“A Missional Kingdom”
John 18:33-38a
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
11/22/15
Folks who spend more time with John’s gospel than I do are
not of one mind about Pilate’s mind. Is he a tragic-comic figure, hustling
anxiously back and forth, wavering between the rabid crowd outside and the
calm, inscrutable Jesus inside? Would he really prefer let Jesus go?
Or is Pilate a devious despot, manipulating emotions in
order to get what he wants while making the masses think they are getting what
they want?
Regardless of Pilate’s intentions, John wants to make it
clear that the Roman governor is outmatched. With the wisdom of a serpent and
the innocence of a dove (Matthew
10:16), Jesus controls this situation.
Why do your own people
want you dead? Pilate asks. Are you
some kind of king?
“If you say so,” answers Jesus.
How frustrating is that? It is like Moses standing at the
burning bush and asking for some name to drop when he confronts Pharaoh.
‘Just tell them that I
AM WHO I AM sent you,’ says Yahweh.
I imagine Moses thinking, ‘Gee. Thanks. That’s really gonna spook
the old boy, isn’t it?’
Pilate asks a direct question, and when Jesus could claim
and proclaim his Lordship, he gets all mysterious. How does that help him? How
does that further the work of his kingdom?
The very idea of a kingdom creates problems. When I hear the
word king, iconic images come to mind
– over-the-top displays of power and wealth, castles, feasts, robes, and such.
And these things were defended not just by armies of knights but by the principle
of the divine right of kings, as
well. Many believed that kings held their offices by God’s decree and with
God’s blessing. So, they could do no wrong. Power funded by fear can keep even
large groups of people in check – at least for a time.
Maybe that is the truth Pilate does not want to hear. A new kind of king, one who leads by grace,
one who not only has but who
consistently leads with a heart for
the people governed, will, in the long run, have far greater power than a king
who leads by threat of violence. I think this truth points to the eternal heart
of our humanity. Truth grounded in creative Love is the kind of truth on which
sustainable, holy community depends. And for Caesar, Pharaoh, and other
violence-dependent rulers, such truth escapes understanding.
Jesus understands it, though. “My kingdom is not of this
world,” he says. If it were, he adds, “my followers would be fighting to keep
me from being handed over to the Jews.”
Jesus’ kingdom cannot be established and maintained through the
means of worldly kingdoms – through sword, and shield, rifle and bomb, pride
and fear. Indeed, trying to force Jesus’ kingdom on anyone inevitably destroys their desire to enter it. One enters
Jesus’ kingdom, the here-and-now kingdom of God, by intentionally of living for
the well-being of neighbor and earth.
Kingdom living is a day-to-day thing, moment-to-moment even.
We can live in Love for God’s creation one minute and cast stones at a neighbor
the next. That is the challenge and the beauty of the Kingdom: It is not subject
to our whims. We cannot rule it or change it. We can only live in it or outside
it. And all of us constantly slip in and out of it. And even when we have been
out of it for some time, it is always as close as our next act of compassion
toward another.
Jesus began his ministry where he is now ending it – with a
proclamation of and an invitation to the kingdom of God. After his baptism and
trials in the wilderness, Jesus reappears preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom
of God is at hand.”
Turn, he says, and see your neighbor and the earth through
my eyes. See through the eyes of fear-shattering Love, and you will live a
different life, because you will inhabit an altogether different place. It is
right here. It is within you, within the people around you, and within the good
earth itself.
A small group of us are reading Brian McLaren’s book, A
Generous Orthodoxy. In the early chapters of the book McLaren separates
himself from every mode of Christianity that accommodates itself to Caesar.
Last Sunday night we looked at the first chapter of McLaren’s positive, Why I Am… chapters. It is entitled, “Why
I Am Missional.” All of us found ideas in that chapter that excited us. To me,
the most compelling sentence in that chapter, and in the book so far, comes
from one of McLaren mentors, whom he does not name. This person defines
“missional” this way: “Remember, in a pluralistic world, a religion is valued
based on the benefit it brings to its nonadherents.”1
Abraham is called to a dynamically missional life. God says
to Abraham: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to
the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will
bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you
all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen 12:1-3)
Inasmuch as God’s creatures, wherever and whoever we are,
regardless of the particulars of doctrine, strive to live as blessings on the
rest of the creation, we inhabit and reveal the kingdom of God. This is what it
means for us to live under the reign of Christ the King.
Do you see the irony at play here? While we do not find our true
home in any worldly kingdom, finding our home in the kingdom of God does indeed
happen in this world. It happens, as
we have acknowledged, in our everyday relationships with the creation –
relationships in which we choose to
live as blessings.
This Thursday we celebrate Thanksgiving. Giving thanks is
only half of recognizing and receiving blessings from God. The other half of
full-fledged gratitude is sharing the benefits of God’s goodness with God’s good
creation.
For our Christian proclamation to be whole, for us to experience
the full potential of gratitude, for our other-worldly path to ring true in
this world, it seems to me that we have to embrace the missional nature of our Christian
faith and community. A missional church lives for the sake of others and the
earth. And to live missionally is to live under the gracious, trustworthy,
eternal Reign of Christ.
1A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren,
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004, p. 121.
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