John 18:33-38
“King of Truth”
November 25, 2012 - Christ the King

         In our old house, a spot appeared in the ceiling of our family room right over the television set. That was fifteen years ago. I mentioned it in a sermon back then and said I was doing my best to ignore the fact that it was right under the upstairs bathroom, the one our daughters used. I told myself it was just a drop or two that came through the floor when one of the girls splashed a bit too much in the bathtub. I didn’t want to face the truth. Neither did Pilate.

         Pontius Pilate had been in Judea four years, its fifth Roman governor. His relationship with the people was rocky from the start. He took money from their temple treasury to build an aqueduct. The result was a huge riot and a number of Jewish people were killed by Roman soldiers. Governors were expected to maintain the famous Roman peace, so Pilate constantly worried about what the emperor would hear back in Rome.

         When the Jewish court brought him a pris­oner, requesting the death penalty, his main object was to avoid more trouble. Just before our text, in verse 31, Pilate tried to get out of the whole thing. He told the Jewish leaders to try Jesus themselves. “Judge him by your own law,” he said. But they wanted Jesus dead, and under Roman rule the governor had to confirm a capital crime and declare a death sentence.

         Even with Jesus in front of him, Pilate hoped he would be able to ignore him and turn it all back over to local authorities. That’s why in verse 33 he asked, “Are you the King of the Jews?” If Jesus said yes, that would have been a crime against Rome. The emperor had no patience with anyone who called himself a king without imperial sanction. Claiming to be king would make Jesus a traitor against Rome. He would have to die.

         Pilate was hoping Jesus would deny it, that whatever He’d done would not be a genuine rebellion. He didn’t need more riots, more problems. He hoped he could safely ignore the whole issue and turn Jesus back over to the Jews.

         We all have a bit of Pilate in us. I hoped I could keep ignoring the truth about our family room ceiling. You may be ignoring a strange noise under the hood of your car or a little twinge in your tooth. Maybe your child has picked up a swear word or your employer is making your life miserable. Whatever ugly truth is beneath such things, you would like to ignore it, hope it can all just go away or be turned over to someone else.

         Jesus would not let Pilate avoid the truth so easily. As Pilate interrogated Him, Jesus interrogated Pilate in verse 34, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Jesus didn’t want this him to just walk away. He wanted to give Pilate an opportunity to face the truth. The question was whether Pilate wanted to know the truth for himself, or whether he was just repeating a charge made by the Jews.

         Pilate’s answer begins revealed truth about himself. “I am not a Jew, am I?” verse 35 asks? He was a Roman. What did petty political squabbles in the provinces have to do with him? “Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me,” he told Him. Even if Jesus were a king, it didn’t matter to Pilate. All he cared about was a possible threat to Rome and thus a possible threat to himself. “What have you done?” he asks, just trying to find out if Jesus is really fomenting a revolution or whether he can ignore him.

         You and I can treat the politics of our time in the same way. We get a little worked up about what’s going on in Egypt or Syria or Israel and Gaza. Nuclear weapons in Iran worry us. That all affects the price of oil, might threaten our economic well-being or national security. It’s harder for us to care, to pay attention to fighting in eastern Congo in places like Goma and Bunia. Unless, like our friends Douglas and Jennings Boone, we happen know someone there, it is truth that’s easy to ignore.

         We also like to ignore smaller truths that don’t affect us. The neighbors fighting with each other next door are not my problem. The garbage somebody dumped in the wetlands is not my problem. The folks sleeping under bridges and in doorways are not our problem. If we’re not affected by the truth, we prefer to ignore it like I ignored that little damp spot on our ceiling.

         Pilate hoped he could ignore Jesus. What Jesus said next in verse 36 strengthened that hope. Jesus told Him, “My kingdom is not from this world.” Pilate heard what most of us hear in those words. The kingdom of Jesus Christ is all about another world, a better world, a world where everyone is happy and healthy and free. We can safely ignore much of what’s going on in this world because we believe in a king and a kingdom that is out of this world.

