Not Jesus, but Christ the King!
John 18:33-37
There’s no pussy-footing around in the character of Pilate. When Jesus was brought before him, Pilate, got right to the point, immediately, asking the central question of his inquiry by which he was mandated to investigate the charge of treason. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Are you a pretender to the throne who would claim power that belongs to Caesar alone? Are you the aspiring leader of a political movement that would overthrow the government? Do you say that you are the rightful King of the Jews?
We can imagine the briefest moment of pregnant silence as Pilate waits for Jesus to answer: and, then, Jesus replies, not dignifying Pilate’s question with a direct answer, but rather, asking a question of his own- inquiring as to the origin of the charges he stands accused of. He asks Pilate, “Do you ask this on your own or did others tell you about me?” In effect what Jesus is asking is, “Have you, as Governor of Judea, leader of civil and political society here, seen any evidence that would even lead you to think that I might be a wanna-be king plotting conspiracy against Caesar or revolution against
Pilate is nobody’s fool and is in fact a very intelligent person. He gets the question Jesus is asking and, in effect, he acknowledges the trumped up nature of the charges against Jesus as he turns his inquiry to an asking of what in heck is going on in the Jewish community that they would so turn against one of their own. “I’m not a Jew,” Pilate says, “So tell me, what have you done that has your own people so riled up against you as to invent this charge of treason by way of a tool whereby I might have to find you guilt and accede to their wish that you be crucified?”
“You don’t have to bother yourself with all of that,” Jesus says. In effect, “You really don’t want to get all tangled up in the messy tales of power in the Jewish community and why they might or might not like or want to get rid of me. You are right, you are not a Jew and the fact of the matter is that, in the forum of this civil court, you don’t need to let yourself get sidetracked by such concerns. Your responsibility is much simpler and more direct than that. You have before you a charge of treason- never mind why someone might maliciously bring such a false charge against me, your job is to adjudicate based on that charge…. So, let’s keep things on track and let me ask you again,” Jesus continues, “do you, right now, see any evidence that
I am any kind of a threat to the
Pilate stands speechless… There IS no evidence. There is nothing for him to say! An awkward moment for Pilate before Jesus helps him out giving him a hint of the real conspiracy here… Jesus says, “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.”
We might miss what Jesus is saying here, but Pilate wouldn’t have missed a beat. Jesus is inviting Pilate to think of him as being some kind of a philosopher- a seeker and sage of “the truth” whose answers to the elemental questions of philosophy- questions about life and death, the meaning and purpose of being, the optimal ordering of society, and the philosophy of religion, might well be so greatly at variance with the prevailing philosophy of the Jews, as to create dissonance in their community: dissonance of such proportion that the Scribes and Pharisees, who would seek to be known as pre-eminent guardians of the one and ultimate truth, might feel threatened.
Pilate, knowing already that for the sake of the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, and its empire in Judea, he would have to go along with the Sanhedrin and condemn Jesus rather than risk the kind of controversy not doing so might entail, but not very comfortable about such moral compromise for the sake of political ends, not only avoids the inevitable moment of sentencing by asking what might at first appear to be a diversionary question- “What is peace?” but, by asking such a question of Jesus, affirms Jesus as being a free and free-thinking person and philosopher/sage worthy of such inquiry! …It really doesn’t matter that the discussion ends at this point- without Jesus having time to answer. We can be sure that Jesus heard what Pilate was saying by asking. The question was Pilate’s comment on the whole situation, the verdict that he, in his heart, longed to pronounce, but, political expediency prevented such a thing. Poor Pilate had no choice but to play along with the seditious charge against Jesus and find him guilty and condemn him to death. So be it, but, even then, in his own way, Pilate managed to voice his disgust and make known his awareness of what was really going on… At the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, Pilate insisted that a sign be hung over Jesus on the cross proclaiming him to be the “King of the Jews.” As you will remember from that bit of the story, some leaders of the Sanhedrin came and objected to that sign being there. Why? Because by hanging that sign Pilate was getting in the final word- his notation that the death was all a conspiracy advanced by the Jews. “Is this the King of the Jews?” –the sign begged the question and the answer was obvious- “Clearly not.” And, ordinary people were thereby invited to wonder who, in goodness name, would make such a ridiculous claim and why? The sign was Pilate’s way of inviting ordinary Jews to take a long hard look at what was going on among the leaders of their community and at the temple.
What I would invite you to notice, out of all this, this morning, is that, at no point, did either Jesus or Pilate ever, for even a second, give the slightest weight to the idea that Jesus might be the King of the Jews. Quite to the contrary, in fact, both Jesus and Pilate, each in their own way, manage to say clearly how absolutely ridiculous such an idea would be.
Jesus, not here, and no where else in scripture, laid claim to the title King of the Jews.
