Sermon on John 18:33-37
Where are you from?
If you’d ask me where I was from, you might be asking where I was born. I was born in West Virginia. Lot of jokes about people from the Appalachians, right? Yes, I’m missing teeth, as a matter of fact.
But no. You might be asking where I grew up. I grew up around Baltimore, with quite a few summers spent in Deltaville, since my mother’s family comes from here. So that would make me either a “Baltimoron” or a sort-of Deltaville been-here. On the one hand, I had a front row seat for the civil rights movement, as Baltimore was the site of some significant demonstrations and yes, even riots, and my mother worked in a black neighborhood for a black vet. On the other hand, I’m also sort-of from Deltaville, a beautiful rural village in southern Virginia, where I learned Southern manners and civility, and where I picked up a little bit of an accent, but where there were few black people at all.
But you also might be asking me where I am, as it were, “coming from”. This is a question that gets at my orientation to the world, the central desire that directs my life. This is the question at the heart of today’s gospel lesson.
It doesn’t matter where Pilate grew up, but he was probably from Rome, the capital city of the greatest empire in that region of the world at that time. The Romans were wildly wealthy and had the biggest and best trained and equipped army in the world. They regarded conquered peoples as racially inferior, who needed to be “civilized”, which really meant Romanized. They built lots of Roman buildings in conquered cities, renamed cities with Roman names, built whole new Roman cities in conquered nations.
But only about twenty percent of the people under the Romans were thriving. The rest were either enslaved or poverty-stricken, and there were constant rebellions, all of which were put down brutally by the Romans, until of course their own inner divisions weakened them and made them vulnerable to both rebellions and invasions. Only a few hundred years after Jesus, the empire more-or-less ceased to exist.
So Pilate comes from Rome, not only in the sense of location, but also in the sense of the core desire of his being: to attain and to maintain power by any and all means.
Jesus was brought before him as an insurrectionist. The crime, as I have said, was widespread, and the policy for dealing with it was plain. The wannabe king would be required to beg and plead and bow the knee to the power of the Roman emperor, and if he groveled enough, he might even keep his head.
Nothing else about Jesus was interesting to Pilate, because of where Pilate was coming from. The only issue for him was whether Jesus was a threat to Roman power. If, on the other hand, this was some theological dispute among Jews, it was a waste of his time.
The gospel of John is something like the argument of a defense attorney in a trial. He’s making the case that Jesus came from God, as God’s only-begotten son. He has come from God with a declaration of peace with God, with a new commandment through which to understand all the others: as it reads in John 13, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciple, if you have love for one another.” This is where Jesus is from.
Pilate is the servant of Caesar, in the sense that he buys completely into the Roman values of greed, violent oppression, and the inherent superiority of the Roman people. This is where he’s from.
The only thing that matters to Pilate is whether Jesus is a king in the same sense that Caesar is. Is he a rival power that must be crushed?
Jesus’ first response to the question turned the tables on Pilate, who, given where Jesus is from, clearly did not understand that he was talking, essentially, to God. “Are you asking for yourself?” What a question, huh? “So, Pilate, were you feeling an urge to drop to your knees?”
Of course he also asks Pilate if he’s heard other testify to him, because he almost certainly has.
You can almost hear Pilate sputtering: “I am not a Jew, am I?” Of course not. Pilate is not from God. Pilate is from Caesar. So what if people have been calling Jesus a king? Jesus’ own leadership had turned him over as an insurrectionist. He must have done something to earn that accusation.
Here’s where that word “from” comes in.
“My kingdom”, Jesus said, “is not from here. If my kingdom were from here, my followers would be fighting for me.” Jesus’ authority didn’t come from those religious authorities, or from the Roman emperor. If it had, his followers would use the same tactics they did. They would violently resist.
“But as it is,” Jesus says, “my kingdom is not from here.”
Pilate had no idea what Jesus was talking about, but he drilled through what sounds like Jesus trying to avoid the title. “So you are a king.”
As he does in all the other gospels, Jesus responds with the mysterious statement “You say I am a king.” The words had come out of Pilate’s mouth, and Jesus gives them back to him.
“For this,” Jesus said, “I was born, for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Jesus is coming from the truth, which is God’s sovereignty, God’s assured victory, and God’s bottomless love and abundance. Pilate comes from Caesar, a mere man pretending to be a god, a violent man who pretends to love peace, a liar if there ever was one.
The power of Caesar was the power of lies and the power of death. But the religious leaders of God’s people were more from Caesar’s kingdom than they were from God’s kingdom, and they chose to lead their people to finally shout in Pilate’s presence, “We have no king but Caesar.” Thus rejecting God and God’s son, the offer of peace, forgiveness and eternal life, the revelation of the truth of God’s love, and chose instead the way of lies and violence of a human god-emperor.
As they crucified the Son of God, humiliating and mocking him, they were unable to see that the man on the cross was the victory and glory of God.
John’s gospel, unlike the others, argues that the day of judgment had already come, in the form of the Roman Empire and other similar towers of babel that were popping up in that time and in all the times since, and that the coming of the Son of Man in glory was on that cross. For John, he resurrection of the dead began on Easter morning and has continued to this day.
And indeed we can see that the world is far kinder, far more compassionate, far more cognizant of the rights of human beings, than the world was in Jesus’ day, despite the many terrible wrongs the church has committed in his name. The choice remains to this day, to choose from where we come. Do we come from the world, with its obsessions with wealth, status and power through violence? Or do we come from above?
For what were we born, and for what have we come into the world?
Where are you from?