         Just like Pilate, we are hearing Jesus wrong. He didn’t say His kingdom was not in this world. He said it was not from this world. Pilate worried whether Jesus was trying to be a king without the proper authority, without Caesar’s approval. Jesus told him He didn’t need Caesar’s approval. His kingship came from somewhere else, somewhere outside this world.

         That’s why, Jesus said, “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.” Every earthly authority struggles to establish and hold onto power. Bashar al-Assad’s followers in Syria are fighting to keep him in control. Mohamed Mursi is grabbing more power in Egypt. We just witnessed the peaceful fight we call a campaign between two men who wanted to president, with their followers doing and saying all kinds of things to get them elected.

         Jesus told Pilate He didn’t need that. His power, His kingdom does depend on people fighting for Him. He stood before Pilate because He was a king whether Pilate or Caesar accepted it or not. That didn’t make His kingdom any less a kingdom. It didn’t make Jesus any less a king.

         There are two mistakes, then, we can make about our King and the kingdom we are celebrating today. First, we imagine it’s something for which we need to fight. Through the ages, Christians made that mistake, marched off in wars of conquest, crusades, and other supposedly holy battles to establish the kingdom of Jesus. We still make that same mistake if we think our Lord’s kingdom depends on outwitting and outvoting our non-Christian neighbors and electing Christian politicians and passing Christian laws. Even more, we don’t need to win a cultural war or a literal war with Muslims or anyone else. That kind of fighting is what Jesus said His followers would not do.

         On the other hand, we can make the mistake Pilate made. He heard what he wanted to hear. Jesus was not an insurrectionist. His disciples would not throw bricks at Roman soldiers or hatch plots in dark rooms. It was all just Jewish superstition. And while what he says next is, “So you are a king?” it is all sarcasm. At the end of verse 38 when he tells the Jewish court, “I find no case against him,” we realize Pilate thinks Jesus is just a harmless nut case, no threat to Rome or anyone else. He can safely be ignored. That was Pilate’s great error. It might be ours.

         Not that you or I completely ignore Jesus, but we may be tempted to ignore what it means to call Him “King.” If His kingdom is not of this world, then we might start to believe that it doesn’t have much to do with everyday life. Yes, I come and sing “Jesus is my king,” on Sunday, but when it comes to the choices I make each day, I operate more practically. “Jesus is King” means is that I’m going to heaven when I die. I’m going to be in His kingdom someday, but for right now I need to make a living, pay my bills, and worry about my retirement. “Jesus is King” is a song about the future, not about today.

         Jesus wanted Pilate and wants us to know that His Kingship can’t be ignored that easily. In verse 37 He answered Pilate by taking His sarcasm at face value and saying what He could also say to us, “You say that I am a king.” Both we and Pilate have affirmed it with our own lips. But now Jesus wants Pilate and you and I to face up to what we’ve affirmed, to take account of the truth we’ve spoken.

         It’s a matter of truth, He told Pilate. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify [to be a witness] to the truth.” In our reading from Revelation 1:5 this morning, before John calls Jesus “the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth,” he calls Him “the faithful witness.”

         Unlike most of the rulers of this world, Jesus is King because He tells the truth. Not long ago I heard one of our members say, “I just have to face the fact that if anyone is going to be a candidate for any significant political office, he will have to be a practiced liar.” But Jesus came to witness against that ugly political reality and to be our King just because He tells the truth.

         The claim Jesus made and that Christians make—that there is truth and that it can be known in Christ—is a different politics, both then and now. Early Christians refused to make Jesus just one of many gods to choose from in the Roman world. They gave exclusive allegiance to Christ. And they lost homes and families. They were ridiculed and arrested. They were blamed for Rome’s problems and put to death. All because they did what Jesus said at the end of verse 37, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

         When you listen to Jesus, you come to different conclusions about the truth. My Catholic friend at Courtsports mentioned that, like we do, his church participates in the Family Shelter. He said, “You know people say homeless folks are just lazy and cause their own problems, but that’s not true!” He talked about some of the people he had met and how hard they were trying and how they just needed a little bit of help. That’s the kind of truth that becomes apparent when you listen to Jesus and is hard to grasp when you do not.

