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Reign of Christ Sunday

John 18
36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” 37 Therefore Pilate said to Him, “So You are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” 38 Pilate *said to Him, “What is truth?”


When in doubt, make a list.

It’s my best advice, and it seems to fit every possible situation. Too many things to remember? Make a list. Don’t know where to start? Make a list. Feeling overwhelmed and want to accomplish something? Make a list. In fact, I would put ‘make a list’ at the top of every list and just check it off. ‘Let’s see, make a list.’ Done!

And, of course, you are not alone. Within the church, we are famous for it. Luther’s 95 theses, Wesley’s directions for singing, catechisms of every shape and size, and lists of virtues and vices, things to embrace and things to avoid.

So, for example, there nine fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5). And there are seven gifts of the Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and wonder (Isa 11). Add to this the three theological virtues, known to anyone who has ever attended a wedding (faith, hope and love—1 Cor 13).

Now, our Roman Catholic friends take this to the next level, with seven deadly sins (I’m too lazy to list them, but one is sloth), the four cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, temperance and courage) and the seven ‘heavenly virtues’ which is simply adding Paul’s wedding virtues to to the four cardinal virtues to get seven.

I think the lesson here is if you find a good list, keep it, and make it your own. The most famous example of this, based on all that I have shared so far, is the four cardinal virtues: cited by the church, shared with the faithful, and stolen from Greeks. We can try to claim them as our own, but it was Plato that said “prudence, justice, temperance and courage” should always be at the top of our list.

Not to be outdone, the Romans had at least eighteen leading virtues, far too many to list. So I’ll give you just three—three that I would commend for daily life in Roman Weston: comitas, meaning ease of manner or openness; gravitas, a sense of the importance of the things we do; and humanitas, being cultured, with a respect for learning. I feel better just thinking about them.

For the Romans, however, the mother of virtue was truth. Literally, the mother of the goddess Virtue was Veritas, or truth. You can see her outside the Supreme Court of Canada, alongside her companion Lady Justice, who surprizingly has no blindfold and no scales, just a sword. But that’s another sermon.

So if truth is the mother of virtue, what can we make of the end of perhaps one of the most famous conversations in history? If the idea of truth was woven into every aspect of being a good Roman, how could Pilate ask the question ‘what is truth?’ We should find out.

Pilate’s words occur, of course, at the end of a very long evening. The evening begins with dinner—the last supper—and continues with Jesus washing the disciples feet. He predicts his betrayal, and begins what scholars call his ‘farewell discourse,’ including the love commandment, the vine and the branches, and his prayer for unity—which happens to make up the motto of our church (‘that all may be one’).

The evening continues with Jesus’ betrayal in the garden, Jesus in the court of the high priest, and finally Jesus before Pilate. This begins with a jurisdictional dispute, with members of the court of the high priest reminding Pilate (as if he could forget) that only he had the power of life and death in Roman Judea. Jesus and Pilate enter debate, with a focus on kingship. And Pilate, hearing enough to draw his conclusion, says “so, you’re a king” and gets this response:

“You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

And to this, Pilate famously says, “What is truth?” This, of course, is the question that has launched a thousand sermons, and a thousand suggestions, everything from speaking in jest (since the trial was such a mockery) to pointing to the hiddenness of absolute truth, something a Roman would love to debate.

“What is truth” may underline Jesus innocence (having been presented the ‘truth’ of his seeming guilt by the Pharisees) or an overall rejection of the truth, something that seemed to be in the air that night.

Or maybe, just maybe, Pilate had gravitas that night, a sense of the importance of the thing he has doing. How would that work? If you had to say one thing about Romans, one thing that defined them, you could say they loved history. History defined them, history informed their actions and their decisions, and history allowed them to put nearly everything that happened into some kind of perspective.

They may not have invented history, that seems to belong to the Greeks, but they made it their own. Education was largely studying the past, learning about the history of gods and goddesses, about the great ones of the past, and even learning the debates of the past. If it was a turning point in the history of Rome (Scipio v Fabius as an example) and someone had a conversation about it, there was a good chance it was added to the curriculum.

The point of this obsession with history was the matter of consequence: your deeds and the way you led your life was your legacy, the way you would be remembered, or as the Romans would say, your monument.* And your monument could be quite literal, something you might see in the Forum, or it could be an office, or a title (Scipio become Africanus). So in some ways, this interest in history was self-interest, trying to understand history was to understand your place in it.

And monument building, being remembered in some manner, was fairly formalized or at least commonly understood. First, you would always remain mindful of being in the public eye, even if you were simply living your life in your own neighbourhood (vicus). Next, you never lost the sense that you were being evaluated, measured against that list of eighteen virtues.

Next, you could expect that a monument would be formalized: again, a reputation, a name, even a statue. And finally, this monument would be a lesson for others: something to inspire similar action on the part of the audience, or a cautionary tale, and example to avoid at all cost. This four-part movement or action-evaluation-commemoration-lesson was in the mind of every good Roman, and in the mind of Pilate that day.

The action, being used by the mob to defeat a threat to the established religious order, was completely fraught with peril. The city and the province were always on the cusp of rebellion, always ready to erupt into violence, so Pilate’s first task was to keep the peace (pax). Already, the truth of the matter at hand was in question, since the justice was compromised by the need to keep order.

The evaluation, the knowledge that Pilate would be judged for his decisions, was top-of-mind. Historians were the journalists of the Roman world, and he know that his decisions were being chronicled for consumption back home. His monument, a perpetual association with this and every situation was accepted as a given, but that this stage the monument was ambiguous: savior of Roman Palestine or the man who washed his hands?

And the lesson—hero or cautionary tale—was the ultimate outcome of what ever transpired that night. Would he stand up to the locals, defend the truth of this man’s innocence? Was he better to defend order, a virtue all on it’s own, a truth on that list of eighteen virtues? In the end, he made a decision, but his monument, that thing that defines him for all time, is the question ‘what is truth?’ and washing his hands.

Along side Pilate’s monument is another, more familiar monument, the cross. Jesus said “If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the religious court.” Escape was possible, momentary insurrection was possible, or just a good scuffle was one of the options at the end of a long evening. But Jesus chose the cross. His monument would be a spirited defense of eternity, that our sin would be met with the determination to defeat death, and in defeating death, we would be free. Jesus also said “the truth will set you free” and he was speaking of his monument, he was speaking of the cross. Amen.

*The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, p. 216

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 6:30 AM