Sermon Text: John 18: 33-38
If
you have not yet seen Steven Spielberg’s glorious film Lincoln, get up now and go to the nearest theater.
Or
try to see it soon. That movie has inhabited my soul these last few days and
will for days to come. It is a love poem
to America, a prophetic call to be who we can be. The events of those divisive
times and the words of that iconic president open up many themes. But on Christ the King/Reign of Christ Sunday, a day we might
dedicate to contemplating Christ’s power, I can’t help contemplating how Lincoln understood and used power. And I wonder how Lincoln’s
power resembles and differs from the power of the Christ—and of ordinary folks
like us.
At a
pivotal moment in the film and in U.S. history, when hope for the passage of
the Thirteenth Amendment was waning, Lincoln fiercely wills his supporters to
fight on for slavery’s abolition. He
roars with uncharacteristic imperiousness: “I am the president of the United
States . . . clothed in immense power!”
The
humble Lincoln we’ve come to love through history books and folklore wore the privileges
of his office lightly but wore the power of the presidency as a heavy care. In
Spielberg’s current portrayal, the president drinks from a tin cup, eschews
fancy gloves for his rough hands, strategizes in a kitchen scullery, kneels on
the hearth to build his own fire, and walks a drafty White House draped in a
rough blanket. We’ve always believed his
power was not about pomp but about the power of his convictions, though the
film shows us clearly how those convictions evolved and then were tempered by necessary
compromises. We’ve always appreciated his powers of persuasion with words and wit,
and the current movie indeed sends those words soaring and helps us love again
the dream that is our country. We see
lawyer Lincoln’s confidence in the power of the U.S. Constitution—as well as
his awareness of its potential for competing interpretations and manipulations.
We have followed the arc of history that one particular leader set in motion through
his intellect and character and sacrificial devotion to saving his riven
country and that empowered us to be better, freer citizens of a united
nation. But how did he specifically
conceive of his own authority when he thundered that he was “clothed in immense
power”?
Apparently
he saw his power as coming from the people.
The movie reminds the audience that the vote on the 13th
amendment occurred shortly after Lincoln’s reelection, underscoring the
people’s mandate. The people who had invested him with power had then
reinvested him with that power. Mary
Todd Lincoln urged her husband not to squander this power on the impossible task
of eradicating slavery. “The people love you,” she tells him. “You have great
power. Why waste it upon this futile effort?” But that is the very reason
Lincoln dared the impossible. Throughout
the film—in brief encounters with a soldier here, a young engineer there—the
people’s love and trust and insight clothed Lincoln in immense power that
shaped his strategies and confirmed his resolve and made possible a freer
nation—of the people, by the people, for the people.
In
some sense you and I must agree to grant power to Christ. Christ has only our hands
and feet to bring justice and peace to this world. Likewise, the historical Jesus’ authority depended
on the people, even in a political setting far different from a modern
democracy. Certainly Jesus changed lives with a power that he said came from
“the Father who sent me,” but that power had to be transmitted through his
followers as he sent them out into the world. Bear in mind that you and I can follow Jesus's powerful way while honoring the spiritual paths that others take toward God. Sadly, Christian scriptures show people again and again refusing to use their power.
According
to John’s Gospel, in a passage that precedes today’s verses, Pilate at first
refused custody of the arrested Jesus, telling the temple authorities it was up
to them to convict Jesus. They, in turn,
tossed the case back to Pilate again. He
reluctantly interrogated the prisoner but found no evidence against Jesus (v.
38) so, in the verses following today’s reading, Pilate offered the gathered
crowd the option of releasing Jesus. The
people at that moment could have enacted justice. They had the power. But they
relinquished it.
Not
only did the people fail to recognize their own power. They—even his closest disciples—also
misunderstood the nature of the power Jesus, preacher of peace, exercised. Because he liberated and healed, exposed
injustice and shamed those misusing power, his enemies taunted him with sarcastic
title King of the Jews. But Jesus was the un-king, the one whose power was
based on compassion, not might. When soldiers had earlier come to arrest Jesus,
Peter had drawn his sword, severing the ear of one soldier. But Jesus repudiated the violence and healed
the soldier. Jesus ruled with creative
nonviolence. His power came as the Lord of Love, not a Commander of Armies.
Although
the Gospels make this point clear—that Jesus stood beside the lowly, served
instead of being served, turned the other cheek, exposed injustice —over the
centuries many who claim to follow Jesus have continued to miss this essential
point. In fact, this particular feast
day on the Christian calendar challenges each of us to resist the temptation to
image Jesus as a king lest we create religious empires out of Jesus’ simple
way, support systems of hierarchy instead of joining Jesus’s egalitarian
movement, sound a note of triumphalism rather than sing Jesus’s song of
peace. Christian art is stocked with
images of Jesus crowned like a European monarch, proof of our tendency to turn
Jesus into a totem for our side.
Christian hymnody, too, reveals our eagerness to make Jesus into a crusader or colonialist.
Remember
the hymn we sang earlier that described Jesus as one who rules by “keeping
company with pain,” by “enduring ridicule,” by “dying”? That hymn rightly
describes Christ’s reign within our hearts.[i]
In
contrast, hear these words to a well-known hymn written during the colonialism
of the early 18th century and still sung by many today. Notice how Jesus is cast as an emperor exacting
tribute from the conquered tribes:
Jesus shall
reign where’er the sun
Does his
successive journeys run;
His kingdom
spread from shore to shore,
‘Till moons
shall wax and wane no more.