         I heard it in the opposite direction on the radio earlier this week when Israel was still bombing sites in Gaza. A reporter asked an Israeli why they were doing it and he said, “When somebody kicks you, you kick back.” I said, “Who says all religions are the same?” No Christian could truthfully and honestly listen to Jesus and say what that Israeli said. What you believe to be the truth makes a huge difference in how you think about the world.

         Yet we are losing our grasp on the truth. We don’t know whom to believe and we come to believe ourselves that it doesn’t matter anymore. We heard a news story yesterday about a wave of accusations of plagiarism among German officials this past year. Their defense minister was forced to resign when it was discovered he plagiarized most of his doctoral dissertation. Just ask my wife Beth and she will tell you how often she finds students in her classes at Christian schools copying their work from other sources on the Internet or even straight out of the textbook.

         Like Pilate we get very pragmatic in our attitude toward truth. Truth is whatever someone wants it to be. Truth is whatever gets the results we want, whether it’s an academic degree or a new job. At the beginning of verse 38, Pilate dismissed the whole issue of truth that Jesus raised with the simple question, “What is truth?”

         Francis Bacon wrote, “What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.” Whether he was jesting or not, Pilate showed how he felt about truth by the fact that he ended his interview with Jesus with those words. He had given up on truth and so he gave up on the Man who had come to be a witness to the truth.

         Jesus is the King of Truth. If we are going to bow before Him and accept Him as our King, then we will be on the side of truth, wherever and whatever it is. We won’t toss truth aside with the modern equivalent of Pilate’s question saying something like, “Well, what’s true for you, may not be true for me,” as though everyone gets to have their own private version of truth.

         No, Jesus is the King of Truth, because Jesus is the Truth. By coming and letting Himself be condemned to the Cross for our sins, Jesus witnessed to the truth about us, about you and me, that we are untruthful, that we are sinners. Listening to that truth and believing it is how we begin to make Jesus our King. We truthfully acknowledge and repent of the sins that condemned Him to death and we accept His witness that God loves us and wants to forgive us.

         Jesus was an innocent Man. Pilate acknowledged as much when he told the Jewish leaders, “I find no case against him.” He was innocent of treason and innocent everything. Pilate ignored that truth. He ignored it and agreed to release a definitely guilty man, a robber, in place of Jesus the innocent Man. Pilate decided not to care about the truth.

         Pilate thought he was furthering his career by ignoring the truth, just like Germany’s defense minister and other students think they are furthering their careers by ignoring the truth and claiming work that is not their own. But ignoring the truth catches up with us. Pilate did not save his career. Five years later he squashed another riot by killing a number of Samaritans. For that he was recalled to Rome. One Christian historian believes the emperor forced him to commit suicide for all his blunders.

         The biggest blunder any of us can make is to ignore the Truth that is Jesus Christ, to ignore His kingdom, His rule in our lives, in this world. As St. Augustine wrote, Jesus said His kingdom was not from here, but He never, ever said that it was not here. No, the kingdom of Jesus Christ is right here in this world. We find it, we are in it, whenever we pay attention to and live the truth.

         Jesus said, “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” You and I listen to Jesus as our King of Truth whenever we do that which belongs to the truth. When we refuse to believe that our lives are made complete by buying but instead by giving, we belong to the truth. When we welcome and treat the homeless as human beings with dignity, we belong to the truth. When we say no to little falsehoods that may help us get ahead in school or work or even family life, we belong to the truth. When we bring our children and invite other children to come and hear the stories of Jesus, we belong to the truth. And we belong to the King of Truth, who witnessed to the truth for us.

         Where are you struggling with the truth today? It may be lies you’ve told or lies that have been told about you. You may be wondering whom you can trust among all the many voices asking for your faith. You may be worried about a child or a parent or a friend who is listening to falsehoods rather than truth. You may be wondering whether the way you live is true to what you believe. Whatever that struggle is, Jesus is here for you. For this He was born and for this He came into the world, to bring you the truth, to help you find it.

         Let Jesus be your King and you will have the Truth. Let Jesus be your King and you will live the Truth. Let Jesus be your King and those you care about will see Him in you standing for the Truth. Let Jesus be your King and you will belong to the Truth, and as He said, “the Truth will set you free.” Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj