“Are you the king of the Jews?” asks Pilate of Jesus.
Jesus has been arrested, hauled up before the Jewish courts, beaten up, bound
and then dragged to the Roman governor’s residence. He was an ordinary Galilean
carpenter, probably not outwardly impressive to look at at the best of times,
but he must have looked even less like a candidate for kingship after the rough
treatment he’d had. I wonder what tone of voice Pilate uses for this opening
question. Is it ridicule or sarcasm? “How can this dishevelled man think he
is king of anything?” Or is it just weary impatience? “Let’s get him to
condemn himself, kill him quickly – get him out of the way and get the Jewish
leaders off my back.” Whatever Pilate thinks, though, Jesus isn’t fazed,
and his answer catches Pilate on the back foot. “Do you ask this on your
own, or did others tell you about me?” Instead of trying to defend himself, Jesus
seems to be trying to open up a dialogue with Pilate, to find out what is in his
mind and his heart. It’s not what Pilate is expecting. Doesn’t Jesus
know who holds the power here? But Pilate’s abrupt response shows that Jesus
has got under his defences. By the end
of this conversation there is at least the start of a real exchange of ideas.
Pilate goes back out to the Jewish leaders and declares that
as far as he is concerned there is no case to answer here. In the end Jesus’
accusers wear Pilate down and Jesus is crucified anyway, but we can tell that Pilate
won’t forget this particular case in a hurry. He had tried to treat Jesus as a bureaucratic
task, just another troublemaker in a long line of them. But Jesus treated him
as a person, a human being, someone with thoughts and feelings worth exploring,
even as he stood there bruised and beaten and at Pilate's mercy,just as he treated all those he had met during his ministry.Who is really in
charge of this conversation? Who has the power that matters? Not Pilate, but
Jesus, because while Pilate is terrified of getting it wrong, terrified of
messing up, terrified of his bosses back in Rome, Jesus isn’t terrified of
anything, not even death. This is true kingship. Jesus has power that even the
might of Imperial Rome can’t destroy.
Today is the feast of Christ the King, a feast that is a fairly recent . It was
first declared as a feast day in 1925, by the then Pope, Pius XI. In the wake
of the First World War, he’d watched Fascism grew in Germany, Spain and Italy.
He’d watched Communism sweep across Eastern Europe. Nationalism was on the rise
everywhere. Boundaries were being drawn, positions were hardening. The Pope
didn’t like what he saw. Nationalism had fuelled one war; he didn’t want to see
it fuel another.
His response might seem a rather inadequate one to such
enormous challenges. Setting aside one Sunday a year to celebrate Christ’s
kingship doesn’t seem likely to make much difference to the tide of world
affairs. But it was meant to be a reminder to Christians that their allegiance
to God should always come above their allegiance to their own tribe. “My country, right or wrong,” just
wouldn’t do. It was one thing to love and care about the nation they lived in,
but it was quite another to think their nation had an absolute claim on them. The
feast he inaugurated reminded Christians that they had king whose rule trumped
that of earthly rulers. God’s call to serve others took priority over national
interests.
As Jesus put it, “My kingdom is not from this world.”
He didn’t mean that his kingdom was other-worldly, only existing in some heavenly
realm, to be inhabited after we die. In fact he meant quite the opposite. It is
a kingdom that is very much here and now, but which crosses the national
boundaries and political rivalries of the world. It runs over and under and
through all the other loyalties we might have, to family or workplace or
friendship group or nation.
That’s the theory anyway, but living with that kind of dual nationality
can be costly and complicated. In the early years of the Church, for example, Christians
were almost always pacifists. How could they fight for the Roman Empire when it
was the very force which had crucified Christ? For those already in the army
when they became Christians the decision was agonising. One of the early
soldier saints was a man called Martin. He’d become a Christian, but what
should he do now? Eventually, on the eve of a particularly important battle, he
laid down his arms and declared "I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight." You can imagine how well that went down. He
was arrested and would have been executed, but he offered instead to go into
the frontline of the battle unarmed. He was only saved because the enemy decided
to sue for peace the next day instead of fighting. Martin was released from
military service and eventually became Bishop of Tours in France. We know him
as St Martin.
