Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

A couple of years ago, when Delight and I went to visit my niece in London, one of the highlights of that trip was our visit to the Tower of London. It is an amazing place with a history that stretches all the way back to William the Conqueror in the 1080's.

For centuries, the Tower complex served as mid-London home of the reigning monarch and so it is filled with the greatest luxuries of its various eras, ranging from the large fireplaces in every room - which were the height of luxury in the 11th century - to the stunningly-beautiful regalia of the Crown Jewels, whose ostentatious wealth could dazzle any era.

To be honest, I have to admit that when I saw the Crown Jewels, I reacted very much like an American, not to mention someone of Scottish descent. Designed to serve as a visual representation of the glory the British empire, the Crown Jewels are an intentionally-ostentatious display of wealth and beauty.

I have to admit that it seemed wasteful to tie all that money up in layer upon layer of jewelry, which is only used on rare state occasions and then is locked up in climate-controlled display cases for years or even decades at a time until the next state occasion demands their use.

If I remember correctly, I think we were told that at her coronation, Queen Elizabeth was weighed down by some 88 pounds of Crown Jewel regalia, making her unable to move without assistance. I suppose that was intended to symbolize the weight of the nation pressing down on her. And yet, I kept thinking that there were probably millions of poor people whose needs could have been more adequately met if the Crown Jewels had been broken up and sold off. Again, I guess that thought alone qualifies me as an American.

But that thought is pertinent today since this is Christ the King Sunday, the very last day of the church calendar year. It is the day in which we celebrate the fact that Jesus is the rightful ruler of the world. And yet he is king in a way that makes no sense to a world that expects its kings and queens to embody the wealth and power of its nations.

For Jesus was a king who was born in a stable in the backwater town of Bethlehem. He was the son of a poor couple from the lower classes of society and was apparently apprenticed to be a semi-skilled laborer. Yet, he chose the life of an itinerant rabbi and was ultimately executed as an enemy of the state. That's hardly the jewel-encrusted life of power anyone would expect from a honest-to-goodness king. And yet there was clearly something in his manner, in his miraculous healing power and in his wisdom that led people to see him in ways that looked beyond the obvious impoverished circumstances of his life.

You can see the same sort of reversal of expectations in our gospel lesson today. It is apportion of Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate, the powerful Roman governor of Judea. The casual observer of this scene sees Jesus as a heavily-beaten prisoner standing before the imperial governor and probably expects Jesus to be trembling before the man who holds the power over his life or death. But that's not what happens at all.

Instead, as the trial progresses, it becomes clear that Jesus is the one who is calm and assured, while Pilate is the one who is wavering and riddled with doubts. I personally see Pilate as someone who is looking for an excuse to release Jesus, but who is too afraid of the crowds to act on his own instincts without some sort of excuse to do so.

Meanwhile, Jesus is the one who demonstrates regal bearing, turning each of Pilate's questions back onto Pilate in order to guide him into taking a stand. In many ways, the extended version of our gospel lesson shows that this is really the trial of Pilate.

Jesus had been dragged before the governor on trumped-up charges of claiming to be a king. The reasons was that Pilate couldn't have cared less about Jewish religious issues, but if he heard that someone was setting himself up to be a rival to Caesar, Pilate was required to act with all the brute force of the Roman Empire. And yet, in the course of this trial, somehow the tables are turned and the judge becomes the one on trial. Here's how Dr. Mickey Anders describes it:

"[...] suddenly, Jesus the defendant has become Jesus the prosecutor. Pilate the judge has become Pilate the defendant, standing sheepishly before Jesus the judge. Every statement shows Pilate more and more confounded by Jesus. It is a scene filled with irony. Jesus was to be crucified, but it was Pilate who was defeated. Pilate wore the royal garb, but Jesus wore the royal manner. Pilate peppers Jesus with his questions, "Are you a king? What have you done? What is truth? Where are you from?" By the end of the scene we know the answers. Jesus is king. He is truth. He is not from our kingdom, but rather from God's kingdom which is breaking into this world in his person."

