Texts: 2 Samuel 23:1-7; Revelation 1:4b-8; John 18:33-37
Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year. To understand these lessons this morning it helps to know a little about the history of the people of Israel and the Eastern Mediterranean region. The people who would eventually become Israel were the ‘hapiru’ which means ‘the wanderers’, because they did not come from any one place. They were a wandering group of Semitic people made up of different races. What they had in common was the Semitic language, and they spoke mainly two versions of it in ancient times, Hebrew and Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. These people were all loosely related through Abraham.
God was the ruler of the ancient Hebrew people, yet there came a time when they wanted a king like other peoples in the region, and they begged God for a leader and protector. Kings in those days led armies into battle. So, very reluctantly God sent a prophet to the Hebrews to anoint a king for them. Jerusalem would be his home and he would build a temple there to worship God.
God had the prophet Samuel anoint Saul the first king of Israel. And after a while, Saul went crazy, so God had Samuel anoint David, but David was a notorious adulterer. Before David died, the Lord told Samuel to anoint his son Solomon as king of Israel. But despite his wisdom, Solomon married many foreign wives who did not worship the God of Israel, and Solomon eventually began to worship their pagan gods. Though Solomon did build the temple in Jerusalem, and that was his greatest achievement, because of his idolatry and the waywardness it brought to his people, Solomon would be the last king of the united Jewish kingdom.
The kingdom of Israel would be divided into north and south, and they would fight each other. The kings of Judah in the south and Israel in the north would become weaker and weaker, and they would lose battle after battle to foreign invaders, because of the kings’ personal flaws. These later kings had not been anointed by God. They were less and less than godly men.
The Hebrew people would be taken into exile to Babylon and Assyria. They were made to be slaves, as they had been in Egypt in the days of Moses. They would suffer immensely for a long period of time. They began to long for someone to save them, they longed for the anointed one who would be their Savior, but they were expecting someone who would be yet another earthly king, who would come carrying a sword, to lead them into battle and defeat their enemies.
So, the first lesson today has to do with King David. He is about to die from old age and his last official words are important. “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land…”
David cannot be describing himself. He knows he is a very flawed man.
Where is the just ruler? Where is the ruler who fears God? Who is the light of morning?
History has proven there is no one who can be this person.
The Revelation to John gives us an overview of all of human history and its destination. While we are in the midst of human history, the Revelation to John provides us God’s view.
God speaks to John, “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”
There will come a time when Jesus rules the kings of the earth. How is this to be?
What does Jesus say about this?
In today’s lesson from the Gospel of John, Pilate, the Roman governor of the region, representing earthly political power, is questioning Jesus, the Son of God, who Pilate thinks is seeking earthly power too.
He asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus doesn’t answer yes or no. He states that his kingdom is not from this world.
Jesus’ kingdom is not a geographical place. It is a rule over the hearts of show who love him and follow him. It transcends physical boundaries. Preoccupied with political, earthly concerns, Pilate is missing the point. And Pilate’s misunderstanding illustrates the contrast between belonging to God and belonging to this world. This is the inner spiritual battle in which the people of Israel had been engaged since the beginning—being torn by living in the world, yet challenged to live according to God’s will. They were supposed to be ‘a light unto the nations’, showing others how to love and live for God. Yet we are all sinners and we are so easily led astray. So Israel stumbled and fell, repeatedly.
Jesus is the Messiah, the King longed for by the Jews living in exile. He is the one sent from God, who is God, to rule, to bring into being the Kingdom of God, a place in our hearts, and one day, a new world. Through Jesus we may come to know the joy of the Kingdom of God’s rule even now.
There are some 50 sayings and parables about this Kingdom in the Gospels. It is the one thing that Jesus taught about the most.
There are the parables of the lost sheep, the vineyard, the prodigal son, the mustard seed, the sower, the rich young ruler, and many others turning upside down the rule of the world. The least shall be the greatest, the lowly will be lifted up, those who suffer now will rejoice then. These parables give us hope.
Perhaps the best summation of the contrast between what life is like now in the earthly realm and what it will be like in the Kingdom of God is the Beatitudes, which concludes, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kind of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”
Generations of Christians facing persecution have been encouraged by these words. The Kingdom of God is the place where we will be comforted, and filled, and shown mercy, and we will see God as He truly is. This is what the Hebrews were longing for, though like the rest of us, they sometimes sought it in the wrong places, in idols and earthly kings. Part of the challenge in every generation has been discerning the truth about God, about the world and about us, and then living by that truth.
Jesus said to Pilate, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
But sometimes the truth is not easy to hear. In the very next verse Pilate sarcastically asks Jesus, “What is truth?”
Yet Jesus is the fullest revelation of God to us. His words are God’s very own words, and God is Truth.
Jesus is telling us that the rule of God, the Kingdom of Heaven, is and will be very different from what we mostly experience now. It is entered into by faith. For now it is a spiritual realm, but one day it will include all of Creation. Amen.
