You Say I Am A King

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John:

The opposite of Christ is not the devil. Christ is the Word Made Flesh, True God and True Man. Christ is the all-powerful and unchanging Lord made vulnerable, in order to suffer with and for us, and testify to the truth. Christ is the Just Judge One Who will forgive His murderers even as they dislocate His shoulders and drive rusted nails through His wrists. The devil is just a fallen angel. The two aren’t comparable at all.

The opposite of Christ, is Emperor.

The Emperor is a man who is worshipped, unjustly, as a god. The Emperor is a vulnerable human being like us, who is not in solidarity with us, who does not endure anything for us, and who demands godlike treatment. The emperor does not forgive; the emperor takes vengeance. The emperor judges, but not justly. And neither does Pilate.

Pilate is the Prefect of Judea. Pilate is the one who the emperor authorizes and requires to hurt others as necessary. The emperor didn’t care if what was done in his name was just; he only cared that Pilate kept Judea quiet, orderly, and subject to the emperor. There could not be a second man claiming to be emperor. That was a man that Pilate was required to murder, for the sake of the empire.

That is the type of king that Pilate has in mind, when he asks if Jesus is a king.

Jesus doesn’t answer: at least, not in any way Pilate can understand. “Do you say this on your own, or have others told you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” asks Pilate. “Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”

Jesus hasn’t done anything but preach, and heal, and knock over the odd table, and free some animals destined for ritual slaughter. That and defending an adulterous woman, and being touched by an unclean woman, and driving seven demons out of his woman friend whose name means “The Tower.” He’s spoken with a Samaritan and asked to drink from her jug. He’s raised the dead, now and again. He caused a fig tree to wither. He served wine at a wedding. He walked on water and quieted the wind. These aren’t capital crimes, but they’re going to get Him killed anyway. “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”

The Jews, this particular group of His own beloved chosen people, hadn’t handed their fellow man over to the Romans because Jews are bad, any more than Judas sold Jesus because apostles are bad or Peter denied Him because fishermen are bad. They did it because they were terrified of what Rome would do, in the Emperor’s name, to every one of them. This is what an emperor does. An emperor makes powerless people turn on one another in terror, instead of standing in solidarity against the emperor. Jesus knows this.

“Then you are a king?” asks Pilate, who still doesn’t understand.

He is not, and cannot be, a king, in the way Pilate means. An emperor isn’t something that exists in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God has a head, in a different way. Christ is the Head of His Body, the Church, and a head doesn’t murder His body. Christ is King the way a beloved teacher or a gentle abbess or a tender grandmother is leader to a classroom or a convent or a family. Christ is the shepherd who is sacrificed in place of the lambs, the mother hen who gathers the chicks under her wings. There is no answer to Pilate’s question. There cannot be. Pilate doesn’t know what a king is.  “You say 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.”

“What is Truth?” asks Pilate. Pilate wants to have a cold, gentlemanly philosophical debate. He doesn’t realize that Truth is standing right in front of him, tied up and roughed up and about to be lynched.

Pilate finds no crime in this man, but has him tortured to death anyway. That is what Empire does. Christ does not condemn even when the crime is very great. He is a different kind of King.

To this day, the Emperor is the opposite of Christ.

Whenever you find an emperor, even and especially if the emperor claims to be doing what he’s doing because it’s God’s will, you will find an anti-Christ.

To this day, where there is an Emperor, helpless people turn on one another. To this day, where there is an Emperor, cruel men ask “What is Truth?” when Truth is standing suffering in front of them. To this day, where there is an Emperor, Christ is murdered.

Christ is a different kind of King.