pentecost 26 Year B

2 Samuel 23: 1-7 NRSV text
Psalm 132 NRSV text
Revelation 1: 4b-8 NRSV text
John 18: 33-37 NRSV text

Isn’t it a shame that on the last Sunday of Year B we move from Mark’s gospel, rather than finishing it? After going through then year with Mark, it feels like abandoning a novel at the penultimate chapter! However, because that belongs to Easter, here we are in John’s gospel o the feast of Christ the King. And it’s a rich section! John’s theology of the cross is that Jesus is the crucified king – the true King of the Jews. His death is his coronation – the “lifting up” that will be the means by which Jesus “draws all people to himself”. Now it’s possible to read John and feel drawn into a world completely alien from the world of the synoptic gospels. Yet it’s also possible – and importantly legitimate – to read John as a deep theological reflection on the synoptic tradition. In other words, it’s important to pay close attention to the way in which John’s story of Jesus is in close dialogue with the earlier gospel tradition. I want, therefore, to look at this whole section of his gospel (Jesus before Pilate) in order to illuminate just what is happening in the section designated for today’s reading.

Kingdom, Passover and sacrifice (Revelation 1: 4b-8/Psalm 132)
I don’t much care about the question of authorship of the book of Revelation. It’s a book that is so thoroughly Johannine in its theology, style ands imagery that it is enormously fruitful to read it alongside the Fourth Gospel as though coming from the same pen.

Look at the section for today. John’s theology of the kingship of Jesus is inseparable from his understanding that Jesus is the Passover Lamb – “the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” (John 1: 29). That is what he means when he says that Jesus has “loved us and freed us from our sins by his blood” (Revelation 1: 4). He goes on in the same breath to say that we who are thus “freed from sin” have been liberated to become a “kingdom of priests”, serving the One whose “glory and dominion” is eternal.

Read that against Jesus’ statement to Pilate: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here” (John 18: 36). The dominant history of the interpretation of John’s gospel has been that, while the synoptic tradition presents Jesus as proclaiming salvation for this world, John presents salvation as something from this world. In other words, John’s Jesus is a spiritualised, world-denying figure, whose focus is on the afterlife. John’s gospel, it is assumed, provokes the immediate question: “If you died tonight, where would you be?” as though that were the most important question. If Jesus’ kingdom is something other than this world – some different place – then what happens here doesn’t matter all that much. Christians, it would seem, should be concerning themselves about people’s “spiritual lives”. The life of faith is “preparation for the hereafter”, rather than “transformation of the here and now”.

This is to misread John. I’m glad the Lectionary’s taken us to Revelation, because it helps us to orientate ourselves correctly. Remember – John is theologian of the Incarnation par excellence! That means that the “movement” in his thought and writings is always from heaven to earth – not the other way round! In Jesus, God comes to us, taking on human form. For what purpose? Not so that we might “escape” from earth to heaven. Look at Revelation 21: 1-5: here the picture is of the transformation – the renewing of the earth – through “heaven coming down to earth”. God, says John, “pitches tent among us” – comes to dwell with us. And all things are made new!

John’s story of Jesus before Pilate and the revelation of the glorified Jesus in Revelation is his “take” on the kingdom of God. He makes the same point as the synoptic authors, but differently: Jesus resists kingship understood in Davidic monarchy terms because his kingdom has different rules. It isn’t about the exercise of power over others – it is about liberation. And here in Revelation 1 he makes clear what Jesus’ kingdom is about: it is about the reign of forgiveness and freedom, brought about through Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. Jesus is king on the cross because he is the incarnation of sacrificial love and forgiveness, which is what God’s kingdom is all about.

