Today the Church marks the end of the liturgical year – the last Sunday in Pentecost. This day has come to be known as The Feast of Christ the King. It’s a very new holiday by church standards. It was first declared by Pius the 11th in 1925 and adjusted in the late 1960’s. It was a Roman Catholic feast day; then observed by the Lutherans. As recently as ten years ago, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church described it as “kept unofficially in some Anglican churches.” As we Episcopalians have lived into our commitment to use the Revised Common Lectionary (meaning that we will be using the Bible reading schedule that other major Christian denominations are using), I’m noticing references to Christ the King Sunday popping up more and more places. The lectionary calls for this reading from John, a departure from the Gospel of Mark used for most of the past year, and the reading places us right in the middle of the passion narrative of the fourth Gospel.

It’s jarring isn’t it? We begin our celebration of the Eucharist today with what strikes me (and I know many of you) as a toxic cocktail of Christian triumphalism and anti-Semitism. We should feel uneasy because that mixture has been deadly for millions. And because we are accountable for what we say and do, we cannot risk letting the damaging words go unaddressed.

There is intense irony in this passage with its disturbing language and that rhetorical exchange about kings and truth, and the embodiment of truth in the person of Jesus. Part of the irony is that this passage perpetuates the lie that “the Jews” rather than the Romans killed Jesus. Pilate, the Roman governor, was responsible for the execution of Jesus as he was for countless other state executions. His excessive cruelty was notorious and the reason for his removal from office in the year 37 and his subsequent exile. Regrettably, early Christian attempts to fly under the radar (anachronistic metaphor!) of Roman authorities combined with the in-fighting between Jesus-followers and non-Jesus-followers codified the untruth in a Gospel so concerned with the word truth that the writer uses the word for truth fifty-five times!

Part of the irony has to do with the nature of kings and what it means to be king and to have a kingdom. The drama in this encounter between Pilate and Jesus is intense. Here is Jesus, arrested and bound, being interrogated by the Roman government’s highest authority in the land. Here Jesus represents compassion, righteousness and deep humility. Here Pilate represents military, social and economic power. Jesus’ concern is for the last, the least and the lost. His work is all about recreating, encouraging and inspiring fullness of life. Pilate’s concern is for the first, the most, and the best. Pilate’s work is all about demeaning, condescending, and controlling power plays. Pilate embodies cynicism and the love of power. Jesus embodies compassion and the power of love. The great irony is that Pilate is arrested by his political situation and bound by his office. In the story, he seems to believe that his hands are tied. In contrast Jesus is spiritually free. He is free from the constraints of the goal of self-preservation, and free from both self-aggrandizement and self-loathing. Jesus exhibits perfect freedom in a most limiting and oppressive situation. He is demonstrating something about courageous living in whatever horrible present moment in contrast to hunkering down and merely surviving.

This is what we rightly hold up when we proclaim Christ as King. Of course, claiming the supreme rule of the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ is one thing when being oppressed by military, political and economic might and it is quite another when claiming supreme right to assault and kill “infidels” or any other kind of enemy in the name of the Lord. Perhaps recognizing the relative speed with which we fearful human beings go there could help us extend our compassion whenever we behave or anyone behaves more like Pilate than like Jesus in the face of conflict.

It seems to me that this passage begs a question. And indeed it’s the question Pilate asks in verse 38. Our passage stops just short of it. I bet for many of you it rang in your ears as I finished reading the Gospel out loud. The question, of course, is, “What is truth?” The story goes that Pilate didn’t wait around for an answer and it’s not clear whether he ever knew that he was staring right at it when he asked. Truth, in the Biblical sense, has to do with integrity, firmness, fidelity, reliability, stability, sincerity, and candor. And Biblical truth can never be separated from Love. The psalmist declares that in God, loving kindness and truth have met together. In this Psalm, the Hebrew words compassion and truth are put together much like words are strung together in German. Justice and peace have kissed each other. The truth of God, according to theologian John A.T. Robinson, “is an experience at one and the same time of ultimacy and intimacy.”(1) The truth of God, according to the Gospel of John, was Jesus.

But if Jesus’ feet never touched the ground; if he was somehow superhuman, he’s really not very useful to us. That is, if Jesus wasn’t demonstrating for us how we can live our lives fully, with integrity, fidelity, sincerity, and the rest, what good is he to us? So when I read about Jesus’ encounter with Pilate, and the words, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth,” I want to wonder with you why any of us was born, if not to testify to the truth. I wonder if you’ve ever had an experience or a moment when you sensed that you were ultimately and intimately born for that experience or that moment. Maybe it has happened many times over the course of your life. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet. That experience or moment, whenever it happens, is one of truth.

Why do you imagine you are here? Why were you born? How is your life testifying to the truth? How is your life coming true? There is a question in biblical exegesis (or interpretation) that I learned to ask many years ago. Some of you have heard me ask it before: if a particular passage were not included in the book, what would we not know? It’s a useful way to remember how important to the whole story each part is. I want to ask it about you and your part in the world. If you weren’t in the world, what truth would the world not know? It’s an interpretive question to use looking backward and forward and at the present moment.

And of course, I want to say that these are questions for you individually, and they are questions for Emmanuel Church. For what did Emmanuel Church come into the world? Why is Emmanuel Church here now? How has Emmanuel Church testified to truth, how is Emmanuel Church testifying to truth, how will Emmanuel Church testify to truth? If Emmanuel Church were not in the world, what truth would the world not know? What truth would we not know if Emmanuel Church were not in the world? How is Emmanuel Church’s life continuing to come true? In what ways can we become even more true to the reasons that Emmanuel Church is in the world?

These are not questions to promote self-aggrandizement or parish-aggrandizement (or loathing or mere preservation, for that matter). They are questions to help us clarify mission and engage meaning both individually and collectively, and to set us free from whatever arrests and binds us, whatever ties our hands, and keeps us from truth. The essence of my prayer each week as I begin to preach is that we all will be freed from foolishness, from weak resignation, and from fear, to live more fully into truth (come when it may and cost what it will). May it be so.