Title: The Perfect Mirror*
The title and much of the good stuff in this sermon is derived from an
article by the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor (Christian Century, March 18-
25, 1998). The bad stuff is to be laid squarely at my feet.
33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters* again, summoned Jesus, and
asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34Jesus answered, ‘Do you
ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35Pilate replied, ‘I
am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed
you over to me. What have you done?’ 36Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom
is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers
would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as
it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ 37Pilate 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.’ 38Pilate asked him, ‘What is
truth?’
One of the things I loved about my college years was this incredible
chance to learn new and challenging things, especially new and
challenging ideas. I would have a been a philosophy major if religion
hadn’t intrigued me just a little bit more, because I love to see people
struggling with the big questions, the big ideas: how do I know something
is true? What is reality? How do I know its reality, rather than a dream of
some sort? What is the foundational idea that one must have before
one can go onto all other ideas? I know its not everyone’s bag, or their
cup of tea, but it was mine, and even today I have fantasies about going
back to school and getting a master’s degree in philosophy, amongst a
few other degrees—but, as Douglas, keeps reminding me I need more
school loan debt like I need another hole in my head!
But still, whether or not I ever go back and get that degree, I will always
be fascinated by the big ideas, especially the big questions about truth,
and very early on in college, I tended to hang out with people who
thought about these sorts of things. My friend Joey was someone I’ve
known since my freshman year in college, though he was one of those
long-term students that never quite finished any degree program he
started, he was also one of the brightest and talented people I’ve ever
known. By the age of 25 Joey had already published his first piece of
fiction, a book published by St. Martin’s Press in New York, and my one
claim to publishing fame was that I was one of the dozen or so people he
thanked at the beginning of the book, because I had helped to edit the
first chapter of it. Now, I can always say I am published, but, just to take
me down a peg or two, the printers or Joey himself misspelled my name,
so I am forever known as Kevin M-C-C-L-E and so on, in the pages of
the book, and in annals of publishing . It figures!
Aside from being brilliant, Joey was a skeptic about a lot of things,
especially about spirituality, and any kind of organized religion, and, as
you can imagine being a rebel growing up in the deep South, he was
especially unconvinced by Christianity. He would always push me and
challenge me, and question my assumptions about faith and life and
God—and to be honest, Joey helped me to question some long-held
assumptions that I think helped me to grow intellectually, and even
spiritually, in some surprising ways. No easy answers for Joey, no pat
answers you would try to read to him out of some smart book—he wouldn’
t settle for it, because I think he knew something I didn’t quite get yet at
that point in my young life, which is that truth is not something you
usually find in a book—yes, even the Good Book—truth is more often
than not found in the lives we actually live in this world, and the lives we
see others live out before our eyes. Walker Percy, the Southern novelist,
once remarked in a book whose name I can’t remember that one of this
characters believed that his books could save him but they could not, he
writes. More and more knowledge doesn’t automatically make you any
wiser in this world. Don’t get me wrong—of course, there is truth in the
pages of books—my whole book collection AND my preaching from the
Bible counts on that being a truth in and of itself—but my friend Joey
knew that it wouldn’t do for me to think that pointing to smarter people or
even wiser people than the both of us somehow makes something I
believe or he believes to be automatically true. Real truth is something
you witness in your own life and in the lives of others, and if we think we
can claim knowledge of truth, of some deeply held principle we have,
without practicing that truth or seeing that truth practiced in the life of
another, then we’ve probably shown that we probably don’t quite believe
our own words. If we’re going to make a claim about THE TRUTH, or
even A TRUTH, you and I are going to have to do better than citing
scripture or philosophers, or our grandmothers, or our best friends, or
even our favorite TV shows—we’re going to want to see it lived out in our
lives or in the lives of others.
I think that is what is happening in this moment before us in the Gospel
of John today, a moment when we see a lot talk about the truth, but more
than that, we see a life lived out of a deep sense of what is true in this
world, we see the life of Christ crystallized before Pilate and before us.
This is Christ the King Sunday, or recently re-named The Reign of
Christ Sunday, where we end the Christian calendar with a final look at
Jesus, the key to the sacred rhythm that we’ve been following all year
through the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, Easter, etc. On December 3,
next week, we begin again, one more sacred cycle following Christ’s life
being lived out in the weekly rhythms of the church.
But today, before we get to the birth of Christ, we get a scene from the
last hours of his life, when Pilate, politically shrewd Pilate, has this would-
be Jewish Messiah before him, someone whose continued presence in
Jerusalem during the Passover feast might trigger a full scale riots if he
was not finally checked. The forces of organized religion, ironically
enough, have rallied around this belief, and have conspired to put Jesus
in chains, before this pagan governor who cares not a wit about any
religion of any sort—what he cares about is getting through another
Passover season without some trouble from these naturally rebellious
Jews. Conquering a people is a lot easier than controlling a people, as
we are seeing in Iraq nowadays.
And so the scene is set, as the writer of John delicately crafts a series of
moments, divided between the religious authorities and the civil
authorities, between the Temple and the governor, both of which want to
pass off the responsibility of ending the life of this potential
troublemaker. And now it is Pilate’s turn to grill this Jesus of Nazareth,
and he asks Christ whether or not he is the King of Jews, as he has been
accused by someone—the charge here is particular, because any
person claiming kingship other than Caesar or Caesar’s puppet kings
like Herod, are always a threat—whoever accused Jesus of being King of
the Jews knew how it would sound to a brutal governor whose main job
was to keep law and order in his corner of the Empire. Jesus replies,
knowing that this accusation is not something likely to come from a
Roman citizen disinterested in Jewish religion and politics, and much to
Pilate’s credit, he admits as much—that it is Jesus’ own people, the
temple priests, people of his own nation, that have set him up on this
charge. But he’s wise, this Pilate, because he knows that this Jesus has
somehow angered or threatened the religious leaders who have brought
this accusation against him—“what have you done?” Pilate asks him.
