11/25/18 “A Different Kind of King for a Different Kind of World” by Nancy Petty
Text: John 18:33-37
“Life is more fun if you play games.” I tend to agree with this quote from British novelist, short story writer, poet and screenwriter, Roald Dahl. I’m not talking about video games or card games but rather the kind of made up games that I played with my friends growing up. Imaginative games with fictional characters and places and creatures. The kind of games we would make up at grade school sleepovers or the more risky games we would play at youth group lock-ins at church. One of these games that I have continued to play occasionally in my adult life—ok, maybe I play it more than occasional—goes like this. “When I am king/queen of the world…” Then I add a statement, like…”
• When I am queen of the world, nobody can get up from their seat while the plane is flying to ensure the plane stays level.
• When I am queen of the world, gravy and biscuits will be sold in every restaurant.
• When I am queen of the world, reruns of The Andy Griffith show will run continuously—24/7 seven days a week.
• When I am queen of the world, it will be a requirement to eat ice cream at least once a day.
This silly game gives you a sense of the kind of world the person playing it would like to live in. And while it reveals preferences and values, it also uncovers judgments and biases. Recently, I read an article about Queen Elizabeth II, who is a legit queen, and how she actually gets to play my game in real life. As queen of her world/commonwealth, here are a few things she has decided.
• No one can eat after the queen has finished her meal
• The royal family can’t have political views
• Monopoly is a forbidden board game amongst the royal family
• The family isn’t allowed to sign autographs or take selfies
• The royal family can’t eat shellfish, garlic isn’t allowed at Buckingham Palace, and neither is potatoes, rice, or pasta for dinner
• Women must wear hats to all formal events; and after 6pm, hats are off and tiaras are on
• The queen’s breakfast menu is non-negotiable: breakfast tea (duh) and Corn Flakes
• No presents opened on Christmas Day
• And my personal favorite: If the queen moves her purse to her right arm, her staff must cut off her conversation (I need a staff like that.)
I thought of my “When I am queen of the world” game and the world of Queen Elizabeth II when I read the passage from John 18 about Pilate trying to figure out just what kind of king Jesus was or was supposed to be. It seems that the question, at least for Jesus, was more about recognition and recognition of truth than about identity or role or having the power and privilege to have things as one prefers. The way we usually think of royalty. Pilate wants to know if Jesus considers himself a king with such power. Jesus want to know if Pilate recognizes a different kind of power that Jesus embodies—truth. But I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, we acknowledge that today we close out the liturgical year with Christ the King or the Reign of Christ Sunday. Not a favorite liturgical Sunday for a lot of preachers, especially in progressive pulpits. Christ the King is not an image we tend to relate with or to. We are much more comfortable with and connected to “Mary’s poor little baby boy”—the image that next Sunday begins to usher in. And often, in our haste to get to baby Jesus, we skip over Christ the King.
Barbara Lundblad, professor of preaching at Union Theological Seminary, writes of one of her colleagues, Delores Williams. Lundblad writes of Williams: “She grew up in the South and remembers Sunday mornings when the minister shouted out: ‘Who is Jesus?’ The choir responded in voices loud and strong: ‘King of Kings and Lord Almighty!’ Then, little Miss Huff in a voice so fragile and soft you could hardly hear, would sing her own answer, ‘Poor little Mary’s boy.’ Back and forth they sang: KING OF KINGS, Poor little Mary’s boy. Delores said, ‘It was the Black church doing theology.’ Who is Jesus? ‘King of Kings’ cannot be the answer without seeing ‘poor little Mary’s boy.’” Lundblad writes: “There is dissonance in the songs. The images clash. One is big and powerful, the other small and poor. Christ the King Sunday [she writes] is a dissonant day.” Yes, it is. But what might we learn in the dissonance.
This dissonance brings us to the very question that Pilate wants to know: What kind of king is Jesus? “He needs to know because “king” is a political term, and Pilate is a political person. In [John chapter 18], he keeps going back and forth between the Praetorium and the crowds outside. He moves from questioning Jesus inside City Hall to appeasing Jesus’ accusers outside. Unfortunately, in John’s Gospel those accusers are always called “the Jews” — as though Jesus wasn’t Jewish, as though all the Jews were to blame for killing Jesus.
