In tomorrow’s lectionary, Jesus is being interrogated by Pilate before he is executed. And according to John’s Gospel (I’m not sure of the writer’s sources for this account!), Jesus displays almost Johnsonian levels of failing to answer the question. It’s as if each question is not being answered so much as being treated as a trigger for Jesus to speak some more about something deep.
But Jesus is sort-of answering the questions (something that other person never even attempts), and what he has to say is so much like dismantling the categories in which Pilate and everyone else has been thinking, that it’s completely necessary to give a non-straight answer….
…His kingdom is not from this world.
Like I say, this is John’s gospel, and there is a load of stuff in there about who Jesus is, and it’s deep, and the experts are striving hard to work out where Jesus’ actual words are in all this. Nevertheless, these are words we need to hear, words that tell the truth about the first Christians’ understanding of Jesus and no doubt Jesus’ own understanding too.
A ‘king’ of that time would have had real power and would of course have been a threat to the Roman Empire (unless he was a puppet king). Maybe the nearest modern equivalent would be a dictator. But Jesus Christ is not like that anyway. And the reign of Jesus Christ is not like that anyway. We read elsewhere about a domain of the human heart and soul and will – in which the least of people get the greatest respect, and the first come last, in which love and mercy and justice rule.
