26 November 2006

John 18:33-37
Reign of Christ Sunday

Pilate was in a fix. Torn as it were. Now don’t feel too sorry for him—he is known to have been a cruel and heartless ruler. He was the face of the Roman government in Judea; the envoy of Caesar, reporting directly to Caesar. And he ruled with a particularly heavy and fierce hand.

But on this day, the day we heard about in our gospel reading from John, Pilate faced two realms. He stood there between the realm of Jesus and the kingdom of Caesar. If you read the proceedings of the whole trial, as John puts it in his gospel starting at verse 28 up to verse 16 in the next chapter, you’ll notice that Pilate goes back and forth several times between the crowd outside and Jesus, whom he is interrogating.

He faces the two realms: the world, as played by the crowd, and the realm of God, as exemplified by Jesus. The world is particularly severe in their blood thirst that day. They cry out for Jesus’ crucifixion. Pilate in the meantime is trying to discover what it is about Jesus that warrants death.

Pilate is indeed caught in between the two. On one hand, he doesn’t want a riot on his hands from the crowd. Nor does he want angry letters from the Jewish leadership going back to his boss in Rome. But, on the other hand, he has a man here who seems innocent. And, maybe, just maybe, Pilate caught an ever-so-brief glimpse of Jesus’ realm; that realm of love and peace. Can a man like Pilate catch a glimpse such as that? I suppose so; the question is whether he cares enough about that glimpse to act.

But Pilate continued that day to face the two realms: the one of Caesar, the other of Jesus. Between these two realms, he hovered, sometimes touching down in the world, at other times facing the realm of God as represented by this itinerant Jewish teacher.

Between two worlds. How often do we find ourselves in that position? Facing the world and its enticements on the one hand while recognizing that God’s realm is beckoning us on the other. We stand, astride the two, like the ancient Colossus of Rhodes stood astride the Mediterranean in ancient Greece.

The kingdom of this world uses all its powers to lure us into its web. We just have to watch an hour of tv to find out that we’re not driving the right car, buying our kids the right toys or drinking the right beers. If only we’d buy the right car, all would be well in our world. Our kids would grow up to be the brightest and best with the correct toys. And of course, drinking the right beer gets us the most beautiful babes; or hunks, depending on what you’re looking for.

This world will beguile you with its methods. It’s easy to fall under the spell of this realm. We do it every day, when we ignore a homeless person at our feet; or when we react with contempt and perhaps rage when another driver somehow wrongs us. We are under the spell of this world’s realm when we buy more things to soothe our pain, or when we seek solace through material possessions.

This world’s realm was signified by Caesar in Pilate’s day but now I think that Fifth Avenue is a more likely candidate to represent the realm of our world today. We crave things because we’re bombarded constantly by messages that you’re not good enough until you own more.

I believe it was John D. Rockefeller who was asked how much money is enough and he was quoted as saying, “One more dollar.” We’re never quite there to enough.

We’re entering the time of our most rampant consumption for our culture. Indeed, with “Shopping Friday” already behind us, the time has come, in our culture and society, for us to buy, buy, buy. That is clearly a sign of our world’s realm.

Another sign of our world’s realm would be the wars and fighting that are going on. Christ’s realm doesn’t include war or fighting. Throughout the earth we have battles going on: in the Sudan, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, Iraq and so many others. The world’s realm continues to be one of greed and fighting: fighting often in the name of greed.

As terrible as I’ve drawn it, we are more comfortable in this world’s realm. We walk a tightrope between the two realms, sometimes favoring one side, sometimes glancing at the other. But clearly we are part and parcel of the world’s realm, catching glimpses, maybe like Pilate, of the other realm; the realm of Jesus.

We, as professed Christians, need to keep Christ’s realm before us always. We need to keep in sight this kingdom of peace and joy. It’s available to us. But it is a decision that we have to make. We have to cast off this world and work for the coming of God’s realm in our time. A time when wars cease and no one, child or adult, goes to bed hungry or without a roof over their head. A time when our elected government doesn’t matter anymore and we are ruled by one whose word is trustworthy and immutable.

It is a balancing act: living in this world but keeping an eye on Christ’s realm. But viewing the beauty of that kingdom will leave us wanting more; it will leave us with an urge to work to bring it to full fruition; work that will take us to the places where God is needed most.