Who’s In Charge Here?

“Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne,  ⁵ and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood,  ⁶ and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.  ⁷ Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.  ⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” – Revelation 1:4-8

“Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  ³⁴ Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”  ³⁵ 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?”  ³⁶ 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.”  ³⁷ 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.”” – John 18:33-37

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Do you ever look around you and wonder who’s in charge on this planet? Who exactly is running this show?

Our immediate reaction might be to say “God is of course!” If we look around at nature – at the fall colors in the trees, at the creeks and the seas, and feel the crisp air that we know will carry snowflakes very soon – it seems clear that God is in charge. No human being could ever duplicate the beauty of nature. Only God could have created a planet where everything works so well together: crops and animals and ecosystems and human beings all supporting each other and all interdependent on each other.

On the other hand, if we walk into our cities, our towns, our neighborhoods, we often see people who are homeless or hungry, lonely or lost, sick or in pain. And we know that people are hurting because something has gone wrong in this world – things have gone wrong with the world of work (or the lack of it), with health and wellness (or lack of it), with integrity in businesses (or the lack of it), even with help from our government (or the lack of it). And watching the news – which is something I recommend only in moderation – reminds me of the old Pink Floyd song from Dark Side of the Moon:

“The lunatics are in the hall
The lunatics are in my hall
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paperboy brings more…”  (Brain Damage, Pink Floyd, 1973)

…and they wrote that nearly 50 years ago! Things haven’t changed much.

So who exactly is in charge here?

As we look at our scriptures for today – from Revelation, and especially from the Gospel of John – the question boils down to one of two options: either Jesus is in charge, or Caesar is in charge.

Taking a look first at the passage from Revelation, the apostle John opens his letter by sending greetings in the name of Jesus. He then describes God the Father as “the one who is and who was and who is to come”. God is also described in verse eight as “the alpha and the omega” – the first and the last.  It should go without saying that no earthly person or power could make this claim and still be considered sane. Only God lives forever, so only God is capable of being in charge forever.

John then talks about Jesus, the Messiah, God’s Son, the faithful witness. The Greek word for ‘witness’ is martyr, and that double meaning is deliberate. Jesus is “the firstborn of the dead.” Jesus has defeated death. And again, this is something that no-one else can claim and be considered sane. Jesus is given the title “ruler of the kings of the earth,” which puts Jesus in charge.

When Jesus returns – as he is prophesied to do in Revelation – everything on earth will be set right.  Revelation says Jesus’ followers will become “a new kingdom of priests” who will serve God and be holy people in God’s new community.

So the Kingdom of God is for real. God and Jesus are ultimately in charge even though the kingdom is not entirely visible yet. We live by faith in a world of the-now-and-the-not-yet.

There’s a problem though: power is not always understood or experienced as a good thing in our world. Many people on this earth have suffered under powers that mistreat or abuse – and to understand God as being ‘in charge’ through power can be a conflicting thought. Far too many people have only known power in its corrupted forms.

For this reason ‘Christ the King Sunday’ sometimes makes people feel uncomfortable. I hope this morning to be able to set that unease to rest. Jesus does not represent an ‘alternate empire’ where the kind of power we’re used to here on earth switches from human hands to God’s hands. Just the opposite: as Revelation says, Jesus “loves us and frees us from our sins.” Jesus is the antidote to abuses of authority.

We were made by God for an eternity with God, who created us and loves us. How do we know this? Scripture tells us God is love. Love is so much a part of God’s nature that if God stopped loving, God would stop being God. Just like there’s no such thing as fire that isn’t hot, there is no such thing as God that isn’t love.

So taking this reality from Revelation and throwing its light onto the conversation between Jesus and Pilate in John’s Gospel, we begin to see how this works out in reality, in daily life.

The apostle John in his Gospel describes for us the scene: the leaders of the Temple have turned Jesus over to Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, with the accusation that “he claims to be a king” – which was a half-truth at best. The Temple leaders wanted to see Jesus crucified, and they knew the only way they could do that would be to get him convicted of a crime against Rome – because only Rome had the authority to crucify.

