November 25, 2012 – John 18:33-37
John 18:33-37
Building From a Point of Compassion
Christ the King Sunday [Lectionary 34] – November 25, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
I have to find in my heart a little compassion for Pilate this morning.
He’s facing Jesus and has no idea he’s facing the biggest trial of his life.
If Jesus truly is the ruler of the earth, as the Book of Revelation says this morning,
We wonder as Jesus and Pilate face off: where will Pilate’s allegiances land?
With Jesus? Or with Rome?
The Gospel reading today is a small portion of the long trial of Jesus in John’s Gospel.
The charge against Jesus is treason, that he has claimed to be a king when, of course,
There can be only one king in the Roman Empire: the emperor, Caesar!
This trial by conversation between Pilate and Jesus takes place in a private room, but
7 times during their conversation Pilate goes out to speak in public with
the Jewish authorities who have brought Jesus to him.
You have a picture of man shuttling back and forth, shilly-shallying,
unsure of what to do or where to put his loyalties.
Jesus is ostensibly the one on trial here.
But of course, in John’s Gospel, where Jesus is magisterially in charge from
beginning to end, it is really Jesus who is in charge.
Pilate asks him a question and Jesus, being Jesus, interrogates Pilate with his own question.
When Pilate says to Jesus, “So, you are a king?” Jesus responds by saying,
“You have said that I am a king,” thus forcing Pilate to choose now between
Jesus as king or the crowd outside who will shortly claim Caesar as their king.
It appears as though Jesus is on trial in the story, but really it is Pilate who is put on trial.
Today, is this story of Jesus under our investigation, or does it put us under investigation?
A preacher I heard in Edinburgh this summer at St. Gile’s Cathedral said,
We so often think we are scrutinizing bible stories and putting them under a microscope,
but really it is usually the bible stories that are scrutinizing and questioning us.
That is probably nowhere more clear than in today’s readings.
Is our highest allegiance to the Alpha and Omega?
Is our greatest loyalty in life to the one who is and who was and who is to come?
Is Jesus the one whom we truly worship?
We say we’re going to worship so easily, so casually, and yet, our life and death are involved.
Are all our loyalties given to Jesus?
Are all our gifts dedicated to this one and his mission,
this one to whom even the kings of the earth owe their allegiance?
On your seat this morning you’ll have found a slip of paper.
Take that paper, and – just for yourself – write down what, for you personally,
competes with Jesus in your life for your allegiance?
Our baptisms signify a transfer of our allegiance, right?
Our baptisms transfer us into a kingdom where Jesus and his servant-love reign.
Our baptisms make us a kingdom of priests made to love God and love our neighbour.
This is a kingdom of love, a kingdom of sharing, a kingdom of generosity,
a kingdom of care for the vulnerable.
Here Jesus and his compassion reign.
Our highest allegiance is to this Jesus.
As our prayer after communion has it, we are, to be sure, inhabitants of earth,
with all the responsibilities that that implies.
But we are, first and foremost, citizens of the commonwealth of heaven.
Our allegiance to that commonwealth supersedes and transcends all other allegiances,
whether to family, ethnicity, nation, or any other god we care to name.
Way back at the beginning of this year, Jesus announced with his first words in Mark’s Gospel:
The Kingdom of God is at hand. (Mark 1:15).
That kingdom announced and embodied what life would be like here on earth, here and now,
if God were reigning and the emperors and kings and rulers of this world were not.
There would be peace-making instead of war-mongering.
There would be liberation instead of exploitation.
There would be sacrifice instead of domination.
Mercy instead of vengeance, care for the vulnerable instead of privileges for the powerful,
generosity instead of greed, embrace rather than exclusion.
(Daniel Clendenin at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20121119JJ.shtml)
This is what is at stake.
It matters where we put our allegiance.
One of the interesting and powerful things about The Hunger Games – both
the book and the movie – is that the drama is generated by us watching Peeta and
Katniss and wondering: will the Capitol change them?
Peeta and Katniss are forced into providing a violent entertainment spectacle for
the inhabitants of the Capitol: they are entered into the Hunger Games,
A so-called entertainment in which 24 teenagers must battle to the death in an outdoor,
miles wide arena.
Will this turn them into killers?
Peeta says at one point, I don’t want them to change me?
