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Preaching John 18:33-37

On this day the Church celebrates the kingship of Jesus. In this week our nation gives thanks for the blessings of the year. In this extraordinary year there is surely much for which to be thankful. The thanksgiving the Church gives, however, is appropriately tempered by the kind of King celebrated on this Christ the King day. But what kind of King is Jesus? And what kind of kingdom is his? The lectionary responds with the lection from the fourth gospel. The lection tells the story of Jesus before Pilate. It raises the questions of who is king and what is truth.

Pilate, himself a ruler of a kingdom, asks Jesus if he is a king. Jesus responds to his questioner with a question. He turns the tables on Pilate. He moves from a question of kingship to one of truth. The turn Jesus introduces into the exchange with Pilate, frames the question of kingship differently. In Pilate's world to be ruler of a kingdom requires power but not necessarily truth. In the kingdom of which Jesus speaks, to rule is to rule in truth.

It is easy enough in preaching on this text to focus on the great virtue of Jesus and the terrible villainy of Pilate. After all, Pilate's complicity, if not responsibility, for the death of Jesus is clear. The text, however, does not portray Pilate as such a villain. Instead it portrays him more as victim than villain. He is a victim of his world and its kingdoms. A shrewd political player, Pilate is caught in a world in which truth is a luxury he simply can't afford. There are compromises one simply must make to live in the kind of world Pilate occupies, and compromises with the truth are just part of the game. These aspects of Pilate's character make him a thoroughly modern person. He is like so many of us who must live in a complex world, where compromises are made every day. At the conclusion of this text he asks a totally modern question: "What is truth?" (v. 38).

Indeed, what is truth? Truth is so elusive. Wars are fought with all sides believing they are fighting for truth. Our newspapers have accounts of the frightening grasp cults have on people with their rigid insistence on their truth. What we know to be true on one day shifts on us the next. Truth is elusive.

Paul Ricoeur also believes that truth is elusive. He makes a connection between truth and totalitarianism.¹ According to Ricoeur, it is not that there isn't truth, it is simply that we cannot fully grasp it. Efforts to grasp the truth fully, succeed only by forcing partiality into a totality. Such efforts are sustained politically by the coercion of totalitarianism. Our history books are filled with accounts of totalitarian regimes that insisted on their version of truth.

Preaching the story of Jesus before Pilate entails carefully maneuvering the boundaries between totalitarianism and truth. Totalitarian regimes can kill for truth, Jesus dies for truth. To kill for truth is to force what is of necessity only partial into something total. But the kingdom of which Jesus is king is not yet total in this world. In speaking to Pilate, Jesus says: "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews" (v. 36).

On the one hand the Church is called to follow the King who is truth and speaks truth. On the other hand the Church needs to avoid the sort of totalitarianism that elevates its version of the truth too loftily. A too certain truth, can be a dangerous thing.

A test of truth, can be found in this text. Standing before Pilate, Jesus says that he came into this world "to testify to the truth" (Jn 18:37). The Greek word translated testify is also the root of the English word martyr. To testify to the truth may in some way mean dying for the truth, at least that was the case for Jesus. Although the truth is worthy of dying for, one does not kill for the truth. One does not kill for Christ's kingdom, even though one might die for Christ's truth. To proclaim a truth for which one would die exercises the boldness appropriate to Christian faith. To propagate a truth for which one might kill is to exercise an arrogance alien to Christian faith. Sometimes not compromising the truth can cost one's life. Killing, however, is always a compromise of the truth for which Christ died.

David Greenhaw

1. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, translated with and introduction by Charles Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965).

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