The Bound King
John 18:31-38
It seems to be such a contrast of images. Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of worship before Advent begins… it is in all respects New Year’s Eve for Christians. Throughout the year we have walked through all the different seasons of the church, anticipating the coming of Christ, celebrating his arrival at Christmas… his revealing in Epiphany… his sacrifice in Lent, and the glory of Easter. During the season of Pentecost… we focus on how we respond to God’s grace… and just as we’re getting ready to start the cycle all over again, we have this powerful image of Christ as King.
This is all well and good… but when we do encounter Jesus in John’s Gospel, he is anything but king-like. We find Jesus standing before Governor Pontius Pilate; a prisoner, bound and humiliated. He awaits a horrible, suffocating death upon a bare wood cross. The only crown he will wear is one of thorns, and only stripes of office he will carry are the cruel welts from a whip. It would seem we are left with nothing to celebrate. The only thing the Gospel of John gives us to consider is the conversation between Jesus and Pilate, and Pilate’s question of contempt, “What is truth?”
It turns our whole notion of what a King is on its ear. This image is so confusing… because we proclaim Christ to be king, and here he is a bound prisoner in front of a Roman official known for his brutality. It’s even more confusing because of the conversation that Pilate has with Jesus, where the two of them seem to be talking past each other. An even more confusing bit comes in the actual translation of the passage, where depending on which English translation of the Bible that you read, the conversation between Jesus and Pilate goes two different ways. Maybe it’s intentionally confusing, because at the end of it all, we are reasonably asking “What is truth?”
John’s Gospel has a wonderful way of telling the story on two levels... Pilate asks basic, straightforward questions, and Jesus speaks of something far greater.
Pilate is asking about tangible, hands-on, practical information. Jesus speaks about the cosmic reality of God that surrounds us. You can hear this come out of the conversation between the two men.
Pilate asks, “Are you a the king of the Jews?”
Jesus answers, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”
Pilate gets defensive, replying: “I am not a Jew am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me —what have you done?”
It seems we get an answer, but not quite, when Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world; if my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews; but as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
Pilate sees this as an opening. Finally, we have a confession! Claiming to be a king is a threat to the Roman Empire, and Pilate thinks to himself that he can do something about this. It seems as if Jesus confesses to the charge when he talks about his kingdom. Jesus can be filed, categorized, and executed...
In order to confirm what he has heard, Pilate asks Jesus again, “So you are a king?”
The answer, however, is not what he expects; “You say that I am a king.”
Jesus tells the Roman commander, “those are your words Pilate, not mine.”
At this point Pilate probably thinks that the guards have knocked the strange prisoner silly. Where he thought he had a confession to the charge that is brought before him, things are suddenly turned around again. Pilate begins to wonder who is really on trial here.
This is a conversation that seems to go nowhere, or at very least, the two men talk past each other. Pilate asks Jesus not once but twice, “Are you a king?”, and twice he does not get a straight answer. He wants to know whether or not Jesus considers himself a king, and therefore, whether or not Jesus is a political threat.
Jesus answers, “For this I was born, for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” Jesus neither denies nor confirms that he is a king. Jesus claims the role to “bear witness to the truth.” But what is truth?
When I was leading the Bible for Dummies course earlier this fall, I made a few recommendations as to where to start when it comes to reading the Bible. When it comes to reading the Gospels, John is at the bottom of the list. Start with Mark, then Matthew, then Luke… then Acts… read Paul’s letters… but leave the Gospel of John until the rest of that story sinks in. Why? Because the gospel of John is full of multi-layered storylines like this: with concepts, ideas. and theology that already assumes that we know the basic plot. Jesus and Pilate are talking on two totally different levels, trying to come to an understanding of what it means to call Christ King.
Pilate is talking at this very earthly level. Either Jesus claims to be a king or not… and his only frame of reference is someone who lives in a palace, determines policy and order. Most of us are on this level… there are some English translations of the Bible that actually have Jesus agreeing with Pilate. Maybe because the translators wanted so much for Jesus to affirm a much more concrete definition of what he means…
But Jesus, as we encounter him in John’s Gospel, doesn’t work that way. Truth is not a list of independently verifiable facts… but is something much larger, something far more profound, reaching far beyond our conventional understanding of the word. This isn’t simply a statement of a particular point of view, nor is it something that can be easily defined or put into a box. Truth, at least how John talks about it, is the indefinable reality of God. Truth is the affirmation that God is present in creation with us, and nowhere is it revealed more fully than in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. How we connect to that is what reveals meaning and purpose in our lives… and how we relate that to each other.
