Kingdom(s) (Mother Beth)

Last Easter Sunday, NBC aired a staged concert version of the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”  It was broadcast live, and while John Legend wasn’t really up to the role of Jesus in my opinion, Brandon Victor Dixon was an amazing Judas. And you need a great Judas for “Jesus Christ Superstar,” since that musical is essentially told through the eyes of Judas -- although it depicts very memorably the encounter between Jesus and Pilate that’s recorded in the Gospel of John, and from which our Gospel reading today, as we observe Christ the King, comes.
 
The story of Jesus’ passion as written by the apostle John is an astonishing piece of literature, and so important that we hear it every Good Friday in full: two whole chapters of Scripture! And this encounter is a key part of the conflict. In this corner, Pilate, the Governor of Judea, the political appointee from south of Rome, lording it over a bunch of hick towns, representing the kingdom of this world. And in that one, Jesus, an ethnic minority, beaten bloody and under arrest, but nevertheless God incarnate, representing the kingdom of God. It’s no wonder Andrew Lloyd Webber’s presentation of this epic face-off in "Jesus Christ Superstar” is so memorable, as of course are those of other artistic presenters of John’s passion text like J.S. Bach.
 
We only get a small section of the confrontation today, but even these five verses show us worldly power – its delusions, its hypocrisy, its pathetic limitations, both in the person of a Gentile, Pilate, and by implication of the Jewish leaders who have handed Jesus over to him. And they make a deep contrast between that worldly power, and the effortlessly true power of Jesus the real king, to whom all authority and heaven on earth has been given, who came to testify to the truth, meeting us in the face of a man condemned to die.

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The reading today, you might have noticed, starts “Pilate entered the headquarters again.” Again? He’s in the middle of rendering judgment; why’d he stop to go outside? Well, he went outside because the religious leaders who were asking for Jesus’ death refused to come inside. John calls them “the Jews,” but this really has nothing specific to do with being Jewish, it has to do with being proud and getting your priorities wrong, which applies to every one of us. Why did they refuse? Well, John tells us a few verses earlier that they were concerned about a cultural technicality that would keep them from being able to attend a big holiday meal.
 
John is known for his ironies, and this is a big one: Here we have a band of religious leaders plotting the murder of an innocent man, yet their delicate consciences cannot tolerate stepping on a Gentile’s property lest they be sullied with some ritual impurity at Passover time. {The admirable priorities of worldly power.) So that’s why Pilate is coming back inside: he’s having to shuttle back and forth between Jesus, who is a prisoner inside the headquarters, and the leaders who are outside. Pilate moves back and forth, and he will continue moving for the rest of this whole chapter; we’ll come back to that. Outside, inside. Outside to the public and the opinion of the world, inside where he is alone with Jesus and his conscience, trying to sort things through.

 
So Pilate enters the headquarters once more as our reading starts, and tries to interrogate Jesus about the charge. “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus sees right through him: he’s not expressing his own ideas with integrity, the words have been put in his mouth through some kind of political process. “Do you ask this on your own?” Jesus inquires.
 
Pilate -- worldly power incarnate, remember -- dodges. Why should he, the judge, owe the defendant an answer? The authorities handed Jesus over, he must have done something. A form of reasoning familiar to those who have enough power to be able to abuse it casually. (You know the thought process: Somebody who looked like him caused trouble here before. He’s been taken into custody, after all; he must have done something. So come on, Jesus, what is it?)
 
Jesus answers with a complete non-sequitur; he simply will not have the discussion on Pilate’s terms. “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.” The kind of power Jesus has originates somewhere completely different than the kind of power Pilate has.
 
On the feast of Christ the King, it’s worth pointing out what this description of the Kingdom says, since people sometimes quote it in isolation as if it meant something else. The King James Version of this text translated it “My kingdom is not of this world,” which in 1611 when it was written conveyed the meaning well: where does it originate, what is its source? We don’t really use “of” that way anymore, though, so sometimes people get confused and think the verse means Jesus’ kingdom isn’t involved in or related to this world, that it’s somehow otherworldly, or "merely spiritual."
 
Not a bit of it. Jesus’ Kingdom is clearly involved in this world, playing by its own rules, ever since the day he brought it to us. However, it doesn’t originate here; it originates with the initiative of God. The whole reading today, in fact the whole Gospel of John, depends on our realizing that. We’re in the middle of a battle between the two kingdoms in this text, and they are at loggerheads much of the time in our daily lives. It’s learning how to live from – to take that word again – how to live from Jesus’ Kingdom, rather than living from the kingdom of the world that is the daily challenge of being a disciple. It’s because the two kingdoms are at work right here in front of us that we have to pay attention. It’s because they are both live options right now that we have to choose what’s right.
 
This is what Pilate can’t quite seem to do: choose. In the eyes of the world, in the so-called kingdom that comes from there, he is the judge in this situation. But he can’t seem to get it done. He can’t make up his mind. He’s being judged himself by the real king of kings without knowing it. Throughout this chapter, he shuttles outside and in, out and in, engages with Jesus for a few moments, then out to public opinion. He tries to slip an acquittal over on the crowds, you may remember, but caves in immediately when they protest. 
 
He’ll do it again a few verses from now, after our reading ends: a second conversation alone with Jesus, in which it really seems he’s beginning to realize Jesus is not your usual criminal, that there’s something fishy going on. But then he shuttles back out, hoping maybe his poll numbers have gone up in the interval, and the insights fall apart. Eventually, he makes a decision, but tries to wash his hands of responsibility for it at the same time.
 
It’s all too common a pattern, even among those of us who claim to have given our allegiance to Christ as King already. We want to have it both ways. Unlike Pilate, we’ve got the information. We know that God has given himself to us in Jesus Christ, that there is another, realer kingdom that has come in him and is available now. We know that God’s paradoxical power puts the world’s brute force to shame. We know that what Jesus has done for us changes everything.
 
We know that, but we still struggle to commit fully to it because it might mess things up with our lives in the kingdom that is from this world. Sometimes, like Pilate, we listen to Jesus with one ear and let all the voices of expedience and popular opinion and politicking keep playing in the background. Sometimes we kind of hope it might work not to definitively choose Jesus come what may, but just to show some interest in him for awhile before shuttling back outside to please those other voices too. Sometimes we think it might work to have it both ways.
 
Yet if we’re honest, when we’re face to face with Jesus Christ we catch the scent of something really different, something really intriguing.  It’s called truth, and Jesus came into the world to speak it to us, to be it for us. If we face truth head on in him, and grasp it, or better are grasped by it once and for all, no matter what the cost, then when we go back out into a world of untruth, we will have the power, unlike Pilate, to choose rightly. We will experience the possibility of living another way. We will find ourselves able to say No to untruth and yes to the real, full life that Christ the King alone offers, that comes from him and not from the kingdom of this world.
 
We will look at all the other candidates with all their promises and realize that in the long run, Jesus is better. This Kingdom is better. And that’s because this King is better. Thanks be to God for his glorious Gospel.