Amen.
Where are you from?
If you’d ask me where I was from, you might be asking where I was born. I was born in West Virginia. Lot of jokes about people from the Appalachians, right? Yes, I’m missing teeth, as a matter of fact.
But no. You might be asking where I grew up. I grew up around Baltimore, with quite a few summers spent in Deltaville, since my mother’s family comes from here. So that would make me either a “Baltimoron” or a sort-of Deltaville been-here. On the one hand, I had a front row seat for the civil rights movement, as Baltimore was the site of some significant demonstrations and yes, even riots, and my mother worked in a black neighborhood for a black vet. On the other hand, I’m also sort-of from Deltaville, a beautiful rural village in southern Virginia, where I learned Southern manners and civility, and where I picked up a little bit of an accent, but where there were few black people at all.
But you also might be asking me where I am, as it were, “coming from”. This is a question that gets at my orientation to the world, the central desire that directs my life. This is the question at the heart of today’s gospel lesson.
It doesn’t matter where Pilate grew up, but he was probably from Rome, the capital city of the greatest empire in that region of the world at that time. The Romans were wildly wealthy and had the biggest and best trained and equipped army in the world. They regarded conquered peoples as racially inferior, who needed to be “civilized”, which really meant Romanized. They built lots of Roman buildings in conquered cities, renamed cities with Roman names, built whole new Roman cities in conquered nations.
But only about twenty percent of the people under the Romans were thriving. The rest were either enslaved or poverty-stricken, and there were constant rebellions, all of which were put down brutally by the Romans, until of course their own inner divisions weakened them and made them vulnerable to both rebellions and invasions. Only a few hundred years after Jesus, the empire more-or-less ceased to exist.
So Pilate comes from Rome, not only in the sense of location, but also in the sense of the core desire of his being: to attain and to maintain power by any and all means.
Jesus was brought before him as an insurrectionist. The crime, as I have said, was widespread, and the policy for dealing with it was plain. The wannabe king would be required to beg and plead and bow the knee to the power of the Roman emperor, and if he groveled enough, he might even keep his head.
Nothing else about Jesus was interesting to Pilate, because of where Pilate was coming from. The only issue for him was whether Jesus was a threat to Roman power. If, on the other hand, this was some theological dispute among Jews, it was a waste of his time.
The gospel of John is something like the argument of a defense attorney in a trial. He’s making the case that Jesus came from God, as God’s only-begotten son. He has come from God with a declaration of peace with God, with a new commandment through which to understand all the others: as it reads in John 13, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciple, if you have love for one another.” This is where Jesus is from.
Pilate is the servant of Caesar, in the sense that he buys completely into the Roman values of greed, violent oppression, and the inherent superiority of the Roman people. This is where he’s from.
The only thing that matters to Pilate is whether Jesus is a king in the same sense that Caesar is. Is he a rival power that must be crushed?
Jesus’ first response to the question turned the tables on Pilate, who, given where Jesus is from, clearly did not understand that he was talking, essentially, to God. “Are you asking for yourself?” What a question, huh? “So, Pilate, were you feeling an urge to drop to your knees?”
Of course he also asks Pilate if he’s heard other testify to him, because he almost certainly has.
You can almost hear Pilate sputtering: “I am not a Jew, am I?” Of course not. Pilate is not from God. Pilate is from Caesar. So what if people have been calling Jesus a king? Jesus’ own leadership had turned him over as an insurrectionist. He must have done something to earn that accusation.
Here’s where that word “from” comes in.
“My kingdom”, Jesus said, “is not from here. If my kingdom were from here, my followers would be fighting for me.” Jesus’ authority didn’t come from those religious authorities, or from the Roman emperor. If it had, his followers would use the same tactics they did. They would violently resist.
“But as it is,” Jesus says, “my kingdom is not from here.”
Pilate had no idea what Jesus was talking about, but he drilled through what sounds like Jesus trying to avoid the title. “So you are a king.”
As he does in all the other gospels, Jesus responds with the mysterious statement “You say I am a king.” The words had come out of Pilate’s mouth, and Jesus gives them back to him.
“For this,” Jesus said, “I was born, for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” Jesus is coming from the truth, which is God’s sovereignty, God’s assured victory, and God’s bottomless love and abundance. Pilate comes from Caesar, a mere man pretending to be a god, a violent man who pretends to love peace, a liar if there ever was one.
The power of Caesar was the power of lies and the power of death. But the religious leaders of God’s people were more from Caesar’s kingdom than they were from God’s kingdom, and they chose to lead their people to finally shout in Pilate’s presence, “We have no king but Caesar.” Thus rejecting God and God’s son, the offer of peace, forgiveness and eternal life, the revelation of the truth of God’s love, and chose instead the way of lies and violence of a human god-emperor.
As they crucified the Son of God, humiliating and mocking him, they were unable to see that the man on the cross was the victory and glory of God.
John’s gospel, unlike the others, argues that the day of judgment had already come, in the form of the Roman Empire and other similar towers of babel that were popping up in that time and in all the times since, and that the coming of the Son of Man in glory was on that cross. For John, he resurrection of the dead began on Easter morning and has continued to this day.
And indeed we can see that the world is far kinder, far more compassionate, far more cognizant of the rights of human beings, than the world was in Jesus’ day, despite the many terrible wrongs the church has committed in his name. The choice remains to this day, to choose from where we come. Do we come from the world, with its obsessions with wealth, status and power through violence? Or do we come from above?
For what were we born, and for what have we come into the world?
Where are you from?
Amen.
