Is Jesus King? - John 18:33-37


When I first began to really get a grasp of the church calendar year, I though it odd that the Scripture for this particular Sunday, Christ The King Sunday, always focuses in on the arrest, trial, or crucifixion of Jesus.  After all, this Sunday is the New Year’s Eve of the Christian Calendar because next Sunday begins the next church year with the first Sunday of Advent and anticipation for the celebration of Christmas and the birth of Christ grows with each passing week.  Should not Christ the King focus on Jesus’ resurrection or even the Scriptures that promise His return?  However, as I have come to understand it more and more over the years, it is very appropriate that we celebrate the Kingship of Jesus in this way—for it is through not only His birth and resurrection that Jesus’ Kingship is revealed, the crucifixion reveals just how different that Kingship is from the rest of  the world.  With each and every Sunday of the year being a “little Easter” our focus, our reason for gathering always has focus on the Resurrection.  The season of Advent is not simply about anticipating and preparing for the celebrating of the birth of our Savior, but it is about preparing ourselves, and anticipating Christ’s return.  It is about being hopeful for the full revelation of God’s Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.  So today, as we move from one church calendar year to the next, we are reminded that while Jesus came as God in the flesh and revealed the presence of God’s Kingdom here amongst us, that Kingdom will not be fully realized until Christ comes back.  We are living between times…between the ultimate Victory won by God over sin and death, and that time when the whole earth realizes the Good News that Jesus is King, and we find ourselves on that day when every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
So, as we complete one year and prepare to enter the next with the season of Advent, we encounter the passage from John that depicts Jesus standing before the procurator of the region, Pilate.  Twice Pilate asks Jesus whether, He, Jesus, is King of the Jews…and twice, Jesus focuses back on Pilate.  The first time Pilate says, “Are you the King of the Jews?”  Jesus then wants to know either Pilate came up with that himself or whether someone else told Pilate that He was King.  The second time, Pilate said, “So you are a king?”  Again, Jesus does not say, “Yes, I am.”  Jesus responds, “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.”
We might think that response is odd.  We might wonder why Jesus doesn’t just tell Pilate that “yes, I am King, not just of the Jews, but of the entire world, of the entire universe.”  However, that is not how Jesus works. 
You see, many of kings, dictators, and even presidents of this world, expect or even demand the allegiance of those they rule over.  They not only expect folks to recognize their position of authority, they will be quick to demand that people revere them, praise them, obey them, and support them. They demand our service or our resources, or in some places or times, they demand both.  It should come as no surprise to God’s people what the leaders of the world would require that of their subjects, for the warning that it would happen goes all the way back to Samuel as the people clamored for an earthly king that they might be like other nations.  Samuel warned them:
These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 
To this day we find Samuel’s words to be true.[i]
Jesus, though, reveals that God is a King unlike any earthly king.  He tells Pilate that His Kingdom is not of this world, for it if were, His subjects would have already risen up to defend Him.  The truth of the matter is that the Kingdom of God, while already present in this world, is far greater than any of the kingdoms of this world.  The truth is that there are many differences between the Kingdom of God and earthly kingdoms.  The Kingdom of God is not bound by geographic lines.  The citizens of the Kingdom of God are made up of members of every nation, tribe, and ethnicity around this globe.  The existence of earthly kingdoms is often founded on the threat of force against any who would intrude on that nation, while the Kingdom of God is founded on places of vulnerability, a manger, a cross, and an empty tomb.  Furthermore, God does not look down upon this world and demand that any be His subjects.  From the moment of Creation, living under the Kingship of God has been a matter of our free will, our choosing.  This is why Jesus never asserts, “Yes I am King” but seeks the confession of His Lordship from those around him, whether it is asking the disciples in the Gospel of Mark who folks say that He is, to this scene with Pilate, to the confession of the thief on the cross who realized s that he is being crucified alongside royalty.
Jesus fully revealed to the world what the Kingdom of God looked like, a place of welcome, a place of healing, a place of acceptance, a place of grace, a place of provision, a place of wholeness. And yet…and yet…and yet we live in a world that seems to be marked by anything but those glimpses of the Kingdom.  We continue to live in a world that more closely reflects the brokenness of the Fall than the Kingdom of God.
It is because we, like the Hebrew people, have clamored after kings in this world and rejected God from being King over us.[ii]  Rather than live out every moment of every day under the Lordship, the Kingship of Christ…we make our careers king of our lives, we choose to seek out the kingdom of pleasure and comfort, we worship our ethnicity, we bow before thrones of possessions, we give unquestioning allegiance to politicians that tickle our itching ears with words we want to hear, and we do these things without remembering that we cannot claim Jesus as our King and serve these other kings as well.  Jesus reminds us that we cannot serve two masters, or two kings, for we “will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.”[iii] We find ourselves in a world where chaos and division run rampant.
What happens when we chase after and bow down all these false kings?  Despite the fact that the One True King reigns, as He has since Creation, we find ourselves where God’s people found themselves near the end of the time of judges in Israel…a time of which it was said, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”[iv]
My brothers and sisters, that is where we find ourselves today.  We live in a world, even in a nation, in which there is no king, a time in which very few acknowledge that God is our One True King.  We live in a time and place where not only the people outside the doors of the church live as if God is not King, but way too often those of us inside the walls of the church do not live their lives as if God is our King.  We give the first fruits of our labors to ourselves…we give the predominance of our time to our work, our social groups, our friends, our families, our recreation, and make room for God if there is nothing else on our calendars…we surrender our lives to the parts of God’s Word we are comfortable with or we think others should follow, while ignoring or laughing off the parts that make us uncomfortable.
In some places in the world, my brothers and sisters, refusal to live under the authority of the nation’s leadership, whether it be a king, a dictator, a president, or a cleric, results in anything from an invitation to “leave if you don’t like the way we do things,” to imprisonment, or even death.  However, the True King of the entire universe does not rule like that…He continually reaches out, inviting all to come and live within His Kingdom.  He offers forgiveness, mercy, and grace and opens His Kingdom to all who will seek asylum there…here…
Today, my brothers and sisters, we all need to wrestle with the question that Pilate wrestled with: Is Jesus King?  If we can say “yes,” then praise be to God.  However, if we have struggled with giving our allegiance to anything or anyone other than God and God alone, God invites me, invites you, right now to reject those false kings and bow before Him alone…and when we do so, we will find ourselves living in a Kingdom, unlike those of this world, that will have no end…
The invitation is there, will you declare Jesus to be Your King today…will You give Him and Him alone Your unwavering allegiance…from this day and forever more?
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.


[i] 1 Samuel 8:11–17
[ii] 1st Samuel 8:7
[iii] Matthew 6:24
[iv] Judges 21:25

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