The Sunday Sermon
21-11-21 St P Christ the King John 18:33-37
Our first reading includes the last words of King David, spoken at the end of his long and successful reign over the united kingdom of Israel and Judah. You may remember the story of David as the young boy who killed the giant Goliath with his slingshot and a rock. The words in today’s reading, said on David’s deathbed, reflect the best of David, and the ideal of a good king. A good king who rules over the people with justice, ruling in the fear of God. Such a king brings peace and wellbeing to the whole kingdom.
This kind of belief, that a good king would be good, would be godly, for all the people, is called royal theology. The people would look to great kings like David and Solomon for generations after they were gone, generations after the kingdom had split in two and different conquering empires had come in and occupied the land. They would look back with longing to that time when kings were good, and so therefore God favored the people.
There were some people who were skeptical though, even of good kings, skeptical of the idea of royal theology, skeptical even of David and Solomon. You can see evidence of that skepticism in the writings about the great kings. Little bits of criticism creep into these writings, about how David behaved very badly with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah, for example. How when the people asked Samuel for a king, he warned them not to ask for that, and when they insisted, they got Saul, who as Samuel had predicted, was kind of a bully.
And there’s one more person who appears to be skeptical of kings, of the idea of royal theology, and that is Jesus, in our gospel today. By the time of this gospel, the age of the kings of Israel was long long gone. The people had gone through a period where they were not even allowed on their own land, exiled instead to Babylon. More occupiers came in, the Persians, the Greeks, and in Jesus’ times, the Roman Empire. Jesus, standing before Pontius Pilate, would have had many reasons to be deeply suspicious of rulers -- of prefects, governors, emperors, or kings.
Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” This is much more than some spiritualized, otherworldly, mystical, hard-to-understand sentence that the gospel of John is famous for. It is an intensely political statement as well as a spiritual one. It is something that can be life-giving to us.
“My kingdom is not from this world.” Jesus is saying that he is not king of the Jews in the sense that David was king of the Israelites. But placing his kingdom somewhere else, not on earth, says something else too. You see, in Pilate’s world, a king of the Jews would still be under the empire, Pilate’s empire and the emperor’s, neatly placed in the world’s hierarchy, “ordered in all things and secure,” as our first reading puts it. Jesus as an earthly king of the Jewish people would still have to fit himself into the Roman order. But Jesus is saying he is separate from all that, he does not have to argue with the emperor, fight with the emperor, or bow to the emperor.
“My kingdom is not from this world.” We may think that we are above the king-thing ourselves. I mean, we got over kings long ago in this country, we don’t have kings right? Well, yes. But it seems that we still have a little royal theology inside of us. We still have that hope and belief that if we have a good leader, peace and justice will come to the land. We feel disappointment and betrayal and anger when a new leader comes, and we get hopeful, and then gas prices and grocery prices go through the roof and a white teenager shoots people and still gets away with it.
We may think we don’t want a king, that we are above that. But we still hope our leaders will be sorta like kings, in the best sense of kingship. We have a hard time accepting that they are not in charge of everything. Maybe because that would mean accepting that we are not really in charge either.
In the scene before this gospel passage, Judas shows up in the middle of the night with a detachment of Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus. A “detachment” is a specific term that means 600 soldiers. This is a mighty show of force by the emperor’s people, a show of force that would scare the living daylights out of you or me or anyone even observing these soldiers marching in the night, let alone what it would do to the person they were after.
But Jesus does not appear to be terrified or moved as he is dragged off, one man taken by six hundred armed soldiers. He does not seem shaken as he testifies before Pilate.
When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world,” his disciples might have hoped it would be like a superhero movie, where he would then give a haughty laugh and pull out a magical sword and go after Pilate and his soldiers in some grand heavenly battle, and then maybe fly up to heaven.
But Jesus means something much bigger by this statement. He means he does not play by these small human rules and measurements of winning and losing and violence and power. Even Jesus is not in charge here, and that is his power, a power that is stronger than death. That is what allows him to stand before Pilate, not terrified, not cowed, but standing upright and firm in who he is, in where he is in the real order of things, God’s kingdom.
“My kingdom is not from this world.” We can make this same statement about our own lives, and it’s a strong statement of letting go of our illusions of control. We are not the kings and queens of our jobs, of our families, of our church. We are not in charge. We can let go of that illusion, that control, that burden. That letting go, letting God be in charge, can be our power.
We are in the season of Thanksgiving, and today is the Sunday we make our pledge to the church. And yes, we do give to our church because we are thankful for this community and what St. Paul’s has meant to us. But today I want to say that there is an even more powerful reason we give. Tithing, or proportionate giving, is one way to live into the knowledge that our kingdom is not from here.
Tithing is not like paying a bill, where it is due every month or every six months and you send in the money. Proportionate giving means you promise to give away a percentage of what you earn -- 10%, 5%, 1% -- wherever you can start, or increase from last year. Every time you get paid, you write your first check or have your first transfer come out, off the top, to the church. If you’re paid every two weeks you give every two weeks.
You give even if you don’t approve of everything the church is doing, even if you don’t like my preaching, even if you’re mad at someone in the next pew. It’s not about those things. It is a spiritual practice between you and God. You are giving up the control of writing your check only after all the other bills have been paid, or when it is comfortable for you. You are trusting that God is in charge, that there will be enough.
For me -- and those of you who have practiced tithing know this too -- tithing has been eye-opening, life-changing. Giving off the top paradoxically opens you to how much abundance there really is, how you actually have enough, and more. Growing to the point of giving 10% was one of the important steps on my spiritual journey, helping me realize I could step away from my comfortable job and go to seminary.
Finding out you are not in charge is humbling and empowering at the same time. The promise we make today with our pledges is one way to demonstrate that faith and that trust in something much bigger than kings or ourselves.
“My kingdom is not from this world.” This statement, this faith, allowed Jesus to stand in his selfhood, in his power, before the mightiest empire on earth. This statement, in our own lives, can help us stand in our deepest selves in the most difficult times. When we are sick, or a loved one is sick. When a friend or boss betrays us. When our cruel human system deals out very different results for a young man who is white than for young men who are Black.
We can stand in these painful, unjust, difficult times knowing a much bigger truth, knowing a much bigger kingdom. It doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes have to fight these human battles, that we don’t have the responsibility to work toward justice. But it can help us to have the long view, to have discernment about where to fight and where to stay out of a fight. It can help us to stay in the struggle and have faith that justice will come.
“My kingdom is not from this world.” Say it with me, St. Paul’s. “My kingdom is not from this world.” Say it, and live it, and we will be closer to having that kingdom, right here. Amen.
--The Rev. Dr. Mary E. Barber