From north to
south the princes meet
To pay their
homage at his feet;
While western
empires own their Lord,
And savage
tribes attend his word.
People and
realms of every tongue
Dwell on his
love with sweetest song,
And infant
voices shall proclaim
Their early
blessings on his name.[ii]
Jesus
Christ, King of the Jews, was an ironic title for a man executed by the state. Jesus as King is utter irony. Irony. Jesus
was, in fact, the un-king. “Call me what you will,”
Jesus responded when Pilate asked if he were King of the Jews. Jesus had no
power to defeat the religious and political systems of his day. He had only the power to forgive, to care, to
die if necessary while indicting the power of violence.
“Are
you king of the Jews?” Pilate asked.
“If you
say so,” Jesus answered.
If we
say so. We have the power to declare
Jesus to be our leader, our guide, our teacher, our lord. We have the power to treat one another as
equals and thus, by our actions, turn slaves into citizens, even into sisters
and brothers.
Pilate
had the power to do justice. But he
vacillated. “What is truth?” he asked,
as his half-hearted interrogation of Jesus devolved into personal
introspection. What is the truest, realest kingdom? he may have wondered.
Jesus
was subverting the notion of empire when he announced the coming of the kingdom
of God. God’s power can never be wielded
with sword or scepter, can only be maintained if we have “malice toward none
and charity for all.” The Greek words interpreted
as “kingdom of God” in the King James Version of the Bible, basileia tou theou, is a phrase better
translated as “the reign of God” or “the rule of God” or “God’s domain” or
even, more loosely “Love’s reign.” Jesus
was not trying to establish a kingdom. There was no territory to rule or a
political movement to lead or a future apocalyptic event to endure. Instead, the basileia tou theou was an encounter with the transforming presence
of God, with a cosmic power greater than even Rome’s empire, a reality in which
the first are last and the last are first, a realm in which God’s shalom holds sway, a way to live that
Jesus followers could already begin to glimpse and live into in the here and
now, not the there and then.[iii]
To
enter this experience of God is within our power. Which means this upside-down kingdom depends
on our ability to give up notions about power as domination. So that we live by love alone. So that we can be clothed in a more “immense power.”
Even
in Lincoln’s mouth, that claim to power sounds more spiritual than imperial.
His phrase puts me in mind of the metaphor Paul developed. Writing to the
Galatians, he explained, “For all of you who were baptized into Christ have
clothed yourselves with Christ” (Gal 3:27).
Paul believed those who dedicated themselves to the Way of Jesus were
clothed with and sharing in his authority.
We do not need to wear Superhero costumes or stovepipe hats to wield
power; instead, we wear the power of compassion within.
Power
hungry though humanity may be, many of us fail to admit our capacity for using
our power for God’s purposes. We abdicate our power. We convince ourselves that
our voice isn’t needed or our actions won’t count for much. But the 13th amendment to the US Constitution
that ended the scourge of slavery in this country was passed by a margin of only
two votes. Our voice, our actions can be
used to usher in not a political theocracy, but a spiritual basileia.
Jesus
had no aspirations to rule an empire. He
was pointing us to a way of life in which we are united in God’s love. His way,
though peaceful, is powerful. But we can misunderstand Jesus’s power of love
and instead fall in love with power.
A
more subtle mistake, however, is to fail to use our power. Like Mary Todd Lincoln, we might fear our
power—of influence and ingenuity, of persuasion and sheer presence—will be
wasted on a hopeless cause, forgetting we are the very ones needed to bring a
just dream to reality. Or like Pilate,
we sometimes wash our hands of messy situations and let someone else figure it
out. Like the fickle crowd gathered
before Pilate, we pretend we have no power and miss the chance to defend the
very one—the scapegoat, the child, the marginalized group, the endangered piece
of our planet—that can in fact be part of our own saving. You and I can tell
ourselves that the world’s problems are too complex and someone else has all the
power while forgetting that each of us has some role in addressing complex
crises. At home, at church, on the job,
in society . . . we forget that we are clothed in immense power. That is not arrogance. It is challenge. To
pretend otherwise only means our true power will dissipate or will be
appropriated without our consent.
We
are “clothed in immense power,” bound together as we are in a spiritual
enterprise of love and care. We, across all national borders, are united,
indivisible, under God.
Hear
as a prayer the closing and deeply empowering words of Lincoln’s second
inaugural address, spoken one month before the Civil War—and his own
life—ended:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to
finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all
nations.”
May it be so, O God. Amen
[i] “Eternal
Christ, You Rule” in the New Century
Hymnal. Hymnwriter Dan Damon credits
a sermon by UCC minister Ansley Coe Throckmorton as inspiration for this
text. To the question, “How does Christ
rule?” Throckmorton replied, “By keeping company with pain.” Note also how the New Century Hymnal alters another hymn traditionally sung on Christ
the King Sunday. In “All Hail the Power
of Jesus’ Name” we do not “crown Him Lord of All” but “crown Christ servant of
all.”
[ii] “Jesus
Shall Reign Where’er the Sun” in the Baptist
Hymnal (1975 edition). Words: Isaac Watts, 1719. (verses 1, 2, 4).
[iii] Jenks,
Gregory C. The Once and Future Bible: An Introduction to the Bible for Religious
Progressives. Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 2011 (147-149).
