who art, and wast, and art to come
because thou hast taken thy great power
and begun to reign.
Revelation 11:17
John 18:33-38
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" 34 Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
35 Pilate 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?" 36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to 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."
37 Pilate 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."
38 Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
Year In Review
We've journeyed through another twelve month long year of grace. We began with Advent expectation and hope. Since then we've
• welcomed the newborn Jesus
• followed him to baptism by the river whose waters connect all waterways and all peoples
• experienced and learned from his ministries and his teachings
• journeyed to Jerusalem
• been in the upper room on Maundy Thursday
• grieved at his trial, death, and burial
• met the risen Christ at the dawn of resurrection day and later in the day on Emmaus Road
• trusted his promise to be with us forever
• followed him into our futures…
• Today? We acknowledge the ruler, the sovereign, the king, whose throne is a cross.
Gospel Reading
Today's reading is unique to John's gospel. Earlier on, after feeding the crowd of 5,000++ Jesus rejected the people's move to make him into a king (John 6:15), but here he says his kingdom is not from this world. "World" is the same word – cosmos – we find in John 3:16 with its declaration God so loved the world. We've seen how Jesus' subversive ways of love, justice, mercy, inclusion, are the opposite of hate, injustice, violence, exclusion. His ways doesn't belong to the world, yet Jesus lived fully engaged in the world.
This ruler and his reign have no checks and balances.
In response to Jesus' claim he testifies to the truth, Pilate asks, "What is truth?" Jesus' truth isn't necessarily verifiable data or observable events measurable in time and space; Jesus' truth embodies God's truth with integrity and wholeness. It will redeem (buy back) and restore all creation.
Like Everyone Else
God's people insisted they wanted "a king to govern us, like other nations." You can read 1 Samuel 8 and heed its warnings of how existence would unfold under a dictator or autocrat.
More often than not, people have been anxious about their overall political, economic, and social situations. It's easy to capitulate to trends and it's even easier to try to return to what felt like security and certainty. Remember the yearnings of the exodus desert wanderers?
• "If only we had died by the Lord's hand in the land of Egypt!" they said. "There we sat by pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, but you have brought us into this wilderness to starve this whole assembly to death!" Exodus 16:3
• Then the Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you…" Exodus 16:4
• And then in response to that manna from heaven:
• The rabble that was among them had a strong craving, and the Israelites also wept again and said, "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic, but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at." Numbers 11:4-6
Where We Live
God gifted the people with the Ten Words or Commandments after they'd left Egypt, before they reached the land of promise. So they wouldn't become like the people and their leaders in the place they just left. So they wouldn't become like the other residents in the place they were on the way to.
Slavery to empire (in spite of its many enticements!) no long would be their frame of reference. Instead they would reverence God by serving the neighbor, establishing a commonwealth of justice, mercy, love, inclusion, and shalom sufficiency. They'd learn to live together in this here and this now without undue longings for what used to be, without overly extravagant imaginings of what the future might hold.
In baptism, we live reborn in the water of Jesus' birth and alive in the transforming, rebirthing power of the cross. We live fully engaged in the world, yet as an alternative community to those under the reign of death, its idols and its artifacts, as we embody God's truth with wholeness and integrity.
We began the year anticipating the birth of an infant; we end the year with a cross. Martin Luther insisted if you really want to see the fulness of God's power and rule, look to the Bethlehem manger—look to the Calvary cross.
nor the ruler's staff from between his feet
until he comes to Shiloh
and to him shall be
the obedience of the peoples.
Genesis 49:10
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