Own Accord
John 18:33-37

November 26, 2006


There is a tradition in the tower above our sanctuary that royalty deserve to be honoured. Not everyone today is a royalist in Canada, but our bell-ringers have held the line, or rope. When King Hussein of Jordan died in 1998, they went a-tolling, but by mid-afternoon I was receiving a number of strongly worded telephone calls. “Your bell must be broken,” said one caller. When I assured her that there was somebody live ringing the bell, the answer was decidedly non-ecclesiastical. Then our chief bell-ringer called and assured me that since the police had already arrived and were satisfied nothing was illegal, everything was fine! It was at that point I decided to drive down to the church and go up into the tower.

The tradition was that the main bell would be tolled once for every day that the now deceased monarch had reigned. For Hussein the 43 or so years amounted to 15,800 or so rings. Keeping careful track of the numbers, a team of dedicated quasimodos (including my daughter and myself) took scarcely 6 hours to completed its assigned tolling. Just think, perish the thought, when Queen Elizabeth departs. Already she is up to 19,535 tolls and each day adds another ding or dong! She’s only added an hour of ringing. When you’re standing around in the seventh hour of tolling of the bell and you’re asked for whom the bell tolls, be ready to say with a firm voice, “It tolls for Queen Elizabeth.”

This is moving well beyond the scope intended for Christ the King and the Reign of Christ, though it is true that we ring bells for him too. Seldom do we allow ourselves to listen in on the confused and confusing trial of Jesus, for it only seems to fit on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, but right here the odd conversation between Pontius Pilate and Jesus is blatantly about being royal.

Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of Judea, is a company man all the way. Ruthless and merciless as the Roman Empire and its representatives were, Roman governors like Pilate were imbued with the ideal of the high morality of Roman law and justice. They ruled according to law, not local customs and vengeance. Rome was the first government of law and order: Rome liked peace, forget about justice for the time being, and heaven help the one whose actions stirred up a public disturbance and violence.

The officers of the Jewish leaders brought Jesus from the house of Caiaphas the chief priest to the praetorium of Pilate. Always religious men, they were careful not to enter the actual grounds of the Roman government house because that would defile them, make them unclean, and after all, Passover was about to begin and they wanted to eat the Seder meal. Pilate can’t figure this out, what charges are against this man Jesus? The officers replied in a kind of double-talk, “If this man were not an evil doer, we would not have handed him over.” Pilate has no taste or interest in getting caught up in Jewish religious disputes, so he tells them to judge him by their standards. They answer honestly, but not innocently, “It is not lawful for us to put any person to death.” Indeed, Rome reserved that right for itself.

Therefore, when Pilate interviewed Jesus he had no idea of what Jesus was guilty and found himself in the awkward position of asking the accused what he was accused of. Jesus was no help.

Pilate obviously had heard some rumours and mutterings about Jesus and begins aggressively, “Are you the King of the Jews?” King Herod Agrippa, by the way, also had the title of King of the Jews, so this was a politically sensitive label. “Are you saying this of our own accord, have you really thought about it, or did you just hear it mentioned somewhere?” Pilate wasn’t going to take the bait and get involved in a Jewish debate, “Am I a Jew?” he virtually spits back. “What have you done?” There is an edge of pleading in the question.

Surprisingly, Jesus then begins to pick up on the royalty question. I’ve got a kingdom, but I am not a king as the world defines the role. My servants - notice, not soldiers - do not fight. A king had to be a warrior and general, a commander-in-chief, and an awful lot of government activity had to do with violence, punishing criminals, suppressing rebellions, taxing the life out of the powerless. One reason we do not read much about such things is that it was ubiquitous, violence was the way of government. Jesus’ non-violent way would be incomprehensible, ridiculous and naive. That it had incredible power was something few could recognize then. Even Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s employment of non-violence methods received persistent and skeptical opposition from their colleagues.

“So you are a king?” Pilate thought somebody was giving him a straight answer after all. “That’s what you say,” Jesus keeps playing the game. “For this I was born and have come into this world to bear witness to the truth.” Pilate wasn’t born into his job; he was appointed to it, probably both by education and skill, and a pinch or two of skullduggery. A subtle putdown by Jesus.

“Every one who is of the truth hears my voice,” Jesus concludes. Pilate, who can blame him, is totally confused and asks the genuine question, “What is truth?” No one answers.

In 1961, one of the other Kings, Martin Luther, Jr., was invited to the White House for a private dinner with President John Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline. Off the record, it was to be understood, and the presence of Jackie probably was an indication that nothing more than social niceties were to be discussed. And it was a very nice occasion for King and the Kennedys. After dinner, they escorted him on a tour of the White House with all the additions Mrs. Kennedy had brought to the residence.

When they came into the Lincoln Room, they passed by a framed copy of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation that in the midst of the American Civil War in 1863 had declared all slaves free. King took a calculated chance, “Mr. President, I’d like to see you stand in this room and sign a Second Emancipation Proclamation outlawing segregation, one hundred years after Lincoln’s.” Kennedy took to the suggestion positively and actually asked King to come up with a draft proclamation for him to consider, to which invitation King happily agreed (Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, pp. 516-518). Kennedy wasn’t Pilate and King wasn’t Jesus, but it was a modern version of two kinds of power, two kinds of truth coming together. There was no such Second Emancipation Proclamation, at least in the Lincoln Room. Lyndon Johnson would sign the Civil Rights Act in 1964 that effected the same ideals.

Have we learned any more truth since Pilate? Pilate’s tone implies that Jesus’ truth is at best relative to the self-interests of his company and self-deluded at its worst.

Getting back 20 or so years, the United Church of Christ in Massachusetts had written a number of 30-60 second spots for local radio for use around Lent and Easter. They were contemporary, inviting and clever focusing on communion, on why we worship, and what is the meaning and purpose of Easter. No bobbleheads were used in the making of these spots.

A group in our presbytery met with the news editor of our small city radio station. He was an active member of the board of the First Church, so we asked him if he would be the reader/performer of one or more of the spots. He flatly refused. “I can’t, because when people hear my voice they know it’s ‘the voice of truth.’”

Nothing but the truth, eh? Would Pilate have said it more succinctly? Obviously for him and his listeners, if we are to believe him, anything associated with Jesus is not the Truth.

Is it truth that there is virtual civil war in Iraq between Sunnis and Shi’ites? Is it truth that conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan is erupting into a larger regional war? Is it truth that Islamic youth believe they are being called by Allah to engage in suicide bombing of those who blaspheme Mohammed and Allah?

All of these are true, all are tragic reality, but all too many confuse what is happening in the “real world” with what should be, with what is true for the benefit of human existence. Violence therefore has become the norm and so some do believe that it constitutes human reality.

Jesus’ truth is Truth that captures people, truth that you belong to, truth that makes you free. Our Truth is always full of justice. Can anything be true if it is unjust? Everyone knows that a king is not worth following if he is an unjust king. At the end of the Christian year is there anything better to end with but the truth?

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan