liturgical year and commence our journey towards Christmas – a journey that to be authentic must not – and cannot – lose sight of the Easter story with all its dissonance – its pain and its joy and, at the heart of which, is a poor little Mary’s boy- king whose extraordinary ways transform the world.
[1] This sermon quotes from and relies on the ideas in A Different Kind of King: John 18:33-37 Barbara K. Lundblad http://odysseynetworks.org/news/onscripture-the-bible-john-18-33-37
[2] Shirley Murray “Christ has changed the world’s direction” Hope is our Song NZHBT
[3] Carter Heyward “The power of God-with-us” http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=440
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