And what was Jesus' kingdom like? It was a kingdom for those whose love led them to prize their devotion to God over everything else - even over their own safety. It was a kingdom for those whose love for others would cause them to give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty, to welcome strangers, to clothe the naked, to care for the sick and to visit the imprisoned.

It was kingdom for those who believed that the first would be last and the last would be first, and that the servant of all would inherit a kingdom that had been prepared for them from the foundation of the world.

Clearly, Jesus' kingdom was unlike any kingdom this world had ever seen and just as clearly, it is a kingdom that still remains one that is "not from this world," although we sometimes catch glimpses of it in the actions of those around us.

The story is told that some time ago, an American soldier was on a bus in Sweden. In making conversation with the man seated next to him, he enthusiastically proclaimed that "America is the most democratic country in the world. After all, ordinary citizens may go the White House to see the president and discuss things with him."

His fellow passenger replied, "That's nothing. In Sweden, the King and the people travel on the same bus." When that man got off the bus, the American was told by other passengers that he had actually been talking to King Gustav Adolf VI.

Another example comes from World War II London, which was the scene of numerous bombing raids. Buckingham Palace, the home of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, was a prime target and was hit at least once. Most London families who could afford to leave the city left or at least sent their children away. But the king and queen chose to stay. The Queen said, "The girls will never leave without me, I will never leave without the King and the King will never leave."

The courageous example of the king gave tremendous encouragement to the working people of London, many of whom had no choice but to stay through the bombing. A good king is one who shares the suffering of his people, as well as their triumphs. And that's the kind of king that Jesus is for this world.

He is the king who set aside his heavenly glory to share our lives and to offer us hope for a new way of living. His life, death and resurrection showed that the seemingly-fragile power of love is, in fact, the only power that can truly endure.

In an book entitled Whispering the Lyrics, Tom Long tells of a scene similar to the trial of Jesus before Pilate. He writes:

"During the prime days of the struggle for racial integration in the South, black civil rights workers - 'freedom riders' they were called - would travel on buses from city to city, challenging segregationist laws. Sometimes they were greeted with violence; often they were arrested. In one town, a bus was halted by the police and the passengers booked and jailed.

"While they were there, the jailers did everything possible to make them miserable and to break their spirits. They tried to deprive them of sleep with noise and light during the nights. They intentionally over salted their food to make it distasteful. They gradually took away their mattresses, one by one, hoping to create conflict over the remaining ones.

"Eventually the strategies seemed to be taking hold. Morale in the jail cells was beginning to sag. One of the jailed leaders, looking around one day at his dispirited fellow prisoners, began softly to sing a spiritual. Slowly, others joined in until the whole group was singing at the top of their voices and the puzzled jailers felt the entire cellblock vibrating with the sounds of a joyful gospel song. When they went to see what was happening, the prisoners triumphantly pushed the remaining mattresses through the cell bars, saying, 'You can take our mattresses, but you can't take our souls.'"

Tom Long says, "It was the hymn singers who were in jail, but it was the jailers who were guilty. It was the prisoners who were suffering, but the jailers who were defeated. It was the prisoners who were in a position of weakness, but it was the broken and bigoted world of the jailers and of all the Pontius Pilates of history that was perishing."

King Jesus calls us to look beyond the seemingly inevitable power struggles of this world - red state versus blue state, Arab versus Jew, Christian versus Muslim, strength versus strength - to find new ways to bring people together and to meet their needs in both physical and spiritual ways.

And we will find that whenever the powers of this world are confronted by the power of Christ's kingdom, Christ's victory is inevitable, even though it may at times seem to be slow. That's also true when we think about our own personal struggles with the pressures and temptations of the world.

C.S. Lewis writes, "Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long, you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heavenly: that is, it is joy, peace, knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or to the other."

And yet, because our kingdom is not of this world, whenever we face the struggles of this world in obedience to Christ, we will have access to his powers that transcend and will inevitably transform the world. For Jesus is the king whose kingdom is one of self-giving and love. And no matter what the circumstances may seem to be at any given time, Christ's kingdom can never fail. Amen.