I want you to hear that very clearly, because we often get confused, in the church, when we hear the phrase, “Christ the King” and we immediately we make a leap to imagining Jesus the King -an error in thinking that has plagued the historic church for years, an error expressed in many historic hymns, among them some we sing today, that proclaim Jesus is King…. He never made such a claim. He never said it. He would have been aghast to hear it- since, as far as Jesus was concerned, God was and is and ever will be, the King of Creation…. Just as Pilate’s sign invited people then to wonder what game’s were being played by those who first voiced the notion of Jesus as King, we today, are invited to wonder what games or agenda perpetuate such misunderstanding.
Jesus- the King? No!
Christ- the King? Yes!
And, there is a difference.
To appreciate the difference, we need to examine the two terms- “Jesus” and “Christ” and recognize that they are not synonymous. When we speak of “Jesus” what we are identifying is a man who, as the gospel stories tell it, lived for 30 odd years about 2000 years ago. During his last years, he left his carpenter shop, joined John the Baptist and then branched out on his own as a spiritual thinker/preacher, prophet, social activist, healer and pastoral care giver. He did all of these things exceedingly well: so well, in fact that as people proclaimed his accolades, they said things like, “Surely this man is a Son of God, (another title that Jesus never laid claim to) for no mortal could do stuff like this.” …The early church, wanting to continue, as best it could, the doing of the kinds of great things Jesus had done, became a fellowship of people who idolized Jesus and held him up as the inspiration and example for what they set about doing…. In time, they began to refer to the man Jesus as being “The Christ” – the “ideal”, the perfect, the incarnation of all that they could imagine God being and doing on earth in the particularity of their day and age, and, beyond that, in the future. The early church laid on Jesus the title of being not just “a” Christ, but “the” Christ: and, in so doing, according to Tom Harpur, the church “made a fatal and fateful error.”[1]
What happens, you see, is that if we buy into the idea that one man, long ago, called Jesus of Nazareth, was the supreme, once and only for all time, incarnation of the divine spark, energy, life and potential of God in flesh, then, all the rest of us are off the hook! “The” Christ, the only “Christ” there will ever be has come and gone and that’s it, that’s all she wrote folks! This kind of thinking designates Jesus as being very different than anything we might ever aspire to be. It robs Jesus of any role as inspiration for us and denies him the function that he tried to claim when he described himself as something of a first fruits or example that we might choose to emulate.
We are all, indeed, called to try and live up to the “Christos” ideal, to trying to be the very best person that we can be today, but, as we do that we have to recognize that, as time marches on, that ideal evolves and changes in terms of the particulars of what it might invite us to think and do in every age. The concept of “Christos” or good man as defined or made manifest in Jesus’ living, two thousand years ago, can not limit what evolving notions of “good” man or woman might look like, today- given today’s opportunities, challenges and possibilities.
Jesus, the ideal, the Christ, the perfect man? When it came time for him to name disciples, he chose only men, so we should do it that way today? …I don’t think so. It may have been the best and right approach for someone caught up in the sexist society of long ago, trying to move that society along toward a feminist understanding, but it is not the best or ideal possibility open to us now.
Jesus, the ideal, the Christ, the perfect man, was unwed in his role as priest or minister, so priests should not get married today? …I don’t think so.
Jesus, the ideal, the Christ, the perfect man, healed people by putting mud in their eyes, so we should look for healing by doing that today? …I don’t think so.
We may agree that Jesus was the ideal, the best incarnation or Christos of God in and for his day, but even he said that after him we should aspire to do new things, sometimes different things, better things. “Greater things than I have done, you shall do.” This, obvious truth, makes sense to us, but it was not so apparent to the early church leaders. They lost track of the distinction between the idea that following Jesus meant following his pattern of aspiring to name and enflesh the Christos of his age and, instead fell into some perverted notion that doing so meant doing and thinking exactly and only what Jesus said and did. That standard become “the” authoritative standard by which they validated and claimed mandate for the kinds of things that they then invited people to do and say.
Hung up on the idea that Jesus was the exclusive, once and for all time, perfection of God incarnate, not only for his age, but for all time thereafter, the early church soon found itself having to deal with the reality that, as the years marched on and the agenda of the church advanced, situations and questions started to come up that nobody in Jesus’ day, not even Jesus himself, could ever have anticipated. Hence there was no recorded “word” or example from the perfect authority and head of the church, Jesus the King, that the early church could quote as definitive response to emerging realities. There was no way to know, for example, what the “perfect” one would have done about such things as the establishment of sacramental rites, the structuring of the leadership of the church, or how the church should respond to the demise of the Temple and the peril that the Jews faced in the times of persecution that accompanied that event…. How would the church speak authoritatively on such matters? Would they try admitting that there was no Jesus teaching relevant and so they were going to suggest the best that they could think of and hope people would respect their authority? That was an option…and, it might have been the honest thing to do, but, fearing that people would not accede to their authority, early church leaders knew that they’d stand a better chance of exerting influence, power and control if they could find a way to accord whatever they wanted to say with the name and authority of Jesus. “We think we should” would have been a hard sell, but if they could find a way to give the impression that whatever policy or idea they wanted to advance was exactly a continuation of what Jesus did, that would carry much more weight. Accomplishing this was not a problem, as it turned out. Remember this was still the oral period of the gospel’s recollection and we know how stories are shaded and changed as they get passed along…
Early church leaders may have started out saying things like, “If Jesus was still here, I’m sure he’d say this or that, he’d give this or that direction and this or that would be his thinking on whatever emerging matter at hand.” But, as such pronouncements were disseminated among the devout followers of the way, we can easily imagine how it would be that the expression of these ideas would evolve and simplify and be shaded by the priorities and opinions of each teller along the way…. What started out as, “If Jesus were here, he would say” got abbreviated, dropping the qualifiers, to ending up being, “Jesus would say” and then, eventually, “Jesus says…” The Gospel record is full of all kinds of things that supposedly Jesus said, that we now know, with thanks to the Jesus Seminar, that he never said at all. They are the opinions and ideas of various early church teachers, leaders, and eventually scribes, that took on weight as they were ascribed to and, post-facto, spoken and written into the mouth of Jesus.
