John 18:33-37 (NRSV)
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him,
‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask
this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I?
Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you
done?’ 36Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom
is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would
be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my
kingdom is not from here.’ 37Pilate 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.’
The Gospel
reading moves back to John as today Sunday is the feast of Christ the King, the
Sunday before Advent. Pilate asks Jesus if he is the king of the Jews. Pilate
seems perplexed – what is the issue? In verse 35 he explains: “Your nation and
the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Well, in the
eyes of the law, Jesus had done nothing wrong. Jesus makes the case very
clearly that there is nothing for the temporal powers to be worried about, as
if he were indeed wanting to become a political ruler, he had amassed enough
support. This is evident in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem and he was also
able to get away with the outrageous cleansing of the Temple. Jesus said: ‘… If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be
fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my
kingdom is not from here.’
Jesus
was wanting to do something far more radical; his kingdom deals with the
essence of who people are. His kingdom does not require armies and taxes to
support them – just transformed lives. I am fascinated by the emphasis on
‘truth’ and find it surprising that the compilers of the Lectionary end the
passage at verse 37, as the key statement for me in this passage is verse 38
where Pilate asks Jesus: “What is truth?” But before I go there, let us
reflect, briefly, on the whole issue of government. Here J C Ryle has some
interesting observations.
Ryle
suggests that Jesus knew that ‘… the
prosperity of kingdoms is wholly dependent on the blessing of God, and that
kings are as much bound to encourage righteousness and godliness, as to punish
unrighteousness and immorality …’
It
is a joy for me to live in a free society where religious freedom is at the
core of what we stand for. I remember when I first arrived, the joy that was
mine to be free to be truly me. Britain has prospered, when the Gospel was
indeed not just tolerated, but also encouraged. We have the most marvellous
health system in the world and this is because of Christian insistence that unless
we do this and help people at their point of need, we could be guilty of
murder; if we do not have a welfare system that pays pensions, then we do not
honour our fathers and our mothers. There was a time when Christian morality
was key, and we became one of the great national powers. Ryle continues:
… no Government can expect to prosper which
refuses to recognise religion, which deals with its subjects as if they had no
souls, and cares not whether they serve God …
And
the reason is almost what my students would call a ‘no brainer’. Ryle puts it
this way:
The kingdom where there is most industry,
temperance, truthfulness, and honesty, will always be the most prosperous of
kingdoms.
I
am not one for prosperity gospels and the like, but I do believe that we are in
the state we are in partly because our society has abandoned the Gospel. Ryle
was writing in the height of the 19th century Evangelical Revival –
when British society flourished.
To
believe is to do, to commit, to work things out in practice.
It would appear that Pilate did not want to condemn Jesus,
because he knew he was innocent. Barclay suggests that Pilate was ‘… caught in
the mesh of his own past …’ As he had before, Pilate tried to put the
responsibility onto someone else – the Jews in this instance. He tried to do
what no one can do – and that is - evade dealing with Jesus. No one else can
deal with Jesus; we must deal with him ourselves. There is no escape from a
personal decision in regard to Jesus: we must ourselves decide what we will do
with him, accept him or reject him.
Pilate also tried to compromise. But no person can
compromise with Jesus; no person can serve two masters. We are either for Jesus
or against him.
Pilate’s biggest problem was that he did not have the
courage to take the right decision and do the right thing! Pilate was at sea;
he did not want to be bothered with Jewish ways and it is therefore not
surprising that he got things wrong because no one can govern effectively if
they do not understand their people and enter their thoughts and minds. Pilate
was also superstitious rather than religious, and was hesitant because Jesus might in fact be who he claimed to be.
By today’s standards even, Pilate had it ‘made’ – he was at
the top of his profession – but in meeting this mysterious man Jesus, came to
see that he had missed out on what really mattered. That day he might have
found all that he had missed; but he had not the courage to defy the world in
spite of his past, and to take his stand with Christ and a future which was
glorious.
No one can read this story without seeing the sheer majesty
of Jesus. There is no sense that Jesus is on trial. But when a person faces
him, it is not Jesus on trial but the person. It seems as though it is Jesus
who is in control and Pilate who is on trial.
Here, Jesus also speaks to us with utter directness about
his kingdom: it is not of this earth. The atmosphere in Jerusalem was electric;
it was Passover and Pilate would (as usual) have drafted more troops into the
city. If Jesus wished to have called for rebellion, he could have done it
easily, but he makes it quite clear that his kingdom is in the hearts of people
– he aimed at conquest, but his conquest was the conquest of love.
Jesus tells us why he came into the world. The days of
guessing and half-truths were gone. He came to tell us the truth. This is one
of the great reasons why we must either accept or refuse Christ. There is no
half-way house about the truth. A man either accepts it or rejects it: and
Christ is the truth.”
We belong to the truth and so must listen to his voice …
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