24 November, 2024, Christ the King: Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37
What do we mean when we call Christ a King?
In a nation born of revolt against a parliamentary monarchy, and with a representative democracy shaped by majority vote, how do we understand kingship? What can it possibly mean to us?
Standing before Pilate, the representative of Imperial Roman rule, Jesus is not a political power. He is an arrested suspect, either a blasphemer against Judaism—well beyond Pilate’s bureaucratic competency—a victim of injustice, a seditious revolutionary or a mad man.
He baffles Pilate, and he certainly has no public record to justify his presence in a criminal court. Jesus does not fit into Pilate’s categories of kingship, be they heredity, power, influence, territory, followers, military strength, international clout, political programs…and Pilate addresses him condescendingly.
In this complex and tense narrative between Jesus and Pilate, of which we have but a few verses as today’s Gospel, a portrait emerges of Jesus. Amidst a frenetic miscarriage of justice, Jesus remains a grounded center of self-mastery despite his powerlessness. He is rooted in the dignity of his human nature; his creatureliness has become a vehicle for his divinity. He is at home in both heaven and earth.
By contrast Pilate tries to coerce the world around him, to subject it, insulating his vulnerabilities by subduing the world and its peoples. He is hardly at home in his own skin.
Isn’t Jesus, the victim, truly sovereign?