Once the Gospels were written down it got a little harder for ideas and pronouncements to be inserted “as if” Jesus had said them, but we know, as we discover various fragments of ancient texts that are often quite different one from another, that even then, scribes were not above adding editorial comment, that quickly slipped into copied text in the form of “Jesus said.” We see this happening in the sometimes very different detailing and emphasis of the same stories as told in differing gospel texts as they were “customized” for use in often very divergent communities in response to emerging issues and realities.
By such process and well-meaning façade, the early church managed to put their thinking into the mouth of Jesus so that they could claim that whatever idea or policy was being expressed, was, in fact, the directive of the true King, Jesus…. Obviously there is a limit to how long this kind of interpolation could continue before people caught on to what was happening and realized that what they were hearing was bogus Jesus teaching on things that were going on years after Jesus could ever have had anything to say about them.
Not to be undone by such logic, the emerging church then got into talking in terms of a “Living Jesus” who they claimed to hear directly, in special ways- by virtue of ordination or office, whose words they then proclaimed as continuing, and authoritative expression of, “Jesus says.”
“Jesus would say” continues, by this pattern to become, “Jesus says” in our day under the guise of “What would Jesus do?” -speculative thinking that quickly transmutes into purportedly definitive and absolute pronouncements announcing such things as, “Jesus says, don’t drive SUVs, don’t allow abortion, stay away from stem cell research, don’t give up on the War Against Terror, convert the heathens, subvert the Muslims…” and whatever other populist ideas that some church leaders seek to advance by ascribing to them the weight of being as sure as spoken by the mouth of Jesus himself.
Rather that appeal to the Spirit inspired best interpretation of what the Christos would think or do, according to our best, tentative understanding, it seems to carry more emotive and persuasive weight to talk in terms of what Jesus would do. Jesus the King- you know: the perfect, the one and only, for all time authoritative voice of God to be appealed to.
“What would Jesus do?” –a matter of dubious speculation that gives today’s religious leaders a lot of latitude for interpretation that is, inevitably, tainted by their own thinking and agenda. And, it’s the wrong question to be asking! The far better question to seek to answer and live by is “What would God do today?”
What would the Christos or ideal person, seeking to live by the evolving, spirit informed, incarnate spirit of life and God within, seek to be on about, to care about, to invest time and energy doing, and how might that get done in our day and age? This is the real question.
This, I think, is the question that Jesus addressed, in his day: in his personal discernment, in the wilderness at the time of temptation and planning, and every day of his life, as he set about to name and live out the ideal of all that he could imagine being right and just, perfect, in the eye’s and service of God.
This is the question that Christ the King notions invite us to ask. We are invited to be ruled, to let be active in us as King of our living, the vision of the very best of what we can imagine God wanting to do and accomplish in and through us, this day and every day. We are invited to let rule in our hearts and lives, the hope of being daily transformed according to the image of God as God dwells in us and with us lives in the world.
As God speaks this ideal in our hearts, and as we, to the best of our faithfully-intended understanding, manage to hear such divine intent, we are invited to so respond as to enflesh in our being the Christos relevant to our day, age, and the particulars of our living.
Christ the King Sunday invites us to lay aside the highly speculative game of trying to imagine what some 1st C Jew might have thought or done 2000 years later: and, instead to get on about trying to discern and imagine, in our day as faithfully as Jesus did in his, what God might be on about: what the ideal person, the Christos of our age would think and say and do.
Jesus, the King? No!
But, the Christos, Christ the King- the best expression of thinking and imagination that we can let inspire or rule our aspirations? Yes!
As surely as God inspired Jesus to imagine and work toward living out the Christos ideal in his day, God will help us name and claim the ideas, ideals and the agenda of what the Christos would look like today. As we discern and try to live up to that image, we serve the ideal of Christos, Christ the King, evermore so and even now, made flesh among us.
Let us listen for the voice of the inner Spirit that is God: hear and obey!
Amen
[1] Tom Harpur The Pagan Christ pg 2