Years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, animosity toward Jewish people infected John’s Gospel with language that accused all Jews of condemning Jesus. There were some Jews who opposed Jesus and some who followed him. There were some who collaborated with the Roman authorities – like Christian bishops appointed by the Nazi regime. Today we must repudiate every claim that Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death. [We must resist anti-Semitism that is growing in this nation and all the ways it is perpetuated by Christian teaching.] Pilate needed to know: “Are you the king of the Jews?” [Because] If so, [then] you’re guilty of treason because the emperor in Rome is the king of everyone everywhere, including the Jews.”
Jesus never really answers Pilate’s question. He employs a technique that we often see Jesus using. He responds to Pilate’s question with a question. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” In other words, Jesus is asking, “Do you recognize me, Pilate? Is there any part of you that recognizes any part of me?”
Truth be told, I feel kind of sorry for Pilate. It seems to me that he was trying every avenue to get an answer to a question, any question, which would allow him to set Jesus free. But Jesus doesn’t play that game. He’s not in the game for himself. Instead, he talks of a kingdom not of this world. He gives a nod to leading a group of non-violent followers. He speaks of being born into the world to testify to truth. Truth, Pilate asks, “What is truth?” Was Pilate being “sarcastic or searching for answers nobody else had given him?” Could it have been that in that moment Pilate recognized that truth was the person standing, in silence, before him?
John 18 raises for us the question: Just what kind of king was Jesus? And what kind of kingdom and truth was he born into this world to give witness to? And where will we find this strange king today?
It goes without saying that Jesus is not the kind of king in my “When I am queen of the world…” game. Neither was he the kind of king/queen to the likings of Queen Elizabeth II and her world. His kingdom is not personal preferences or petty judgments or individual biases. His kingdom is not about power or control or protocol. His kingdom is not even about safety and survival, despite our fixation on heaven as an everlasting reprieve from the toils and snares of this world. No, Jesus is an entirely different kind of king, one who is constantly giving his power away instead of hoarding and lording it over others. His is the kind of kingdom that re-orders things in such a way that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Jesus was a different kind of king in a different kind of world. His kingship was not based on power and privilege and wealth. His world was not comprised of royalty but rather of misfits. His commonwealth was not based on a hierarchy of white privilege but rather on lifting up the lowly and offering hospitality to the stranger. In his kingdom the poor are given preferential treatment, children sit at the place of honor, outcasts have a place at the table, strangers and sojourners are welcomed at the borders with loving human arms not military arms.
This different kind of king is found in the most unexpected places. He is found in “deep theological conversation with a Samaritan woman who had had five husbands and was living with a man who wasn’t her husband! [He is found] bending down on the ground to be with a woman accused of adultery. He leans in close to hear her voice when nobody else bothered to listen. [He is found] putting a towel around his waist and then kneeling on the floor to wash his disciples’ dirty feet. Jesus is a king who never rose so high that he couldn’t see those who were down low.”
And if we want to see this different kind of king today, we will need to look in places kings and queens seldom go. We will need to go to those places in our communities that represent a different kind of world than most of us sitting here in this sanctuary live in. For this king, this truth stands at the border where families are torn apart. This king, this truth sits by the bedside of the 98-year-old husband and father dying of cancer. This king, this truth sleeps on the cold pavement beside the homeless woman who suffers from addiction. This king, this truth resides in places where people are still without power and water and the basic necessities of life as they try to recover from hurricane flood waters. This king, this truth walks the halls in shelters where women have sought refuge from abusers. This king, this truth holds our hand in our darkest night. This king, this truth doesn’t give up hope when despair is all around. This king, this truth shines a light in the darkness. This king, this truth keeps on building a kingdom—a commonwealth—where justice rolls down like an ever-flowing stream, where people treat others as they want to be treated, where love of neighbor is primary, where people pray for their enemies and forgive seventy times seven. This king, this truth keeps on building the kind of kingdom where folks share what they have with one another, where no one goes hungry or thirsty, where the stranger is welcomed and the sick and prisoner are visited. To find, to see, to recognize this different kind of king who belongs to a different kind of world will require us to step outside of our world of privilege and power and wealth and go to places that we seldom go.
May we slow our haste in getting to sweet little Mary’s baby boy and spend a week—this week—with a different kind of king who establishes a different kind of world.
