John 18:33-37

Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 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?” Jesus answered, “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 to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 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.”

I remember my first day as the new Latin teacher in a middle school in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It should have been an anxious day for me but I remember feeling strangely relaxed as I drove up to the school, a modern brick building that sat in a prosperous, tree-lined neighborhood. I remember feeling strangely relaxed that day as I parked my car, gathered up my things and walked to the front door of the school, my book bag over my shoulder, my room number running around in my head.

As I approached the front door, I noticed a sign at eye level to my right that said: “Attention: All visitors must report to the office immediately” “I am not a visitor,” I thought, and I stepped inside. It was then that my feelings changed. As I breathed in that school smell, as I noticed the vacant halls with the exception of a stray student or two, as I realized I was back in school, I no longer felt strangely relaxed. No, I felt nauseus and panicked—not because I was afraid I would fail as a teacher, not because I had neglected to think through what I would do on that first day, but because I was suddenly in a realm not of my own making. I had that day entered a realm of rules and regulations and authority that I was both subject to and a part of, ways of being and doing things that were not my ways.

Years later, I would feel the very same way the day I began work at Procter & Gamble, the first corporation I ever worked for. The signals were different from the school: this time it was the busy lobby, the security desk and the name badges that I noticed as I walked through the door. But the feelings were the same—nauseous and panicked, the desire to run as I entered a realm where someone or something else ruled.

And yet of course we are, all of us, in places all the time where someone else or something else rules. We are in families, workplaces, churches, processes, relationships, situations in which someone or something else rules over us, in which we are constrained by some powerful someone or something. Sometimes that’s just fine—we move through life and its constraints contented or just unaware of those constraints.

Other times the experience is different—we feel nauseous, panicked. We feel the desire to run, or we wake up and say to ourselves: who’s in charge here? Who have I become in living within this constraint, in living in this realm with this ruler? Who have I become, and how does it match with who I really am?

In 1925 Pope Pius XI published an encyclical establishing the Feast of Christ the King, the Feast we celebrate today. The encyclical mentions why the Pope believed establishing this Feast was a good idea. He mentions loss of faith in the face of the rising tides of secularity and disillusionment. But he also mentions the rise of bad faith: people’s willingness to put their faith in or allow themselves to be ruled by materiality, violence, earthly systems and what he called “human power.” With the rubble of World War I still surrounding him, Pius proclaimed that we must look for “the peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ,” a kingdom that demands of its subjects a spirit of detachment from riches and earthly things, and a spirit of gentleness.

While the image of kingship and subjects may seem a bit antique to us, Pope Pius’s point, I believe, was a good one. How do we, who must live in many realms and within many constraints, who on a given day are losing our faith or putting our faith in the wrong things, how do we find a way to remember not only who we are but who we belong to. Another way of asking this is: how do we find a way to stay connected our true realm, a realm whose constraints deepen our humanity, open our hearts and give us deep peace?

The conversation that Jesus has with Pilate in John’s Gospel for today, a conversation that takes place right before his crucifixion, gives us some clues. In this passage, containing three of the five times John uses the word “kingdom” we hear a dialogue that doesn’t really connect. While Pilate is asking Jesus questions that assume one understanding of kingdom--a realm dominated by a powerful ruler—John’s Jesus is responding out of a completely different understanding. This is because John’s Jesus is the king who will be enthroned by being “lifted up on a cross.,” a king, in other words, who doesn’t rule by sheer force (as the Romans did) but by suffering love, love that pours its energy, its very self out in the direction of and for the sake of another..

One scholar put it this way: “Unlike worldly kings and rulers, God has no interest in coercing humans, compelling us to obey. Instead the “kingship” of Christ (in John) through (the) crucifixion is supremacy through love….The meaning of John’s passion narrative is, therefore, above all, divine love.”

Where does this take us?

Here’s one place it takes us: In whatever realm I occupy, the degree to which I can focus myself on what or who I feel called to spend my energy on, to pour out my love towards is the degree to which I’m no longer a subject in a realm that seems to hold an ultimate power over me. Let me say that again. In whatever realm I occupy, the degree to which I can focus myself on what or who I feel called to spend my energy on, to pour out my love towards is the degree to which I’m no longer a subject in a realm that seems to hold an ultimate power over me.

In a way this is what Jesus is trying to say when he tells Pilate that his kingdom is not of or from this world. My reality, he is saying, is not your reality. Your reality is power and control which you surely will be exercising. My reality is costly love—that’s what my life has been about and that’s what my death will be about—costly love. And, oh, by the way, that’s who God is, that’s how we inhabit God’s realm—when we let God’s costly love wash over us and we enter a realm in which our costly love is our center and our way, when we say yes to being constrained by love.

Constained by love.

In looking back on the days I spent teaching my two little classes of Latin students at the middle school, this was right. The degree to which I gave my heart to the blonde teenager who was having self-esteem problems or to the young Jewish boy in the wheelchair or to the clumsy basketball player or the girl bussed over from the projects, both of whom for some reason wanted to learn Latin, the degree to which I kept my mind and heart on them and my energy flowing toward them, was the degree to which I was not preoccupied or occupied by the more negative aspects, and there were many, of being a subject in that place.

Where are you being asked to focus your attention on your own costly love instead of the rulers who would have you obey them? Where are you being asked to live more fully in God’s realm, a realm in which you are still constrained but are constrained by love?

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the Church’s year, a final triumphant moment before we begin our time of waiting for the coming of God in the nativity. It is not the triumph of God’s or our own worldly power that we celebrate. Rather, we celebrate the power of the one who is both alpha and omega, the who was lifted up upon the cross, the image of God’s and our costly love.

Works Cited or Consulted

Robert Kysar: Preaching John

Leonard Beechy: Theolog, November 17, 2009 Blogging toward Sunday: Good news that remains

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