Preached at Holy Cross, Seend
John 18. 33-38; Revelation 1. 4-8
“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight…”
I’m currently reading a book called Stalin’s War by an American historian called Sean McMeekin. It’s grippingly written, but also a fairly contrarian take on the Second World War, so it has been rather controversial. This week, I found myself engrossed in his account of the build-up to Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Hitler and Stalin were big men, with grandiose ambitions to impose their hellish visions of utopia on Earth. These icons of tyranny, and the terrible, grand-scale, war between them will, I suspect, continue to fascinate people for long centuries after the Second World War has otherwise been forgotten. But for all that these men casually disposed of the lives of millions, Hitler’s empire collapsed barely four years after that invasion, while it is now more than a generation ago since the Union that Stalin led collapsed. They were big men, and terrible men, but nothing now remains of what they tried to create.
Pontius Pilate was also a big man. He was the governor of a province of the Roman Empire – admittedly, not a very large or wealthy one, but he was a power in the land. He was a man who was used to pronouncing judgement, especially on those ranked well below him, such as the strange holy men from the fringes of the Jewish religion who occasionally stirred up emotions in Jerusalem.
As it turns out, when the particular wandering preacher in today’s Gospel claimed, in a very strange phrase, that He was the ruler of a kingdom that was not of this world, He was telling the truth. He was indeed a king, a far greater king than either Pilate or the Jewish authorities could have imagined. He was king of the universe, God Himself, made incarnate as a human being. In handing Himself over to be condemned, Jesus Christ, God made human, judges every nation and every era, including our own, and their pretentions to justice and truth.
Unlike Hitler and Stalin and all those Caesars and shahs – and unlike all those Victorias and Henrys – this king does not impose His will on the world, but instead humbles Himself to accepting the world’s will, even though that is a cruel miscarriage of justice followed by a terrible death. Jesus here upends the standards of the world; not “might is right”, but instead that the purest love can never be destroyed, even if we die.How hard the lessons of that are to live out—sometimes it seems hardest of all for the Church.
And what is the instrument by which Christ judges the world? By the truth.
And this is a truth, that all empires and states, all human ideologies and organisations, all human beings themselves are doomed to commit wrong, even when they set out with the best of intentions—which of course, they often don’t. None of us can stand up to a perfect standard of goodness. Even when we try to do good, we find ourselves doing wrong things, at least some of the time.
Perhaps this is the price of being made in the likeness of God. We could not be made in God’s image without free will that we inevitably abuse sometimes; or without creativity that sometimes leads us to imagine wrong.It was to save us from the consequences of the dark side of our nature, the side of us that revels in wrongdoing, that Christ submitted Himself to Pilate’s judgement.
Our first reading, from the Revelation, was written by a persecuted Christian in a place of exile, perhaps two generations after the encounter between Christ and Pontius Pilate. Revelation can be a very odd document; yet no true vision of the eternal realms could be anything other than weird. What makes Revelation’s mystical visions so powerful is that they bring “the ultimate future into direct relation to John’s own present”[1], and therefore also to our present, because the things of which it writes – power and human nature – have not changed since John’s time.
Revelation’s author was oppressed by the same Roman Empire that had put Christ to death. Yet this strange mystical letter doesn’t call for political reform or revolution, but instead points toward a new kingdom that will be established when Jesus Christ returns.
What do you think about the idea that Jesus Christ will return? Do you think it’s mad? Be honest. Is it one of those embarrassing things that crackpot fundamentalists shout about but which isn’t really for sensible Anglicans like us, thank you very much? But in the Creed every Sunday we say, “I believe… he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.”
Let’s just pretend that we really all do believe that, and it isn’t just an empty formula we repeat without thinking too much. Does the prospect of Jesus Christ returning to judge the world frighten you? Why?
As this morning’s reading from the Revelation reminds us, He “loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood”. Jesus Christ loves you and He died to free you from your sins; He longs to vindicate you, not to condemn you.
There’s more: Christ didn’t just free us from our sins, the letter goes on, but “made us kings and priests unto God and his Father”. On the Cross, Christ made us, His followers, kings and priests of an eternal and perfect kingdom. That doesn’t make us perfect – priests have plenty of sins, I can assure you.
What sort of kings are we called to be? Christ should be our pattern. We are called to that humble, non-violent refusal to submit to the lies of the world that Christ showed before Pilate. We are called to resist the delusion that the world would be prefect if only we got our own way whenever we wanted; we are called to resist the delusion that we are always right. We are called to leave judgement to Christ. Although we might not like the sound of that, He will judge more justly than any human court—and without that judgement, we live in a universe where Stalin got away with it.
Most of all, if Christ rules the world, then men like Hitler and Stalin no longer will—we have plenty to look forward to about His return.
Pilate’s political career came to an end when he was dismissed from his post for misgovernment. He was sent to Rome to answer before Emperor Tiberias, but the Emperor died before his case could be heard. We know nothing of his earthly life after that. But if we have faith, we know that Pilate will be judged by the same Jesus Christ that he once condemned to death.
So too will everyone, alive and dead. The Hitlers and Stalins of human history will have to submit to Christ just as they sought to make others submit to them. So too will the Caesars and shahs and Henrys and Victorias—and you and me. For at the name of Jesus, every knee shall indeed bow.
We should not fear Him for He is the king of love, who submitted Himself to judgement so that He might save the universe from the power of lies and death, and open the way for us into eternal life.
Now glory and honour be to the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the Father who made us, the Son who redeemed us, the Spirit who sustains us, this day and forevermore. Amen.
[1] John Bauckham, ‘Revelation’ in The Oxford Bible Commentary, p1288.
Top imag: Bernardo Luini, Christ Crowned With Thorns (ca. 1522). Now hangs in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.
You have a gift of orientating Anglican’s toward the fundamentals of their Christian confession.
Thank you, that’s quite a compliment. More Christians – of all sorts – should think more about the fundamental and eternal things.