“My kingdom isn’t from here.”
Mosaic experiential service sermon
3 July 2011
John 18:33-38
Perritte Memorial UMC | Nacogdoches, TX
Sharing with you all tonight about what it means to be Christian & America is something I approach with fear + trembling. There’s a lot of posturing & shouting, many accusations are thrown around when we enter this ground, so much conflict that makes it difficult to even hear clearly. There’s actually a lot of heat and very little light being generated amongst all that friction.
So what are we to do? Should we ignore the topic altogether? Or perhaps we should just stick to one party line or another, and sign over the deeds of our hearts and minds to others completely.
Those paths lead ultimately to faithlessness and madness. If we are to be faithful, we need to have some conversation amongst ourselves humbly, seeking wisdom.
So rather than beginning with “Is America a Christian country?” or “One nation under God” or “separation of church & state,” let’s take a few words from Jesus as our starting point. In this passage, he is having a conversation with Pontius Pilate before his crucifixion. Note how Jesus is deliberately (I think) confusing and challenging, and how Pilate fails to ask the right questions, much less discover answers.
Pilate went back into the palace. He summoned Jesus and asked, Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, Do you say this on your own or have others spoken to you about me? Pilate responded, I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done? Jesus replied, My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here. So you are a king? Pilate said. Jesus answered, You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice. What is truth? Pilate asked. (John 18:33-38, CEB)
A few things to observe: When we talk about kingdom, it’s a translation of the Greek word basileia, but another way you could say it is “empire.” And Jesus is quite clear that his stands in opposition to the empires of the world. But it isn’t just that Jesus’ basileia is the kingdom of heaven — from or in a different location. It also operates according to a different dynamic than in Rome or elsewhere.
Power works differently in Jesus’ basileia than in that of Rome or anywhere else. You aren’t blessed or privileged because you come from wealth or have authority, or due to ancestry or class or privilege or country of origin or anything else. They come from being poor in spirit, or from being one who mourns. They come from peacemaking, not aggressive police action. It’s a way of life that blesses those who curse you, that turns the extra cheek, goes the first mile required by imperial soldiers and then volunteers to go a second. It means giving generously of your own when it’s asked for, of giving up your extra clothing if someone takes you to court for the shirt off your back. And in case you think I’m just making any of this up, I encourage you to read Matthew 5 carefully!
And so Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes of this kingdom: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Why? Because following Christ is costly discipleship. To enter into the basileia of God requires us to live our lives in the same shape that Jesus lived his: a cross. This cruciform life is foreign to governments and empires, to kingdoms and republics. It goes beyond an equitable burden-sharing and demands self-sacrifice. And it does not require of its members to commit violence; it is the peaceable kingdom.
Stanley Hauerwas: “I do not have a foreign policy. I have something better – a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill.”
The self-sacrifice, the unyielding pursuit of holiness, the entrenched unwillingness to commit violence, and the commitment to God’s preferential option for the poor are all things which governments cannot comprehend nor embrace. Liberty isn’t just to be rid of tyranny & oppression, it’s freedom to be a holy people. freedom for, not only freedom from. It’s to recognize justice exists beyond the laws our courts enact for our citizens: a justice which crosses borders & group boundaries. It’s a peace which beats swords into plowshares & places a divinely-inspired creativity at the center of resolving conflicts, displacing violence & aggression. This is the comprehensive, all-encompassing kingdom which Jesus invites us to enter & enact.
I’m reminded of the story told of Karl Barth visiting the seminary at the University of Chicago. Someone got up to the microphone at the end of the talk and asked him to share what he thought, arguably the finest theological mind of the century, what he understood was at the core of Christian faith. Barth paused for a moment, and then began to sing:
“Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong; they are weak, but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.”
It is only the Christian faith — not the faith of democracy nor empire — that tells us we are weak, you & me, our societies & governments; and it is only the Christian faith that tells us who loves us in our weakness, and not just tells us, but gives us a community in the Church which is a foretaste of the coming Kingdom of God, in which all experience life together in righteousness, justice, peace, and joy.
“Jesus loves me, this I know…”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Image of Nave of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo used under Creative Commons license (Attribution, Noncommercial)