But will they be changed? Peeta comes from a family of bakers. Katniss’s mom is a healer.
Will the situation they’ve been placed in force them to turn into life-takers rather than
life-givers?
It matters where they put their allegiance, it matters whether they are able to hold fast.
And if that is true for these fictional characters, how much more so for us.
It matters – for the sake of the world – where we put our allegiance.
And our allegiance is always shown with our bodies: the body never lies.
Our allegiance is shown with where we put our hands and feet,
it’s shown by what we do with our time, its shown by what we do with our money,
it’s shown by what we do with our talents and our imaginations and
our commitments.
A man was asked by someone whether or not he’d been saved,
whether or not he’d accepted Jesus as his lord and saviour.
And he responded: Why are you asking me? I could tell you anything I wanted.
Go and ask my banker, my employees, my family members.
Ask them if I’ve been saved. Ask them where my true allegiances are.
Our allegiance will be shown, in other words, by our stewardship of what’s been given to us.
Honour and riches, power and might, all honour and glory be to Christ, forever.
We sing that regularly in the Gloria.
We bring those things to Jesus, because Jesus knows what to do with them.
He knows what they’re for.
They’re for the benefit of our neighbours in need.
Stewardship enables us to love our neighbours better.
Stewardship is about recognizing that all we have is a gracious gift of God.
Life itself and consciousness are wondrous gifts.
Mercy, empathy, compassion are amazing gifts.
Our bodies, our intelligence, our imaginations are gifts of infinite worth.
The earth and its many gifts and all our wealth: all gift, all given freely.
How will we steward them? To whom will we give them and for what purpose?
What we do with them shows where our allegiance is.
And what we do with them makes a difference.
We will receive the gift of Jesus’ self, the gift of his love again this morning: gift beyond price.
You are precious and beloved and full of dignity and worth: you are given great love.
What will you do with it? To what, and to whom, will you give your love?
When you receive the bread in your hand and the wine on your lips, it will be a small point.
A small point of compassion. The question I want you to leave with today is:
what can you build from there, from that small point of compassion?
The gay, angry, post-punk, power-pop pioneer rocker Bob Mould –
who I have great admiration for –
spoke in a memoir he published last year about returning to the Catholic Church.
He is about the last person on earth I expected to talk about returning to church.
But here’s what he said:
It was a late-afternoon Mass on Saturday. . . . I walked in, went up the stairs, dipped my hand into the water, and motioned the sign of the cross. We went in, found [my friend] Steve’s usual pew, knelt in the aisle before entering, and I again crossed myself. We lowered the altar bench, and for the first time in thirty years, I knelt in front of God. I hadn’t been to church since confirmation. . . .
We all rise and start singing. Down the aisle comes Father Caulfield, thirty-something, handsome, tall, inspirational. . .
The routine comes back to me, the whole drill; it didn’t change one bit. It’s not like they start with the sermon and then put a Sun Ra song in the middle—everything stays exactly the same. The set list doesn’t change. I’m up, I’m down, I’m kneeling, I’m standing, I’m singing, I’m praying. The service lasted an hour.
Mass was a levelling and humbling experience that gave me a different perspective on life. There was music, there was readings, there was community. There was the moment in the service when you greet your neighbour, someone you’ve probably never seen before in your life and may never see again outside of the church. Everyone is united around one thing. . . . It brings many different kinds of people together into one room. . . .
I opened myself up and tried to find – through Scripture, song, and community – a different perspective. . . . Instead of rebelling against or wholesale dismissing the Church, I tried to find the goodness in what the Church had to offer. And I tried to find a point of compassion in the experience that I could build from. I’d always been a driven person, but I’d not been the most compassionate person on earth. (Bob Mould, with Michael Azerrad. See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody [New York: Little, Brown, 2011], 348-350)
What Bob Mould experiences in church is
a little taste of the kingdom of the King of Compassion.
What he finds is a point of compassion to build from.
That point is Jesus.
May each of you, at the end of this church year, come to find that point of compassion.
May you know yourself to be beloved and
infinitely precious to the shepherd who lays down and gives his life for you.
May you receive every gift this king wants to give you.
And may you steward those gifts wisely and generously.
And together, may you build from that point of compassion something beautiful and good.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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