And then Jesus oddly enough, owns the accusation, owns that indeed he
is a king, but not a king with an army, ready to set him free from the
political machinations so often found in this world, on this side of
eternity—Jesus’ followers will not use a sword to defend their king,
because this king keeps turning the world upside down, keeps
challenging the idea that the way things have always been will always be
the way things are forever—might beats right, power is everything, and
better to rule in hell than grovel in heaven, as Milton had Satan say
hundreds of years ago. Jesus is born to this, to this dominion based not
on power, but on truth, and a truth that is crystallized in a life and in the
words of its king. And I think verse 39 carries the question my friend
Joey used to always challenge me with, the question that Pilate asks of
Jesus—“what is truth?” Pilate walks out of the room, right after he says
these words, skeptical to the end, when people speak of truth in a world
that only truly honors power, the sword.
And I think that is where the silence speaks louder than any words Christ
could have come up with, any dissertation he could have given, any
proof-texting he could have used from some sacred text somewhere.
The silence is his answer to Pilate’s skepticism, because in the end, I
think, what Pilate failed to recognize is that when the words end, Pilate’s
words, Jesus’ words, the words of the temple priests intent on Jesus’
murder, when all the words end, what we are left with is a life, a life of
some man who lived thousands of years ago, and with whom we still
struggle to understand, even after billions of words have been said
about him, and millions of words have been written about him. What
Pilate saw was the truth, the living breathing truth, right before him, in
this life, in this moment, when finally the words all fail, and even Jesus’
powerful voice grows silence in this moment, and what lay before Pilate
was a life that transformed the world. Mother Teresa’s words echo in my
ears in moments like this, when the silence engulfs the scene, when she
says to us Christians: “Enough words. Let them see what we do.”
Jesus doesn’t point to something else, some book, some grandiose God,
to justify his kingdom—he points to his own life, his own nonviolent
choices—and that life clarifies everything for us, those of us who look at
that particular life as a source of truth. He told the truth, he exposed all
the ridiculous pretensions and beliefs we have about ourselves, about
the universe, and that choice to tell the truth, with his life and with his
words, it did him in. Barbara Brown Taylor, writing about this text, says
this:
I remember being at a retreat once where the leader asked us to think of
someone who represented Christ in our lives. When it came time to
share our answers, one woman stood up and said, "I had to think hard
about that one. I kept thinking, ‘Who is it who told me the truth about
myself so clearly that I wanted to kill him for it?"’ According to John,
Jesus died because he told the truth to everyone he met. He was the
truth, a perfect mirror in which people saw themselves in God’s own light.
That perfect mirror, that life that undermines all that I have believed
about this world, and what is really true in this world, gets crystallized in
this life, these words, this death, and this resurrection. Taylor continues
to write, and I had hoped to put it in my own words, but her words are just
so much better than anything I could say:
What happened then goes on happening now. In the presence of his
integrity, our own pretense is exposed. In the presence of his constancy,
our cowardice is brought to light. In the presence of his fierce love for
God and for us, our own hardness of heart is revealed. Take him out of
the room and all those things become relative. I am not that much worse
than you are, nor you than I, but leave him in the room and there is no
place to hide. He is the light of the world. In his presence, people either
fall down to worship him or do everything they can to extinguish his light.
He unravels me, this Jesus, every time, and I am more in love with him
than I was when my good friend Joey did his best version of Pilate with
me. The only answer I can give about why I believe in this One who lived
thousands of years ago is that this life, these words, this death, even this
silence in John’s Gospel—it seems very true to me, more and more it
feels like a God I can recognize and be in wonder of. Joey is right to be
skeptical, and as someone who has struggled with doubts his whole life, I
get why he is skeptical about religion and faith—keep in mind that it was
not forces of anarchy and atheism that brought about Jesus’ death—it
was the organized forces of religion and law and order that did him in. I
wonder, though, if my friend had done what I wish Pilate would have
done at that moment, which is to stay in the room with this Jesus of
Nazareth, rather than walk out of the room like Pilate did, I wonder if that
would have made all the difference. It has for me, staying in the room,
and I suspect it has made a difference for many of you in this room as
well. There is something about this life that sharpens all the axes, that
befuddles all common sense, and that even angers the soul, and yet it is
also a life that, so often, softens the heart, and opens up the world, if we
are willing to stay in the room with him, even with our good and difficult
questions. In our Wednesday night series, one of the speakers on the
video series reminded us of an old African proverb that was said right
before the village storyteller began their tales—he or she would say, “I
don’t know if it happened this way, but I know that it is true.” Exactly,
exactly—something about the life and words told of him and about him,
they seem true, and maybe that is the best answer I could give, if I were
to ever sit with Joey again.
There is an old African-American spiritual that has been haunting me the
last couple of days, the song Ride On, King Jesus, especially Jessye
Norman’s version of it. Written during the years of slavery and sung by
those suffering at the hands of, ironically enough, other Christians, these
words say something about what this king can do for a person, for a life.
The words go…
Ride on King Jesus
No man can-a-hinder me
Ride on King Jesus
Ride on
No man can-a-hinder me
If Pilate and the forces of an empire and the forces of organized religion
cannot stop him, or his kingdom, than maybe nothing can stop us as
well, than maybe our lives can be changed because this one life has
changed the world. So, let’s stay in the room with this humiliated King of
the Jews, and when it is time to leave, and when we are finally convinced
of the truth that we see in his life and his words, we can shout with the
African slaves of some hundreds of years ago, “ride on, king Jesus, ride
on, no man can hinder me!” especially now. Amen.
