Text: John 18:33-37

If you’ve ever had your personality type analyzed by the Myers-Briggs method, you know that there are two kinds of people. Some people can’t stand uncertainty. They want no loose ends in the fabric of their lives, no unresolved chords. These people need closure. They are called “judgers,” J’s” for short. There are others who thrive on a lack of structure. They like things open-ended and unresolved, and are energized by ambiguity. These folks are called “perceivers”—“P’s“ for short.

The people who put the lectionary together must be “J’s.” On this last Sunday of the liturgical year, the feast of Christ the King, they wanted to be certain that there were no loose ends left hanging from the Scripture lessons. So they ended the gospel reading about Pilate’s meeting with Jesus on a note of certainty.

Pilate asked Jesus, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. 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."

End of conversation. It’s a neat and satisfying ending to the church year—the assertion that everyone belonging to the truth listens to Jesus’ voice. No doubt the people assembling the lectionary felt good about giving the last word to those who belong to the truth. It’s like ending the whole church year with an exclamation point! But there’s only one problem: the last word in the conversation between Pilate and Jesus isn’t an answer, but a question. So let’s go back to the meeting between Pilate and Jesus, but this time with the real ending of the conversation.

Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. 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." Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”

“What is truth?” To omit Pilate’s wistful inquiry treats a gospel that invites the right questions as a manual of right answers. Jesus, it seems, leaves it to Pilate—and to us--to answer the question.

“What is truth?” Pontius Pilate presents one possible answer to that question: truth is power. Historians tell us that Pilate ruled with an iron fist over the Roman province of which he was governor. The Jewish historian Philo describes him as “by nature rigid and stubbornly harsh…of spiteful disposition and an exceeding wrathful man…the bribes, the acts of violence, the outrages, the cases of spiteful treatment, the constant murders without trial, the ceaseless and most grievous brutality.”

But even Pilate, apparently, saw the limitations of his form of truth. According to the 4^th century historian Eusebius Pilate, “wearied with misfortunes,” committed suicide four years after he sentenced Jesus to death.

One wonders if he was somehow haunted to the end by his unanswered question. Could it be that he realized that the truth was standing right before him all along?

A second answer to the question “what is truth?” emerges, for some, from the apocalyptic literature of the Bible, including today’s readings from Daniel and Revelation. People have long responded to times of turmoil and uncertainty by matching biblical prophecy with current events and constructing a “truth” that provides an escape from the world. And with all of the violence and social unrest in our world today, such thinking has reached a fever pitch.

Today’s apocalypticism follows a form of belief that was articulated in the mid 19^th-century by John Nelson Darby, a disaffected Scottish preacher from Glasgow. Darby turned biblical prophecy into a literal prediction of how history would progress, in an elaborate view called “premillenial dispensationalism.” Those who espouse this view say that history is divided into ages called “dispensations,” and Christ will return not once but twice. The first return will be in the “Rapture” before Christ’s millennial reign, to take up the true believers to heaven before the war and plagues of the tribulation occur.

This scenario is in vogue in evangelical America today, and underlies the popular “Left Behind” series of books and movies that claim to tell the story of seven years of earth’s history between the Rapture and the Apocalypse. Millions of people believe that the Bible literally predicts this. And they take great comfort in their ability to identify who will be taken up and who will be “left behind.”

In this vision of the future age, God is vengeful, arrogant, unforgiving, and obsessed with power. Jesus strides across the valley of Armageddon with his white robes red to the knees with blood and his enemies exploding at the sight of him (from Weavings, Nov/Dec 2006). Apparently, some people find all of this very comforting. But is it the truth of the gospel that Jesus proclaims?

“What is truth?” Christ overcame evil and chaos not through force of arms but by emptying himself of all divine privilege and enduring bitter suffering and an ignominious death. Paul tells us, in Philippians, how Jesus modeled power:

”…though he was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross (Phil 2:6-8).

This is not the kind of power that Pontius Pilate represents—nor is it the kind of power that is often modeled for us by leaders today.

Translating the model of Jesus’ self-emptying love to an admonition for early Christians, Paul instructed them to live in this way: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others (Phil 2:3-4).”

This doesn’t sound like the version of “truth” that is told by premillenialists who proclaim gleefully that “we” will be swept up to heaven in the Rapture while “they” will be left behind to suffer the horrors of the tribulation.

Pilate and the premillenialists proclaim particular versions of truth that spring from fear. But, Scripture says, “Perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).”

When Jesus says, “my kingdom is not of this world,” he proclaims the good news of a reign of God in which we have peace-making not violence, liberation not exploitation, sacrifice not subjugation, mercy not vengeance, generosity not greed, humility not hubris, and embrace not exclusion. The ancient Hebrews had a marvelous word for this: shalom, human well being. It is the way that Jesus lived. It is the way that he calls us to live.

The good news is that the God of love will indeed redeem all creation through Christ. Someday this world will end, time will be swallowed by eternity, and death will have no dominion. Beyond all worlds, Christ will reign forever in God’s kingdom.

He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. His kingdom is not of this world, and his kingdom is in the here and now, in “the already and the not yet.” Fear not, for Christ the King is among us to redeem all creation and make all things new.

And that’s the truth.