“When Kingdoms Converge”

John 18:33-37

John 18:36: 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.”

[prayer]

In today’s text, who’s in charge? Is it Pilate? Or is it Jesus? By all forms of rational criteria, Pilate would have seemed to be. He was the governor. He had authority. He had troops. He had the backing of the great and mighty Roman Empire. Even the Jews, who normally hated him, were in his corner. That gave him another major advantage: overwhelming approval in the court of public opinion.

What did Jesus have, or more importantly, what did Jesus lack? He was on the negative end of all the public opinion polls. The nation’s religious leaders hated him. He had no army. He had no major financial backers. He had no empire. In a contest where the rules declared that “might made right,” Jesus was sorely lacking in the might department. Pilate held all the trump cards.

That being true, and it was, why does Pilate come off looking like a nervous nitwit? He couldn’t make a decision. He wouldn’t take a stand. In his heart of hearts he knew that Jesus was innocent. In spite of the inflammatory anti-Jesus rhetoric being bandied about, it was obvious to him that Jesus was not a threat to the Roman Empire.

But the natives were restless. It was Passover week. Feelings of Jewish nationalism were running higher than usual. The last thing Pilate wanted was an armed rebellion, even one that he could easily have put down. It wouldn’t look good on his resume. It would be a blot on his record. It would severely damage his political future. It might even be a threat to his job security. Thus he waffled and ultimately surrendered. In the end it was easier, not to mention more pragmatic, to let Jesus die.

Jesus, by comparison, was cool, calm, and collected. He refused to take the easy way out. He also refused to let Pilate off the hook. Never, ever, did he deny his Kingship. Nor did he ever explain his Kingship in terms that Pilate could understand or appreciate. “Yes, I’m a King. Yes, I have a Kingdom,” said Jesus. “But it is a Kingdom that will never be defined in worldly terms.”

Pilate understood worldly kingdoms. So, too, did the religious leaders of Jerusalem and the general population. Worldly kingdoms, no matter how just or unjust they might be, were centers of political, military, and economic power. More often than not they were built on and maintained by force, coercion, and intimidation. To a greater or lesser degree political or financial expediency were used to justify whatever pragmatic actions had to be taken in order to maintain the social structure or status quo.

In Pilate’s mind any kingdom other than Rome had to be a threat. If such a kingdom were real, as he defined real, then that kingdom would soon challenge Rome for political, economic, and military dominance. Of course Jesus thoroughly confused Pilate when he pointed out the fact that his followers were not up in arms. Pilate just didn’t get it.

That’s okay, neither did Jesus’ followers at that point. They were still thinking in terms of some sort of David-like Messiah who would throw off the yoke of Roman oppression and reinstate the glory years of Solomon’s kingdom. They were still thinking in terms of supplanting Rome as the world’s great empire. They were still thinking in terms of political, military, and economic dominance.

In other words, they’d not really heard much of what Jesus had been saying over the past three years. They hadn’t been listening closely enough to those parables of the Kingdom that Jesus had shared with them.

Quoting from John B. Rogers, JR’s commentary on today’s text, “… these parables are very disconcerting to the powerful. They tell of an enterprise – the kingdom of God – that is not finally dependent on what men and women do or decide one way or another. They describe an order of life and human relationships based not on a chain of command, but on compassion and mutuality; marked not by strict proportion, but by appropriate caring; concerned not with what is lawful according to the dictates of the big shots in church or state or community, but with what is right and fitting. [They] point to an order of reality that depends finally not on diligence, but on providence.”

In other words, right is right simply because God deems it to be right, not because one human or one system has the might to impose it on someone. In the end no humanly devised political, economic, or military system can save us. God’s Kingdom cannot be imposed by force. It cannot be legislated into existence. Nor can it ever be brought in under budget.

And yet we keep in trying to do just that. As we confessed in this morning’s Prayer of Confession, “We give allegiance to the powers of this world…,” forgetting the words of today’s Affirmation of Faith: “Our confidence and hope for ourselves and for other people do not rest in the powers and achievements of this world…”

Over and over again we need to be reminded that the Kingdom of God really is different. It is not from this world. It is not of this world. It is not defined by popular culture. Addressing ways in which today’s Christians, especially evangelicals, have sold out to modern American culture in her book Left Behind in a Megachurch World: How God Works Through Ordinary Churches, Ruth Tucker writes: “Our culture is one characterized by materialism and the cult of therapy, self-absorption, and political correctness. This was not the way of Jesus. Jesus was countercultural… To follow Jesus [is] to step out of the crowd and be different. Jesus continually spoke of the uniqueness of the kingdom of God as opposed to the world at large.” The Kingdom of God really isn’t from this world.

Ms. Tucker’s book is one of the most challenging books I’ve read this year. Even more challenging is Gregory A Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church. This book is a summary of a series of sermons preached by Mr. Boyd in response to intense pressure from the so-called Christian right during the 2004 presidential campaign. Mr. Boyd lost twenty-percent of his congregation, over 1,000 members, because he dared to point out that the Kingdom of God is not to be confused with any form of the various kingdoms of this world, including that kingdom known as the United States of America.

Early in the book he wrote, “… [the kingdom Jesus came to establish] operates differently than the kingdoms of the world do. While all the versions of the kingdom of the world acquire and exercise power over others, the kingdom of God, incarnated and modeled in the person of Jesus Christ, advances only by exercising power under others. It expands by manifesting the power of self-sacrificial, Calvary-like love.

To put it differently, the governments of the world seek to establish, protect, and advance their ideals and agendas. It’s in the fallen nature of all those governments to want to ‘win.’ By contrast, the kingdom Jesus established and modeled with his life, death, and resurrection doesn’t seek to ‘win’ by any criteria the world would use. Rather, it seeks to be faithful. It demonstrates the reign of God by manifesting the sacrificial character of God, and in the process, it reveals the most beautiful, dynamic, and transformative power in the universe. It testifies that this power alone – the power to transform people from the inside out by coming under them – holds the hope of the world. Everything the church is about, I argue, hangs on preserving the radical uniqueness of this kingdom in contrast to the kingdom of the world.”

Back to Jesus and Pilate. Pilate was captive to his culture. Jesus was not. Pilate envisioned transforming the world in terms of conquering it by force. Jesus did not. Pilate’s kind of kingdom can only be established and maintained by coercion and intimidation. It imposes peace at the point of a sword. The Kingdom Jesus came to establish, the Kingdom of God, is established by way of sacrificial love and servanthood. The peace of this kingdom can never be imposed. It can only be accepted.

In closing, let us never forget those words we affirmed today: “Our confidence and hope for ourselves and other people do not rest in the powers and achievements of this world…” Let us go forth remembering and then acting upon the words of our King of Kings and Lord of Lords: "My Kingdom is not from this world." And as we live out our lives as disciples of this Lord may it be that we will less and less have to confess the sin of giving allegiance to the powers of this world. Amen.