The fact that Jesus appears before Pilate bound in chains should be our first clue that we’re looking at something different here. John goes out of his way to talk about Jesus as being something that simple concepts like “King” are not enough to encompass the true profound reality of God. John uses this contrasting scene of Jesus next to an earthly authority who is simply not able to understand who he really is. His question of contempt “What is Truth?” is to show how completely out-of-tune and outclassed earthly authorities are when it comes to truly understanding God.
But so what? After all of this, most of us are probably still sitting there with Pilate wondering what on earth Jesus is getting at. What is this kingdom that he is talking about? Why does Jesus seems so evasive to a direct question as to whether or not he is a king?
Even when Jesus appears before Pilate, bound in chains, we really get this sense that these chains can’t contain what Jesus is about. Maybe that’s the message of the story. They way that John tells this part of the gospel story is in one of contrasts… he uses the images to contrast with the words.
Jesus stands there, bound and in chains, but in his soul, in who he is, he is free. He freely speaks about the Kingdom of God. Pilate by contrast is a free man, a Roman citizen with the authority to rule over this part of the Empire… and yet he is shackled by his own ideas and limited understanding. He seems unable or unwilling to accept there is something new and profound standing right in front of him. When he spits out his reply to Jesus “What is truth?” He shows how much a prisoner he is to his own ideology and culture.
It is the contrast of the bound king, the free ruler… and yet who really is the one who is free?
In a very practical sense, maybe what John is after in telling this story is to warn us as to how we can become so trapped by our own culture, our own ideas, that we can actually miss God standing right in front of us. I’ve said this before that sometimes we are so preoccupied with trying to find God where we expect God to show up, that we miss the most obvious standing right in front of us. Yet as we learn from the whole of John’s gospel it isn’t just secular authorities like Pilate, who miss this, but people who are widely perceived to be profoundly religious can also let their own ideology bind them and blind them from seeing God right in their midst… as John’s gospel proclaims at the opening: “the Word became flesh and lived amongst us.”
Maybe Pilate remained a prisoner of his own ideas… but that doesn’t mean we are tied to the same fate. On this Christ the King Sunday remember the image of the bound king who is yet free, and the free ruler who is a prisoner. Who would we rather be?
Amen
It seems to be such a contrast of images. Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last day of worship before Advent begins… it is in all respects New Year’s Eve for Christians. Throughout the year we have walked through all the different seasons of the church, anticipating the coming of Christ, celebrating his arrival at Christmas… his revealing in Epiphany… his sacrifice in Lent, and the glory of Easter. During the season of Pentecost… we focus on how we respond to God’s grace… and just as we’re getting ready to start the cycle all over again, we have this powerful image of Christ as King.
This is all well and good… but when we do encounter Jesus in John’s Gospel, he is anything but king-like. We find Jesus standing before Governor Pontius Pilate; a prisoner, bound and humiliated. He awaits a horrible, suffocating death upon a bare wood cross. The only crown he will wear is one of thorns, and only stripes of office he will carry are the cruel welts from a whip. It would seem we are left with nothing to celebrate. The only thing the Gospel of John gives us to consider is the conversation between Jesus and Pilate, and Pilate’s question of contempt, “What is truth?”
It turns our whole notion of what a King is on its ear. This image is so confusing… because we proclaim Christ to be king, and here he is a bound prisoner in front of a Roman official known for his brutality. It’s even more confusing because of the conversation that Pilate has with Jesus, where the two of them seem to be talking past each other. An even more confusing bit comes in the actual translation of the passage, where depending on which English translation of the Bible that you read, the conversation between Jesus and Pilate goes two different ways. Maybe it’s intentionally confusing, because at the end of it all, we are reasonably asking “What is truth?”
John’s Gospel has a wonderful way of telling the story on two levels... Pilate asks basic, straightforward questions, and Jesus speaks of something far greater.
Pilate is asking about tangible, hands-on, practical information. Jesus speaks about the cosmic reality of God that surrounds us. You can hear this come out of the conversation between the two men.
Pilate asks, “Are you a the king of the Jews?”
Jesus answers, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?”
Pilate gets defensive, replying: “I am not a Jew am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me —what have you done?”
It seems we get an answer, but not quite, when Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world; if my kingdom were from this world, my servants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews; but as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
Pilate sees this as an opening. Finally, we have a confession! Claiming to be a king is a threat to the Roman Empire, and Pilate thinks to himself that he can do something about this. It seems as if Jesus confesses to the charge when he talks about his kingdom. Jesus can be filed, categorized, and executed...