Civilians had to make tough choices too. The Roman Empire insisted
that all its citizens offered incense to the Emperor, who they believed to be a
living God. They didn’t mind who else they worshipped, but this was a test of
loyalty to the Empire. Many Christians refused to do this, and paid for their
principles with their lives.
The pressure to marry and have children was another common
point of discord. It was the task of every good Roman woman to have children -
the more the better. This wasn’t just to
provide heirs for her husband’s family. It was also to provide the workers and soldiers
that the state needed. It was considered to be a patriotic duty. But what if you
didn’t want to support this oppressive, freedom denying Empire? What if you’d
discovered another calling – to pray, to serve, to spread the message of the
Gospel? People often think that the early Christians were prudish about sex,
but that’s not really true – they just felt that there other priorities which
had a greater claim on them. For women, refusing to marry someone who didn’t
share your faith, or wouldn’t allow you to practice it was one of the only ways
they could take a stand. Most of the early Christian female martyrs were killed
for this reason, women like St Cecilia, whose feast
day is also today by coincidence. Their
refusal to become part of a system they disagreed with was an act of civil
disobedience, and one which often cost them their lives.
These were some of the dilemmas those first generations of
Christians faced. They had stark and costly choices to make. But every
generation has its own struggles, ways in which their allegiance to Christ the
King cuts across their other allegiances to family or nation, and in some ways
it became even more complicated when Christianity became the official religion
of the Roman Empire. Instead of being countercultural Christian faith became
the route to secular power. This may have brought it into the mainstream, but
it also multiplied the opportunities for it to be misused to manipulate and
oppress. The list of ways that happened is too long to name, but here are a few;
the Crusades, the conquistadors, the inquisition, the burning of witches,
anti-semitism homophobia… Terrible things happen easily, and almost
inevitably, when power and religion get tangled up together. It isn’t just a
problem with Christianity, of course – any faith, or secular ideology can be used
to oppress. The devastation ISIS are wreaking across the Middle East, the
massacre in Paris last week is fuelled by a religious vision of world
domination. That twisted vision wouldn’t matter so much if was just a privately
held fantasy, but backed by arms and money, as we’ve seen over this last few
weeks in Paris and in Mali, it is catastrophic. But as we condemn and lament
this perversion of Islam, we also need to recognise that Christian history is
just as bloodstained.
With the dark shadow of those abuses of religious power looming
over us, it is tempting to think it would be safer simply to keep our faith
private, something to be discreetly dusted off on Sunday mornings, then put
back in a box for the rest of the week, not allowed to affect the rest of our
lives. There are many who would argue that is just what weshould do – keep our
noses out of politics and education and science and ethics. But that isn’t
possible or realistic. We all have to make decisions; how we spend our money,
how we spend our time, how we vote, how we raise our children or treat our
neighbours. Consciously or unconsciously, our beliefs will influence these
decisions. We all have power; it can’t be otherwise. Our responsibility is to
make sure we use it wisely.
That’s why it matters that we should keep this feast,
however many questions it raises for us, because it is the questions which
really matter.The time for easy triumphalism is long past – that idea that we
are entitled somehow to throw our weight around because of the historical
importance of Christian faith. We have grown wary, and weary of that. But that
makes it all the more important that we should ask ourselves what it means to call Christ king now.
That’s why it is good that the Gospel today pulls us back to
the place where we ought to be; alongside a bruised and ragged man who showed
us what real power looks like. The power we really need, the power that makes
the difference doesn’t rely on wealth or force or political influence but on
love. The kind of love that sees even your enemy as a human being, worth
listening to, worth talking to. The kind of love that is not afraid of
anything, because it is rooted in the love of God which is eternal and
indestructible. That kind of power is the only power that, in the end, can
conquer the world.
Amen
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