So the Temple leaders trumped up a charge and accused Jesus of claiming to be a king. This accusation of course would have been considered treason (because Caesar was king) and treason was a crime punishable by crucifixion.

Of course the Temple leaders knew that Jesus’ claim was to be the Messiah, not a secular king. The Messiah predicted in the Old Testament would be both the son of God and the son of David: descended from both God and the royal line, which Jesus was. But many Jews in Jesus’ time expected the Messiah to be a military savior – someone who would kick the Romans out and kick the Greeks out and re-establish the nation-state of Israel.

All of these things were swirling in peoples’ minds; and none of these things had anything to do with what Jesus came to earth to accomplish – which was our salvation. With all this as backdrop, Jesus is taken to Pilate, who asks him: “are you the King of the Jews?”

This question is a bit racist BTW: a Jewish person would have asked, “are you the King of Israel?” The phrase “King of the Jews” was used only by people who looked down on Jews.

So Jesus asked Pilate: “are you asking this of your own accord or did other people tell you about me?” Jesus is giving Pilate, a man who is more pragmatic than truthful, an opportunity to be honest if he chooses to do so.

Pilate comes back with honesty, if a bit rudely. He says: “I’m not a Jew am I?” (as if that’s too low a thing for him to be.) “Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Pilate needs a charge to charge Jesus with, and he wants to get this job over with as quickly as possible.

Jesus answers, “my kingdom is not from this world. If it were my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over… but my kingdom is not from here.”  And again we catch a glimpse of two kinds of kingdoms, two different kinds of authorities: earthly kingdoms, which maintain power through force and violence; and a heavenly kingdom which has a different nature entirely.

If Pilate had been a man of intelligence or curiosity the next logical question would have been “where is your kingdom then, if it’s not from here?” But Pilate doesn’t ask that. Instead he says, “so you are a king?” – which makes a very handy charge against Jesus. Jesus answers him: “you say that I am. I was born and came into this world to testify to the truth; and everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate can’t say he never had his chance. Pilate couldn’t go home that night to his wife (who had suffered in a dream about Jesus the night before) and tell her that he had done what was right.

Pilate looked Truth in the eye and said:

“What is truth?”

That question has echoed down the centuries ever since: both in the sense of ‘what is the truth about Jesus?’ (which is a HUGE question), and in the sense of ‘what is truth?’ period. Does truth even exist? Why is it that even today our news sources can’t agree on the actual facts of events, let alone interpretations? We find ourselves today still asking what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.

And Pilate turned Jesus over to be crucified. In a final act of insult against the Temple leaders, Pilate nailed the charge above Jesus’ head reading, “The King of the Jews” – a deliberate racial slur, mocking the nation Pilate despised – and yet ironically the first truth Pilate had spoken all day.

The Cross shows us the power of God cannot be defeated by kings or governors, by jealousy or hate, by prejudice or racism, by lies or corruption or any of the things the Temple leaders AND the Roman Empire brought to bear – and that our society today still brings to bear against Jesus.

The Cross is the final word of the powers of darkness, pain, and death. The Resurrection is God’s answer and Jesus’ victory.

As theology professor Jaime Clark-Sales has said: “Pilate’s rule brings terror, even in the midst of calm; Jesus’ rule brings peace, even in the midst of terror.” That’s the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world.

For this reason we celebrate today Christ the King, raised from the dead, the faithful witness, who loves us and sets us free, and defeats the powers of darkness “not by might, not by power” but by God’s Spirit.

We celebrate a king who requires our allegiance, who requires that we turn from any other and follow him. We celebrate a king who has compassion on the lost and the hurting, who came to serve rather than be served, who speaks truth and calls us to do the same.

Light does not destroy darkness by violence. Light destroys darkness simply by being light. In the same way Jesus, our King, defeats the powers of sin and death, not with weapons, not by political or economic power, but simply by being who Jesus is: the King of Life and Truth and Love. The darkness cannot stand in the light of Jesus.

This is our king – and today on Christ the King Sunday we look forward to his coronation. AMEN.

Preached at Fairhaven United Methodist Church and Spencer United Methodist Church, 11/21/21