A Sermon based on John 18: 33-37
Christ the King Sunday, Year B
November 22, 2009
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
Childhood can be filled all kinds of mysteries and riddles to be solved. The challenge to figure out the truth is part of the wonder of it. I’ll never forget how one day I solved one of those wonders. Like most children, I used to believe that Christmas fell out of the sky. One night I found it under the bed in our guest room. Christmas was altogether different after that. I solved the mystery but at the same time discovered another one, just like that.
Another amazing wonder of my childhood was visiting relatives on Sunday afternoon. On some occasions we took my Grandmother to visit her sister Bessie in nearby Davie County. At that time, my Aunt Bessie was supposed to be the most “religious” devout woman in our extended family. She was said to have read the Bible through at last 7 times and she did not believe that humans had landed on the moon. She didn’t like Hollywood either and she believed that somebody just made the “moon landing up” in a Hollywood studio.
As a child who especially liked Astronomy and space travel, I didn’t pay much attention to Aunt Bessie’s opinions about the world, but I really did like the fact that, although she had indoor plumbing, she still had an open well at her house. Each time we visited, my Father and I would go outside to draw up a bucket out of that deep, dark chasm and drink some of the best tasting water in the world. “Can I do it, Can I do it?” I remember asking my Dad. He let me. Afterword, I wanted to linger and just glare into the depths and wonder, but that wasn’t allowed for long. The forbidden nature of it made everything even more mysterious—even more mysterious than Aunt Bessie herself.
I’m sure children today experience their own special kinds of wonders and mysteries that make life exciting and awe-filled. One generation of children was the first to peer straight into wonder of automobiles, appliances and televisions. Today’s generation is just as enamored by computers, mobile phones and video games. Even now, as we speak, somebody who is still a child at heart may be just as thrilled to have just learned how to “tweet!” But today, I want us to look straight into another wonder and mystery—an even more ancient one. It can become just as thought provoking and “deep” as it was the very first time the truth came to us, face to face. We encounter the depth of this mystery during one of the darkest moments of human history. Right before the crowd yelled “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!, we come across this mysterious, never-ending question: “What is truth?” But before we get to this big question, let’s look at the first question the governor put to Jesus.
The question Pilate was all “fired-up” about is a question that still concerns most: Politics. The media picks up our biggest concerns by constantly ranting over opinion-polls or raving over the possible political fallout from a newly released article or book. When you are on top of your world, like Pilate was, and you want to stay on top of it, like Pilate definitely did, then you’re seldom looking for truth for truth’s sake. What consumes your daily life is constantly answering the unending political questions of the day to find some way to stay on top of life.”
“Are you the king of the Jews?” This is what Pilate asks Jesus, but Jesus knows what Pilate is really after. Jesus does not answer Pilate directly but puts the question back: “Are you asking this for yourself, or did somebody else put you up to this?” Now, we get a much clearer picture of what’s happening. Pilate does not really want to know Jesus. He only wants know who Jesus is so that he can remain on top of his own world. There’s a big difference between seeking the truth for the sake of the truth and working the truth for our own angles and advantages.
All of us in life are “truth seekers” of some art, aren’t we? Many people, like Pilate seek the truth, not for the sake of finding or knowing it, but they seek the truth to confirm what they think they already know, or to affirm only what they want to know. The truth Pilate wanted from Jesus was just enough truth to help him keep his own world secure, at least for the moment, and hold everything together just like it was.
It’s not really a wrong reason to look for Jesus, is it? We all live in a world that has the most amazing, mysterious tendency to fall apart. No matter how much power and control we think we have. No matter how much money we can accumulate. No matter how well we try to insure, insulate or isolate ourselves from the possibilities of falling off the top we worked so hard to climb up on, we know the risks are great and that some day and in some way, falling off is inevitable. Even our words own human words testify against us: “All good things, must come to an end.” “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the Kings Horses and All the Kings men, couldn’t put Humpty together again.” Pilate knew this probability as well as anybody. When your life has a view from the top, it is even scarier what you might see. This is why the only thing truth Pilate wants is the kind of truth that can keep him safe right where he is.
And guess what? It is really amazing that the Jesus Pilate hopes to find the very Jesus he does find. As strange as it might seem, Pilate found exactly the Jesus he was hoping for! Whew! Breathe a sigh of relief! For Pilate, at least in this moment, the tension lessens. Jesus is not who they said he was. Pilate had heard that Jesus was a kind of “King” that was turning things upside down. Pilate heard that Jesus was stirring up all kinds of trouble. Pilate heard that Jesus wanted to be a king who would put demands on people, even asking them to bow down to his own kingdom alone. Amazingly, Pilate discovers that the Jesus he meets is really not much of a threat at all : “My Kingdom is not of this world? If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom is not from here.”
