Year B

John 18:33-37

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

The King of Truth

There’s a popular series of Mary Englebreit birthday cards you might be familiar with that feature a young girl or boy holding a scepter, wearing a crown, and wrapped in an ermine-lined robe or blanket. These cards say things like, “On your birthday, it’s good to be King or Queen.” The message, of course, means that on one’s birthday one should be allowed the opportunity to be pampered, attended to, and allowed to make important decisions about the kind of celebration that takes place on one’s special day. In the twenty-first century Hallmark-world in which we live, being king or queen for a day carries none of the presumptive power, awe, or threat that it has had throughout history and especially for the conquered children of Israel, who found themselves time and time again under the harsh rule of foreign pharaohs, kings, and Caesars.

The one bright ray of hope for God’s chosen people came to them through King David and his line of successors. As the Lord’s anointed, these kings received God’s blessing and God’s law, making it possible for them to rule with justice and mercy, if only they would do so and because so few of David’s offspring and usurpers managed to combine piety with policy, the days of Israel’s independence and glory were all too few. From that void came the human appeals to the divine anointer of kings. The human appeal sought a charismatic warrior king like David while the divine anointer of kings, sent a king whose kingship was outside the realm of comprehension of both Pontius Pilate and first-century Jews.

“My kingdom is not of 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.” Pilate might have replied, say what? Demonstrating that he cannot grasp the concept of a king or emperor who doesn’t intend to conquer and rule the world. For that’s the job of kings after all-to conquer, control, and profit from both, by means of power, riches, and the fear they instill in mortal souls. While Pilate can’t conceive of a king who doesn’t fit the earthly model, he is partially able to follow Jesus from the earthly understanding of king to the celestial with the question, “What is truth?” What sort of kingship is this?

Today is the last Sunday before the season of Advent begins. It is Christ the King Sunday which proclaims that Jesus is king of all kings, the ruler of all rulers, and the power of all powers. The lessons today, on this Christ the King Sunday, ask us to consider how God can be king for us? They ask us to consider what is the truth we are to give our heart, mind, body, and soul to? Truth and a kingdom not of this world aren’t easy to understand. To help us understand how Jesus claims kingship through his words and testimony to the truth, we have to look at what Jesus says about truth in the gospel of John.  In the beginning, we read: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory: the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Later, Jesus says to Nicocemus: “The one who comes from heaven…testifies to what he has seen and heard…whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true.”

Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” To the Jews who believed in him, he said, “The one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him…if you continue in my word, you are truly my disciple, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And, on the night before Jesus faced Pilate, Jesus spoke words of assurance to his frightened disciples. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you have seen my Father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”  In John’s gospel, truth isn’t a fact, a piece of data, or even a system of thought that explains the world. Truth is the life-giving power of God, lovingly given to the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Truth can be summarized, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.” Jesus’ whole identity—his words, his works, his dying and rising, his breathing of the Spirit upon his followers at Pentecost, everything was the embodiment of that simple, yet confounding truth. That makes Jesus’ kingship unlike any other.  What Jesus does is reveal the perfect light, utter love, and endless mercy of God to people who are blind, bound, and dead in the darkness of sin. Most kings make laws, fight wars, make treaties, order ordinary people around, and act as judge, jury, and executioner. This is not the truth of what Jesus does and says, and is. He acts out the kingship over creation that was his from before the world’s foundation.

How very strange that must have seemed to Pilate! He knew how the world operated. He understood imperial power. As a man scornful of Jews, he cared about order and in keeping the peace. Yet, this Jew before him was a King who came “among them as one who serves.” No wonder Pilate and Jesus are talking at cross purposes and with totally different meanings. It is difficult even for us today to imagine a king who insists his power and whole identity consists solely of bearing testimony to the truth of God and what could happen if we allowed that sort of kingship, that unwavering fidelity to the truth, that kind of utter transparency to God, take over our lives? Here at the end of the church year, at the end of Jesus’ earthly life, these are the questions that confront us.

How will we respond to Christ our King? Because is we name Jesus as King: if we worship him as the way, the truth, and life of God dwelling here in our midst: if we confess that we belong to the truth because we have listened to this voice, then we live changed, forever alive in God’s unsparing love.  This is what the Samaritan woman at the well received when she believed. It was what the man paralyzed for 38 years received when he was touched by Jesus’ healing truth. Nicodumus was pierced by the truth of God’s love revealed in Jesus and later he defended Jesus and helped to bury him. The gospel truth is: God is love and that God is calling us to love. And this truth is the eternal kingdom (not of this world) that our kind is witnessing to and ushering in. May we listen to his voice, belong to his truth, and dwell in his kingdom forever.