A king like David, but not like David (2 Samuel 23: 1-7)
As we read David’s last words in the context of Christ the King, two things stand out. The first is David’s idealised self-description of his rule (vv 3-5a), which stands in such contrast to the ambiguous reality of his story. David is a human king. He manifests all the ambiguities of monarchy that the prophet Samuel warns against when Israel asks for “a king like all the other nations”. That David is regarded as a success (by Yahweh as well as by the nation) is a mark of Yahweh’s grace. David’s intentions are good – and intentions count with Yahweh! Ultimately, the verdict on David’s reign is based on the fact that Yahweh chooses David as the king with whom to make the covenant. To be where David is, is to be where Yahweh is (Psalm 132: 6ff). Yahweh has chosen Zion. It is Yahweh’s free choice. It is the fact that Yahweh acts for Israel’s benefit that makes David a great king, rather than David himself. There is no such ambiguity with Jesus. Rather, there is complete continuity between the character of the God who acts through him and Jesus who is king.

The second factor to note is David’s closing words about the godless. They are judged – condemned and “thrown away … entirely consumed in fire” (vv 6-7). Jesus is not a king who metes out just deserts; neither is God’s kingdom a kingdom in which we mortals get what we deserve. What we deserve is condemnation; what we get is mercy, forgiveness and freedom. Yahweh’s kingdom is in fact radically unlike the Davidic (and all human) monarchy, because it is the kingdom of grace. That is the sense in which Jesus’ kingdom is “not of this world”.

Jesus before Pilate
Let’s look more closely at this theology in storied form. In John 18: 28 the Jews bring Jesus to Pilate. John notes that they “do not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover” (v 28). The time is early morning, Thursday (not Friday, as in the synoptic tradition). There is no Passover meal in John’s gospel because the true Passover is Jesus. John has Jesus crucified at the exact moment when the Passover lambs are being killed in the temple.

We need, therefore, to see the irony here: the high priest’s people deliver the Passover Lamb to Pilate – and seek to avoid defilement in order to eat the Passover! And Pilate’s first question to Jesus is, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (v33).

The answer is, of course, “Yes” – but not in the way that either Pilate or the Jews understand. Again, we’re into John’s “take” on the synoptic debate about Messiahship and royalty – deep into his version of “kingdom of God” territory.

The Barabbas story takes on a particular slant in John’s gospel. The name Barabbas means, “son of the father”. But in John’s gospel, Jesus’ innocence of the crimes with which he is charged take on particular significance. Pilate emphasises that releasing either Jesus or Barabbas is a “Passover” tradition. We already know that Jesus is the Lamb of God – the Passover Lamb. Pilate’s declaration of Jesus’ innocence is therefore the priestly declaration that the Passover Lamb is “spotless”. So the Son of the Father, who is the Passover Lamb, is also King. But he is a king who suffers – hence the crown he wears is the crown of thorns. The purple robe, draped in mockery, ironically proclaims Jesus’ real authority. But it is an authority not recognised by the soldiers.

Again and again in the narrative, Pilate declares Jesus innocent, attempts to release him and proclaims him King. He is their king – the King of the Jews. Yet they declare, “We have no king but Caesar”. It is at this point – the point at which the people have roundly rejected Jesus as king and declared their loyalty to a foreign ruler – that Pilate hands Jesus over to them to be crucified (19: 16).

John still isn’t satisfied. The truth about Jesus needs to be told. The king needs to be enthroned as king for all to see. And so, in John’s narrative, Pilate has the inscription written in all the known languages of the world: “The King of the Jews”. In the face of opposition, he insists on having the last word. “What is truth?” Pilate asks Jesus (in the verse left out by the Lectionary compilers!). Pilate has learned the truth in his talking to Jesus – and proclaims it! This is the King!

Jesus is “lifted up” – enthroned – on the cross. What is seen and proclaimed as truth (saving truth) will one day be recognised by everyone in the world (Revelation 1: 7) when “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him”. What we are to recognise is that true royalty – divine royalty – is truly to be seen in the battered, beaten, thorn-torn, nail- and spear-pierced body that is Jesus. This is the Lamb of God that is taking away the sin of the world. This is the King of Love. To recognise Jesus as King is to be drawn into the story of forgiving, liberating love; to become part of the “kingdom of priests”, ministering this love and transforming the world as Jesus transforms us.

Amen.