BProp29

2 Samuel 23:1-7; 132:1-12; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37

November 22, 2009 – Christ the King

 

The war was over. The troops had retreated.

The dead were buried.

And, the children were collected.

They were brought to the school,

which for now would serve as an orphanage.

The staff was sparse.

Food, medicines, clothes, linens for bathing and sleeping,

were being collected.

There was no time in the beginning for the staff to provide

classes or recreation

or even one-on-one time with the children.

So, the word went out that volunteers were needed to come.

To be assigned to the children. To read to them.

To let them tell their stories, voice their fears, share their dreams.

 

One day one of the staff members,

went in to talk to a teenage boy.

She did not speak his language, but tried to tell him

that he was going to have a visitor.

She knew just a few words in his native language

and tried to intersperse them as best she could.

 

“You’ll have someone come to spend time with you, to talk with you.

Someone to answer your questions.

Someone to bring you some things that you might need.”

 

“No,” said the boy. He shook his head and pushed her away.

 

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “This someone will be a friend to you,

as safe as if you were at home with your own mother.”

 

The boy looked blankly at her and then stared off into the distance.

She wondered at his reaction to what was meant to be good news.

What she didn’t understand was that the few words he gleaned,

he interpreted from his own very different perspective of the world.

What he put together was:

“Someone is coming to be your new mother

and this will be your new homeland.”

 

The next day, the visitor was shown over to the boy

and sat down in front of him.

The boy didn’t see someone from his own homeland

or from this country where he was now a refugee.

It was an old man with different colored skin and thick white hair.

He had leathery creases in his face

and his deeply set eyes hid in the shadows of his thick eyebrows.

He was from a completely different part of the world.

 

“Hello, I’ve come to visit you,” he said in the boy’s native tongue.

 

The familiar words drew the boy out of his shell enough to say:

 

“You are supposed to be my new mother in this new homeland–

but you are an old man from far away.

And how do you know my language?”

 

The man smiled. “That’s why they chose me,

because I do speak your language.

And you can call me mother if you like

because I have come to tell you everything a mother would tell you

and give you everything a mother would give you.”

 

The boy looked him square on and asked,

“What is a mother? And what would she give me.”

 

For the boy had been an orphan all his life.

 

What is a true mother?

 

++++

 

The whole gospel of John is engaged in a kind of trial of Jesus.

All through the gospel people are wondering

who he really is and what he has to offer.

And, now he is finally on trial, standing in front of Pilate, the Roman governor.

What is a true king?

On this ‘Christ the King’ Sunday we are given

Pilate asking Jesus if he is the political king of a rebel group.

Jesus answers that Pilate can call him king if he likes

But that the power and authority he has been given,

is not of any earthly kingdom

but to testify to the truth.

Pilate asks, “What is truth.”

Truth as the Greeks understood it

was that which can be unveiled by using the intellect.

“What is truth,” he asks.

 

The word truth is used in John’s gospel 32 times.

The other three gospels combined only include it 6 times.

 

Who is this Jesus? And what is the truth he brings?

 

All the way through his gospel, John is writing to answer these questions.

When you read through the passages, the answer begins to take shape.

 

John doesn’t put as much emphasis on Jesus as preacher or even as healer.

There are only five miracles included in the entire gospel.

 

What John endeavors to open up as you move through his gospel is this:

Jesus has come as the full revelation of the truth about God,

the dominion of God, the kingdom of God.

The Real Reality, as one writer puts it.

Not an alternate reality but THE reality,

the land where all children are children of the King.

It calls not for a split allegiance, but when revealed, demands a choice.

 

[And, John maintains, that

the Spirit of truth will come after Jesus

and continue to lead people into the truth.

And, like Jesus, the Spirit is one with God and does nothing apart from God.]

 

As Pilate goes back and forth four times - from Jesus to the crowd

Jesus challenges Pilate to recognize the truth of true kingly power

that Jesus brings into the world.

And Pilate becomes uncomfortable.

He is torn over who to listen to, Jesus or the crowd.

And this scene is no longer an issue of innocence or guilt

but whether or not Pilate will delve into the truth or to the crowd’s demands.

Pilate never does accept the charges of the Jews,

and yet, like them, neither does he recognize the truth.

 

From John’s point of view

Jesus has been handed over to Pilate

because he has exposed the truth.

And, like the truth, he has been rejected

because he comes in and overwhelms

so much of the power that has been so firmly

and yet so inadequately established in this world.

 

Emily Dickinson describes such truth like this:

 

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant…

 

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise!

 

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind.                

 

“What is truth?” asks Pilate.

To know the truth Jesus speaks of

is not to understand and make sense of the universe.

To know the truth is to know God and be set free

to live your life in God’s goodness and peace.

 

For Jesus said, “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive,

because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him, because he abides with you and he will be in you.”

 

The truth of God is everywhere!

It is the Real Reality that dazzles the lesser realities of our making.

And it is always right with you - to be known and received.

 

It is in quiet prayer and companionship with God -

if we’ll get still and soften up and settle into God’s presence.

It is in working in the soup kitchen as our youth did yesterday -

if they looked for Christ in the faces of those they served

and were open to God’s presence.

It is in an old man offering to be mother to an orphaned boy

if the boy will chance opening up to the unknown.

 

[What is truth for you?

However the truth of God’s presence appears before you,

You may go back and forth between what God offers

and what your world demands.

Let’s not be like Pilate and get hung between the two.

Let’s delve into the truth Christ reveals in our lives.]