The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee
Yes, that was the correct gospel reading for today! We have not pressed fast-forward and gone directly to Lent, we are instead taking a little bit of a tour of our liturgical seasons as we hear what is ordinarily a Lenten reading on this last Sunday of the season of Pentecost, the Feast of Christ the King, as preparation for Advent. Did you get all that? If you are visiting the Episcopal Church for the first time today, please, do not despair-we do not always speak in code!
Pentecost, longest season, today would have been the 30th Sunday in the season. Gail in the office, who posts my sermons to the blog, will be glad that it is the end of my very clever joke-46th Sunday in Pentecost, 73rd Sunday in Pentecost.
So we have finally come to the end of that longest of seasons, and here we are, the Sunday of Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent begins, with a bit of the Passion story-Jesus being interrogated by Pontius Pilate. What is going on?
I think that we are given this low-point, this very un-kingly moment in Jesus’ life for two reasons. One is to balance the description of kingship we get in the reading from Daniel:
That Prophet says:
As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
and an Ancient One took his throne,
his clothing was white as snow…
his throne was fiery flames,
and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousands served him,
and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.”
That is the sort of language we are used to in the describing of kings, that is the sort of majesty and opulence we associate with royalty. Royalty were considered God’s chosen rulers on earth, and so they were worthy of gold and silver and jewels and thousands upon thousands of servants. And so how much more stark is the contrast between this fantastical description and what we hear in the Gospel:
Jesus, God’s true son on Earth, handed over to a local governor and judged like a common criminal, interrogated about his kingship in this common context.
And that, I believe, is the second reason we are reading this particular passage from John today-because Jesus was in fact a king, and he came to turn the notion of kingship on its head. He was a king like no other-his kingdom was in heaven not in his earthly life, and so in this scene with Pilate we see Jesus redefine the very nature of kingship. This is very in line with his teachings during his life-the meek shall inherit the earth, the last shall be first-and the king must meet death to enter his kingdom.
I think that the wise people who designed our lectionary had all of that in mind when they set the readings for this day, and I think they also took this chance to inject a bit of drama into our Sunday. I say this because today is in fact the last day of Pentecost, which means that next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, which in another oddity of church time v. secular time is the beginning of our new year. Advent is the season of holy waiting, of prayer, study, fasting all in anticipation of the birth of our Savior at Christmas.
And so I think the readings today were chosen as a sort of bookend of the season to come-we see Jesus at the end of his earthly life as a bit of foreshadowing of what is to come in the life of this child we eagerly await.
In the last line of the Gospel passage Jesus says to Pilate:
"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."
If this Gospel was a movie we were watching in the theater, there would have been dramatic music-
And the camera would have cut away from the torch lit audience room in the imperial palace, and we suddenly would have found ourselves in dusk in Jerusalem, following a carpenter and his heavily pregnant wife as they walked from inn to inn in the dying light, seeking lodging, though none was to be found.
And our little film would end deep in the night, looking down on a manger as animals placidly chewed and a single lamp flickered, and the cry of a newborn King echoed in the night.
AMEN.
