The King of the Jews
A Sermon by the Reverend Dr. Bob Prichard for the Feast of Christ the King (B), November 21, 2021.
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14: Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8: John 18:33-37
From the Gospel: Pilate . . . summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
This Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King, the newest celebration of our Lord on the calendar of Western liturgical churches. It was added to the calendar of the Roman Catholic Church by Pius XI in 1925 (Quas Primas, December 11, 1925), and moved to its current date in 1969. The festival was included in the ecumenical Revised Common Lectionary of 1992, and partially adopted by the Episcopal Church when it accepted the Revised Common Lectionary in 2006: The feast appears in the listing of Sunday lessons in the back of prayer books printed after 2006 but not in the calendar or the list of Titles of Seasons, Sundays, and Major Holy Days found in the front of the prayer book. But that is not the only confusing thing about the festival.
I have been doing more recreational reading than usual in the past year, no doubt due to the limits that COVID 19 has placed on other activities. In this past week, I made an unaccustomed reading error: I read an entire novel, without knowing that I had read it soon after its publication in 2000. I knew the author, and I knew the characters who had appeared in several earlier novels. It was the absence of a key event in the early part of the book that was the cause of my confusion. The event came in the college days of the lead character, and I—converting the narrative to chronological order in my memory—assumed that its absence in the first 4/5th of the book indicated that I was reading a volume in which the author relied on the reader’s memory of an earlier work. But then I found that event as a flashback in the 13th of the book’s 15 chapters.
I mention this, because this jumping back and forth in chronological order is a characteristic of the lessons for the day of Christ the King. The Old Testament lesson and Epistle are visions of the reign of Christ at the End of Time, but the gospel lesson is flashback from Jesus’ arrest and condemnation before Pontius Pilate rather than a parallel apocalyptic passage about Jesus’ Second Coming (like the lesson that we will have next week for Advent 1, Year C: Luke 21:25-36). It is confusing, at least to anyone who likes to think about things in order.
We have that order on most Sundays. In general, the gospel lessons flow in chronological order from late Advent to Pentecost, moving from the events leading up to and following Christ’s birth, to his testing in the wilderness, to his public ministry, to his arrest and crucifixion, to his death, resurrection, ascension, to the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. For most of the remainder of the Church year we go back and consider his teaching and ministry in greater detail. In late Pentecost and early Advent, however, we are all over the map. We have, I think, a glimpse of the structure of Sundays before the fourth century, when the current chronological arrangement of lesson became the norm. Prior to point—at least accounting to 20th century Anglican liturgical scholar Gregory Dix—every Sunday was a celebration of the whole sweep of the narrative of salvation from creation to Christ’s Second Coming and his eternal reign. When confronted by that broad narrative some us find our imaginations stretched as we attempt to grasp it all.
Pilate . . . summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Today’s version of the encounter of Jesus with the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate comes from the Gospel of John. In the other three gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke--the exchange between Pilate and Jesus is terse. Pilate asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?” and Jesus answered, “You say so,” and then remains silent to all other questions from Pilate. Jesus is a man of mystery before Pilate.
In John, from which we heard today, the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate is much longer, a kind of verbal chess game, in which the two characters explore of the nature of kingship and of the kingdoms of the earth. We have heard only a portion of it today.
In both cases—the first three Gospels and John—the authors are reasoning backwards from Pilate’s decision to post the sign “King of the Jews” on the cross; they are reconstructing an examination for which no Christian witnesses would have been present.
The encounter begins in John in the same way as the other gospels, with Pilate’s question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus responds in John’s Gospel with a question of his own, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate’s rejoinder is, “I am not a Jew, am I?”
I take it Luke’s understanding is this: Jesus wants to know what to make of Pilate’s use of the term, “King of the Jews.” What becomes clear by Pilate’s answer is that he as a Roman governor is not all that impressed by the Jewish nation and does think that claiming to be its head is particularly important. His reaction would be similar to the way that a governor of Governor of Virginia might respond to hearing that someone claimed to be the Countess of Clarendon or the Baron of Ballston. The Arlington County Board might be concerned, but for the Governor it would just be an idle curiosity.
But Pilate presses on, “Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” The claim to kingship, if Jesus was in fact making it, does not mean much to him, but he is concerned with concrete actions. What precisely have you done, he asks Jesus, to get in your present predicament?
And then Jesus changes the whole terms of the debate. “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were . . ., my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over . . . . But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” The scope of the debate has changed. Jesus’ kingship is not just over the people of Judea, or the entire known world, it is cosmic in scale.
Pilate simply did not understand, and asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “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.” Jesus is doubling down on his cosmic claim; he is one who came from outside of creation as we know it.
I don’t entirely agree with the original rationale for establishing this festival of Christ the King, which had at least something to do with preserving a tie to the monarchs of Europe, which were giving way at the time to more representative forms of government. Pius XI did hit the nail on the head, however, in the first paragraph of his authorizing encyclical, when he said it was becoming increasingly common for many to “thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics.”
The Anglican theologian F. D. Maurice had made a related argument 90 year earlier in his The Kingdom of Christ (1837), though with different political connotations. He argued that in the incarnation Jesus came not only into a religious community, but into a system of politics, economics, and justice. Jesus, Maurice suggested, began the transformation of them all, a work that members of his kingdom should continue. Both he and Pius agreed on a central point—Jesus Christ is Lord over all, and no part of human personal or political life is outside his reign.
Sometimes it is the small things that bring us that realization. I was convinced of that by the pastor of the Zion Baptist Church, on Josephine Street in Berryville, Virginia. I was the rector of the Episcopal Parish in town, and clergy occasionally supported each other by inviting guest preachers and by attending events at one another’s congregations. In the midst of his sermon, the pastor used an illustration about prayer. He said that when taking his family to dine at a fast food restaurant he had been omitting a blessing, but he came to believe that if Christ was Lord, he should not be ignored just because he was in a restaurant. I was convicted at that point, because I had been doing precisely the same thing—acknowledging Jesus at the family dinner table but leaving him at home when I ate out. So we began to pray over French fries and burgers at McDonald’s.
If Jesus is truly our Lord, he belongs in the room when we encounter a neighbor in need, when we enter the polling place or the board room, balance our check books, or enter the work place. We need to acknowledge Christ’s Lordship, not in an ostentatious way—for Jesus has something to say about that—but as a fixed part of our lives.
Pilate . . . summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”