A trial is a formal meeting in a law court, at which a judge and jury listen to evidence and decide whether a person is guilty of a crime. Those who are called to testify are asked to “affirm that all the testimony they are about to give in the case now before the court will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Typically the truth at stake is solely about the facts of the case, but sometimes a trial reveals a larger truth.
On Friday the news broke that Kyle Rittenhouse had been acquitted on all charges in the shooting deaths of two men and wounding of a third at a Wisconsin protest against racial injustice last year. The truth all of us are facing after this trial is that in this country a young white man can carry an assault weapon into a situation rife with tension, shoot three persons, killing two, and the people won’t hold him accountable because he hasn’t broken any laws. We have to live with that hard truth, and with the fact that some of us are actually celebrating while others are in mourning and worried sick. And I will continue to live with the troubling conviction that if Rittenhouse were Black, “acquitted on all counts” would not have been Friday’s headline.
In 1967, a group of Black Panthers demonstrated at the California Statehouse in Sacramento carrying loaded rifles and shotguns. Ronald Reagan was governor and he said of the Panthers’ action at the time, “I don’t think that loaded guns is the way to solve a problem that should be solved between people of good will. And anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration must be out of their mind.” The California legislature passed and Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which banned the open carry of firearms in the state. The NRA supported the measure. The bill’s author, Don Mulford, said at the time, “We’ve got to protect society from nuts with guns.”[1] It appears we have changed our minds about nuts with guns; the NRA certainly has.
Today is the last Sunday of the church year. The readings for this Sunday in the ecumenical lectionary invite us to reflect on the consummation of Christ’s reign—something that may feel like an escape, welcome or not, to some of you, but it actually takes us to the heart of the matter.
The psalm sings of the Lord’s majesty and everlasting throne, and in the Gospel reading, John takes us to phase two of a trial. Jesus has been arrested by a detachment of soldiers and temple police. After an interrogation by the chief priest, they have taken him to the headquarters of Pilate, with the goal to get him sentenced to death.
Pontius Pilate had been appointed governor over Judea just a few years before; Judea was a remote but strategically important corner of the Roman empire. Fully aware that he represented the greatest power in the mediterranean world, Pilate ruled the province with an iron fist. A contemporary of his described him as “rigid and stubbornly harsh, wrathful and of spiteful disposition,” and that his rule was marked by corruption and “ceaseless and most grievous brutality.”[2] Whoever raised their head too high or their voice too confidently, risked being disposed of as a threat to Roman dominance. Pilate had heard about Jesus, he had received preliminary intelligence reports about a Galilean whom the crowd had greeted at the city gate as king of Israel.[3] “Are you the king of the Jews?” he asked Jesus. Pilate was neither a prosecutor nor a judge, but that mattered little; those were just formalities: he represented the power of the Roman empire. He looked at the man before him the way he looked at everything and everyone: through the eyes of those above him, those who would decide whether to advance his career or terminate it. As governor, he played the empire’s game, and he knew that if he didn’t handle matters in Jerusalem to the emperor’s liking, his next appointment would definitely not be a move up.
“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asks Jesus rather routinely, to see if this Galilean peasant might have insurgency on his mind. But John uses this trial scene to help us see a larger truth. Pilate may think that Jesus is the one being interrogated here. The temple authorities may think Jesus is the one on trial here. But Jesus turns the tables on them and becomes the interrogator. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” he asks Pilate. Whose questions are you asking? Do you want to know who I am?
The issue of Jesus’ kingship had been raised before. He had fed thousands by the lake up in Galilee, and when he realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he went away.[4] The empire, of course, excels at controlling the masses with bread and circuses, but Jesus has no dreams of empire. He won’t command an army to put himself in power. He doesn’t want to live in a palace behind high walls and guarded gates. He has no ambition to sit on Caesar’s throne, as unimaginable as that may be to a man like Pilate. This king knelt to wash the feet of his friends. This king told his companion who still carried a sword to put it back into its sheath. This king insists that should any blood be shed, it would be his own.
“What have you done?” Pilate asks. And Jesus continues to testify, “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. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Jesus’ kingship is not from this world, not based on this world’s ambitions and assumptions, not established with this world’s methods. Jesus’ kingship doesn’t fit into the world’s power patterns, but it is for the world and exercised in the world, for the life of the world.
“So you are a king?” Pilate asks, and Jesus still won’t give him a simple yes or no answer. Jesus is testifying, and he tells Pilate and all who are overhearing this interrogation that his entire life has been a testimony to the truth. “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.”
John uses this trial scene to show us a larger truth: it may look like the temple authorities and Pilate, driven by political expedience, have put Jesus on trial, seeking to convict, sentence and execute him; it may look like the world has put Jesus on trial, but in condemning him, the world is condemning itself. Jesus’ entire life is a testimony to the truth, but the world can neither hear nor see him. He doesn’t fit the patterns of perception of the powerful. “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,” says Jesus. “Truth? What is that?” says Pilate.
To belong to the truth is to see in Jesus the fullness of God revealed and to hear the words of God in Jesus’ voice. To know the truth is not a matter of having been told all the relevant facts, but a matter of encounter and relationship, a matter of belonging. Pilate assumes that truth is a “what”—a concept, an idea, a set of facts—but in the Gospel according to John, where truth is mentioned at least three times more than in all the other gospels combinded, Jesus is never said to teach the truth, and the disciples are never said to have to truth; and Jesus doesn’t give us great truths to live by—he gives himself. He himself is the truth of God. In the Fourth Gospel, truth is not a “what” but a “who,” a person, a king who isn’t a king and yet the only one worthy to reign over God’s creation.
One who rules over people justly,
ruling in the fear of God,
is like the light of the morning,
like the sun rising on a cloudless morning,
gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.[5]
The longing for one who rules over people justly goes back as far as ancient songs and poetry can take us. The hope for one who rules in the fear of God is as old as the persistent reality of rulers and princes and judges who don’t. The testimony of Jesus reveals love as the power at the heart of the universe, love that calls and invites, love that serves and never overwhelms. The truth about God is God’s love for the world, and the truth about the world is God’s love for it. The truth is Jesus.
In Gian-Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors”, one of the three kings says,
The child we seek doesn’t need our gold.
On love, on love alone he will build his kingdom.
His pierced hand will hold no scepter.
His haloed head will wear no crown.
His might will not be built on your toil.
Swifter than lightning
he will soon walk among us.
He will bring us new life
and receive our death,
and the keys to his city belong to the poor. [6]
“Jesus’ kingship … can be difficult to see, for it is manifest in crucifixion rather than in political dominance,” writes Susan Hylen.[7] Jesus’ kingship rests not on bribe and coercion but on self-giving love—something that cannot be legislated or decreed or enforced, only received. And those who know themselves to be recipients of this love no longer dream of domination. The good-shepherd king who lays down his life for those he loves—he has no subjects, only friends who see him and know his voice and follow him on the way to the fullness of God’s reign. May we be among them.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/07/opinion/gun-control-and-white-terror.html
[2] Philo of Alexandria, Legatio ad Gaium, 33.
[3] John 12:13
[4] John 6:1-15
[5] 2 Samuel 23:3-4
[6] https://www.opera-arias.com/menotti/amahl-and-the-nightvisitors/libretto/
[7] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christ-the-king-2/commentary-on-john-1833-37-3