In order to confirm what he has heard, Pilate asks Jesus again, “So you are a king?”
The answer, however, is not what he expects; “You say that I am a king.”
Jesus tells the Roman commander, “those are your words Pilate, not mine.”
At this point Pilate probably thinks that the guards have knocked the strange prisoner silly. Where he thought he had a confession to the charge that is brought before him, things are suddenly turned around again. Pilate begins to wonder who is really on trial here.
This is a conversation that seems to go nowhere, or at very least, the two men talk past each other. Pilate asks Jesus not once but twice, “Are you a king?”, and twice he does not get a straight answer. He wants to know whether or not Jesus considers himself a king, and therefore, whether or not Jesus is a political threat.
Jesus answers, “For this I was born, for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” Jesus neither denies nor confirms that he is a king. Jesus claims the role to “bear witness to the truth.” But what is truth?
When I was leading the Bible for Dummies course earlier this fall, I made a few recommendations as to where to start when it comes to reading the Bible. When it comes to reading the Gospels, John is at the bottom of the list. Start with Mark, then Matthew, then Luke… then Acts… read Paul’s letters… but leave the Gospel of John until the rest of that story sinks in. Why? Because the gospel of John is full of multi-layered storylines like this: with concepts, ideas. and theology that already assumes that we know the basic plot. Jesus and Pilate are talking on two totally different levels, trying to come to an understanding of what it means to call Christ King.
Pilate is talking at this very earthly level. Either Jesus claims to be a king or not… and his only frame of reference is someone who lives in a palace, determines policy and order. Most of us are on this level… there are some English translations of the Bible that actually have Jesus agreeing with Pilate. Maybe because the translators wanted so much for Jesus to affirm a much more concrete definition of what he means…
But Jesus, as we encounter him in John’s Gospel, doesn’t work that way. Truth is not a list of independently verifiable facts… but is something much larger, something far more profound, reaching far beyond our conventional understanding of the word. This isn’t simply a statement of a particular point of view, nor is it something that can be easily defined or put into a box. Truth, at least how John talks about it, is the indefinable reality of God. Truth is the affirmation that God is present in creation with us, and nowhere is it revealed more fully than in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. How we connect to that is what reveals meaning and purpose in our lives… and how we relate that to each other.
The fact that Jesus appears before Pilate bound in chains should be our first clue that we’re looking at something different here. John goes out of his way to talk about Jesus as being something that simple concepts like “King” are not enough to encompass the true profound reality of God. John uses this contrasting scene of Jesus next to an earthly authority who is simply not able to understand who he really is. His question of contempt “What is Truth?” is to show how completely out-of-tune and outclassed earthly authorities are when it comes to truly understanding God.
But so what? After all of this, most of us are probably still sitting there with Pilate wondering what on earth Jesus is getting at. What is this kingdom that he is talking about? Why does Jesus seems so evasive to a direct question as to whether or not he is a king?
Even when Jesus appears before Pilate, bound in chains, we really get this sense that these chains can’t contain what Jesus is about. Maybe that’s the message of the story. They way that John tells this part of the gospel story is in one of contrasts… he uses the images to contrast with the words.
Jesus stands there, bound and in chains, but in his soul, in who he is, he is free. He freely speaks about the Kingdom of God. Pilate by contrast is a free man, a Roman citizen with the authority to rule over this part of the Empire… and yet he is shackled by his own ideas and limited understanding. He seems unable or unwilling to accept there is something new and profound standing right in front of him. When he spits out his reply to Jesus “What is truth?” He shows how much a prisoner he is to his own ideology and culture.
It is the contrast of the bound king, the free ruler… and yet who really is the one who is free?
In a very practical sense, maybe what John is after in telling this story is to warn us as to how we can become so trapped by our own culture, our own ideas, that we can actually miss God standing right in front of us. I’ve said this before that sometimes we are so preoccupied with trying to find God where we expect God to show up, that we miss the most obvious standing right in front of us. Yet as we learn from the whole of John’s gospel it isn’t just secular authorities like Pilate, who miss this, but people who are widely perceived to be profoundly religious can also let their own ideology bind them and blind them from seeing God right in their midst… as John’s gospel proclaims at the opening: “the Word became flesh and lived amongst us.”
Maybe Pilate remained a prisoner of his own ideas… but that doesn’t mean we are tied to the same fate. On this Christ the King Sunday remember the image of the bound king who is yet free, and the free ruler who is a prisoner. Who would we rather be?
Amen
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