Our Evangelist gives yet another
narrative from the life of Jesus, continuing the story from our previous
reading/sermon passage. I must admit from the beginning, I had no idea how this
might preach when I started studying this passage on Monday. In fact, I
struggled with this...and even considered seeking a different passage for this
Sunday. But, I stayed with it, certain that God would be faithful as always to
help me find something, some nugget, to share with our congregation.
In this unfolding story in John 18, Jesus
is now brought before the occupying powers—the Romans who govern Judea.
v.28-32 – The irony
and pain of these verses boggles the mind. The Jewish ‘religious leaders’ take
Jesus to Pilate...because their faith prohibits them from executing Jesus. How
convenient! “Well, we can’t do it because it’s against our faith—let’s find
someone who can!” And, they don’t even go inside the palace because they would
become unclean and unable to sit for Passover—a celebration of God’s freedom
for the Jews from a pagan, foreign power. (Oh, the irony....) Pilate doesn’t
want to mess with this. I’m sure he thinks there are bigger fish to fry.
v.33-38a – Here we find
that interesting conversation between Pilate and Jesus. Have you read it
without the surrounding commentary? It’s rather odd:
Pilate: “Are you the king of the
Jews?”
Jesus: “Is that your own idea, or did others talk to you about
me?”
Pilate: “Am I a Jew? Your own people
and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Jesus: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants
would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is
from another place.”
Pilate: “You are a king, then!”
Jesus: “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born
and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of
truth listens to me.”
Pilate: “What is truth?”
Two overarching themes come out of
this conversation—“kingdom” and “truth.” If those were the things important to
Jesus, they better be important to us.
Kingdom: As far as the Jewish leaders
and Pilate are concerned, there are two kingdoms—for the Jews, the legitimate
kingdom of Judea; for the Pilate, the legitimate kingdom of Rome. That’s it.
Jesus indicates there is another kingdom...the very kingdom that he has been
preaching since the beginning of his ministry, a kingdom that is not from ‘here’
but “from another place.” Interestingly (or oddly), Jesus mentions this kingdom
only three (3) times in the whole Gospel of John—here and in his conversation
with Nick in John 3. That’s it. I may need to step outside of John for my
sermon and remind our people that Jesus came proclaiming this kingdom from the
beginning—Matt. 3:2, Mark 1:15, Luke 4:43. In fact, Matthew and Luke are
saturated with this kingdom-talk; many of the parables recorded in those
Gospels are kingdom-parables. Always,
this kingdom of God, of Heaven, is different from the earthly kingdoms; it is ‘other’—invisible,
with relatively up-side-down values and perspectives, etc.
Truth: The statement in our passage
differs from many other self-statements of Jesus. This almost reads like the
thesis I teach my English student at the college: “...the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the
truth.” Nowhere else that I can recall does Jesus express his reason for
being so directly, clearly and succinctly than here. Of course, Pilate questions
even the idea of truth. Of course, our clever modernists and postmodernists of
the last 60 years think they are the first ones to question truth. I guess the
writer of Ecclesiastes got it right: What
has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing
new under the sun. (1:9)
“Truth” appears in the Gospel of John
23 times...and in the epistles of John 19 times—42 mentions. In Matthew, Mark
and Luke, a combined total of 4 times. In the writings of Paul, a combined
total of 43 times. Yes, ‘truth’ is important to John. Perhaps because of his
interaction with those influenced by Greek thought? Perhaps out of his own
search for truth? What we do know is that he heard “truth” in Jesus a lot.
Our own culture has lost its mooring
with regard to truth. We hear about ‘fake news.’ We hear people talk about ‘your
truth and my truth.’ We don’t know what to believe any more, it seems. We can
pick our own flavor of truth by selecting a news network that simply agrees
with our own way of seeing the world. And which one is right? Which one has the
truth? I have a feeling they are all missing the truth. The truth, in the end,
lies in Jesus—his word, his life, his teaching.
Truth? There is another kingdom still
today—something beyond the United States of America, beyond los Estados Unidos
de Mexico (recall, I live on the US/Mexico border....) When we look at that other
kingdom, we do see a different way of living that is crazy generous, that loves
enemies, that welcomes strangers, that calls us to earn so we can share with others, that calls us to embrace ambitions of
kindness, goodness instead of wealth and power, that forgives and moves on,
that accepts the social outcasts as equals, that steps aside and allows the
other to take first place.
Do you want to know more about this
kingdom and about truth? “Everyone on the
side of truth listens to me.” Again, the message is, listen to Jesus. Do
you know what he says?
v.38b-40 ~ Pilate tries;
he really does. He sees the injustice of this situation, but his goal is keeping
the peace, not necessarily executing justice. He lets the Jewish crowd decide. Barabbas
(trans., ironically, son of the father)
is freed and Jesus remains. But, that seems to have been the plan all along.
And so, we are one step closer to the
cross, an instrument of death and torture that this Jesus-kingdom transforms
into a symbol of life and forgiveness...but that’s another story.
(Go HERE to read my intro to this
series.)
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