Aren’t you a little amazed too? I find it very interesting that Jesus tells Pilate exactly what Pilate wants to hear. Jesus gives Pilate ever reason in this world to let him go. Since Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, since Pilate is only concerned about is keeping things they way they are, then Jesus doesn’t really matter that much to him. Pilate finally “finds no fault” in Jesus for the exact same reason many people today don’t find any fault or may I say, any threat in Jesus. Since Jesus hasn’t come to disrupt anything in our lives, Jesus really doesn’t matter. It’s not because Pilate sees Jesus as the sinless son of God, but because Pilate has no real interest in the truth Jesus brings, that he doesn’t see Jesus as any real threat to anybody. Jesus is safe enough to let go. As Pilate sees him, this "safe", "other-worldly" Jesus wouldn’t even hurt a fly.
A Jesus who doesn’t demand anything from us, won’t hurt us much either. A Jesus who will let us stay in and on top of our own worlds just like we have them, doesn’t really matter that much to us, does he? This is the very kind of Jesus many might like, isn't it? And the truth is, most people do like this of kind of safe-sounding, undemanding Jesus, who simply stands before us and gives us what we want and tells us what we want to hear. We like the Jesus who has his mind on a different world altogether. Since Jesus lets us go on with our world without making any changes to our lives, we can let him go too, just like Pilate did. Since his kingdom is “not of this world,” we think he will leave the kingdom we build for ourselves alone.
And Jesus will leave us alone, if we want him too. Pilate knows this too. When you know the nice, tidy, unthreatening, comforting Jesus who lets you keep your own world and do with it what you want, without any demands, any commands, any sacrifices or any risks, the only catch is this one thing: the world you now have and the kingdom you now hold on to is the only world the only world and only kingdom you will know. You see, when we let the “nice and neat”, undemanding Jesus go, and when we, like Pilate, when we wash our hands of having anything else to do with him or for him, and when we think he demands nothing from us and he only does what we want for us, the one thing we can be sure of is that the only world we’ll ever have is the world we will we now have and the world we will one day lose.
Several years ago, when I was working hard as a missionary behind the former Berlin Wall, a newspaper report sought me out to do an article for the Berlin Morning News. He wanted to right about why some American would leave the comfort of America and come to the unsettled, insecure world of eastern Europe to live and work.
One day, after we spend several hours talking about life, taking photos, and interviewing me, and after he told me that even after communism had fallen in Europe, he was still a believer in communism, he also volunteered to tell me that “since he had his own life in his own way, he was sure that he didn’t need God.” When I heard that what came to my mind was only one further question and I asked him. “I understand that you can live without God, but can you die without God? After a period of silent reflection, he much less assuredly stammered, “I think I can.”
This is the “catchy part” of the truth we face in life. We can find all kinds of different truths “other truths” and purposes to go after with our lives. But the one question that keeps confronting, coming after, and even hounding us is this: What truth will we die for and what world will we die toward? When the day comes that we realize that all the kingdoms of this world (even our own) are going and that only Jesus and his kingdom is left still coming, then Jesus starts to matter. Jesus doesn’t matter all that much, if we are using him in to keep things just as they are or only as we want them. But when we realize that Jesus is a threat to what want only for ourselves; or when we realize this world is not as stable as we thought it was and we find ourselves only left with the hope and dream for another world out there because this one has fallen so much apart---, then Jesus looks very, very different.
Learn this one thing from Pilate’s mishandling of the Jesus question: Jesus isn't a deal maker for my life, he's a deal breaker. I can’t come to Jesus to make a deal with him. That's what the rich, young ruler learned (Luke 18: 18ff.). That kind of Jesus doesn’t matter. Only the Jesus I must fall down before and surrender to matters, or Jesus doesn’t matter at all. Only when I let Jesus be my king, my lord, my master, my ruler and my commander, and only when I give Jesus all my life, does Jesus make any real difference.
I can’t say what kind of Jesus you’ve thought you were making a deal with. But I can tell you, even warn you from Pilate’s own experience with truth, that real life and truth is not some kind of game where you get to play “let’s make a deal.” Only what you give all your heart to really matters. And even what you give your heart to will not finally matter, unless what you give your heart to is the truth. If Jesus is simply a Jesus we can easily dismiss when we want to, avoid and forget so we can get on with our lives as we want them, then this Jesus really doesn’t matter, because he’s just “our” Jesus. But if the Jesus who stands before us is the Jesus we have to bow to, who demands that we give him everything, this is the Jesus who truly matters because we really do make him our king.
In this world that is running out of kings really fast and in this world that is also running out of kingdoms still to come, Jesus is the only King that matters. Only the King we will not let go of is the King who does not let go of us. And only the Jesus who is king when our world goes is the hope that something is still to come. Is this kind of King Jesus on your throne ruling your life, or is the Jesus you have, a Jesus you can let go of because he hasn’t made any real difference nor been any real danger to your world as it is? Is Jesus really a King for you or just a nice friend to have a long? It does matter which Jesus you trust. One day when “all the kingdoms of this world, become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ” the gospel says “He shall reign forever and ever.” And he will reign forever with or without you. For you see, in the final end, the truth is that you won’t matter, but he will. It makes all the difference in eternity how you see Jesus now. If he doesn’t matter, then in the grand scheme of things, who are any of us to matter? But if he does matter, and he matters enough to challenge and change everything about you and you must bow down to him, then you and everything else matters. And that’s truth---the whole gospel truth. Amen.
© 2009 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
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