Are you the King of the Jews?
What kind of king is Jesus, anyway?
Ancient peoples had various ways of imagining kingship. Psalm 93, for example, celebrates God’s kingship as evidenced by God’s victory over the chaos at the time of creation: The Lord is king, in splendor robed, and he has made the world firm, not to be moved. The psalmist is remembering back to the moment when God set order on the world so that humanity could exist there, a moment of victory to be praised by all. For after all, who else has the right to be king but the one who made all possible? Much later, the prophet Daniel offered what sounds very much like a messianic prophecy: I saw one like a Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven to receive dominion, glory, and kingship. Daniel’s vision of the heavenly kingdom of God is set in opposition to the worldly kingdoms opposed to God; God’s kingdom is everlasting and shall not be destroyed.
But Jesus has his own vision of the kingdom of God. And so when, in John’s gospel, Jesus is brought before Pilate, he will try to make the Roman governor understand that his is a new sense of kingship: My kingdom does not belong to this world, Jesus tells Pilate. Jesus is inviting Pilate to look deeper, for Jesus testifies to the truth, the truth that love itself is the only true power because it can transform hearts. Everyone who accepts the love of God in their lives listens to his voice; only Christ’s truth gives access to the heart, which is the only kingdom the Lord is interested in ruling, a kingdom not bound by this world but reaching beyond it. Through his death and resurrection, the Book of Revelation tells us, Jesus Christ has made us into a kingdom; with time, God will gather all into one in him, bound only by and to the Alpha and the Omega, the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty! This is the king we worship – not a king we define in our own terms, but a king who offers us his love, that we might one day know perfect union with the Lord in heaven, hearts aglow with the light of Christ!
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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