Christ the King
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 • Psalm 93 • Revelation 1:4b-8 • John 18:33-37
Has the world as you know it ever completely fallen apart, crumbled before your eyes and been turned upside down? For certain people on this particular day, their source of life was literally being separated before their very eyes. Worlds were colliding, and creating uncertainty. The disciples’ close, close partnership that they had shared with Jesus in his ministry was crumbling. None of them wanted to be persecuted for admitting they followed Jesus. But Jesus had been the very one holding their group together, not to mention the lives of so many others…. He was now under direct threat, taken away by the Roman authorities and put on trial. If he were gone forever, would there be any meaning to their lives at all? What would hold them together, and keep them from disillusionment?
Pilate tries to keep the world together with absolute control….the way the world so often tries to handle things falling apart. Pilate grabs full and absolute control of the threat Jesus poses to keeping his rule secure. As a representative of the world’s most dominant political power in Jesus’ day, Pilate’s approach as he interrogates Jesus in John’s is to perpetuate the laws of the empire as the means to control the chaos Jesus stirs up. Pilate is so concerned with maintaining his role and perpetuating the rule of law, he focuses only on the legal matter at hand with Jesus. Pilate wants to know if Jesus says he is a king—that’s it. Pilate believes in holding the world together by his own authority….a power that will not last….
In this scene, a scene where the two greatest powers in the world confront one another….Jesus shows why it is he….it is he who is the one…who holds it all together…who keeps the world from falling apart in a way that is bigger than we can begin to imagine. Jesus’ power to diminish and subdue even the mightiest of Earthly authorities comes from his reign that he says “is not from this world.” (18:36) Jesus can reign because he’s the one who is both one of us, and yet who also is not from us, but comes from beyond this world—from God. Jesus names for Pilate what his life, what his person, what his being means: to be born human, to reveal the love of God in the world through himself and to testify to this truth for all who would hear and listen (18:37).
In this encounter with Pilate, Jesus’ testimony reaches the highest level of authority; Jesus’ testimony reaches not only the sick, the poor and the sinners, but to the world’s most influential. Jesus’ testimony is not bound by any Earthly status or level—he shares it with all. His influence goes beyond the weak and the mighty, beyond any category we may try to fit Jesus into or compare his Lordship to. Jesus’ hold on the world—and on the whole universe—is cosmic in its reach and scope.
After Pilate dismisses him, Jesus rule culminates not on a throne, but on a cross, which is his seat of glory. In Christ a tool for torture becomes a needle that knits together a broken world crying out for mending. On this cross Jesus unites himself to all things; and all things become redeemed through his conquering of death’s power forever. Jesus creates a tapestry of fabric through the cross that wraps and tethers and makes visible the meaning of God’s intention for the world. This doesn’t happen through chaos, not through stubborn resistance, not through complete control…but through love and mercy. Is it not good, brothers and sisters, to worship and to be ruled by mercy….to be ruled by love and mercy?!
It is not us who have to put the world back together when things fall apart. It’s not we who must regain control of the forces challenging our sanity and fracturing our lives apart. It’s Jesus’ rule that keeps the world together. God weaves the threads of Jesus’ truthful love beneath what we can see, and gives underlying meaning to the universe. It is altogether fitting and proper that we close out the church year today, as we close before it begins anew in Advent. We can look back today and see the reign of Christ who is the tether who has strung us together and bound all of the past year together in himself. This is the same tether we see as we look back at the handiwork of God in Christ making all things new in our lives.
As disciples of Christ, the one who reigns in and through all things…God has made us a part of this rule as subjects to Christ. We as disciples take into ourselves today, in body and blood, that ruler, that one who lays claim on us and we on him. As disciples of this Jesus we belong to the truth and listen to him who gives our lives meaning, who connects us to something so much bigger than our lives, and our universe. One very concrete way we as disciples can listen to and receive this gentle rule of Christ is to listen to the testimony of his life and words as they are told in scripture. This is an opportunity all are invited to on Sunday mornings in December during Adult Education Hour from 9:15-10:15am in the Lounge. For the first three Sundays in December, we will be hearing the Gospel of Luke read aloud in its entirety over the course of the three Sundays. What a unique opportunity to live in and grow in relationship with this Christ who upholds and mends us with us own life.
As we are sent today, we are sent not into a world where we have to make it on our own, but where Jesus holds us and the whole world by his love and mercy. May we seek to make visible that underlying hold that Christ has in our whole lives. We can reveal his gentle reign within the world that he mends…a world that he makes whole and that he truly brings to new life as he shapes us into his own people. Amen.
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