It is a gift to be able to share a few reflections on today’s readings on this the last Sunday of our liturgical year.  Today’s Sunday used to be called the ‘Feast of Christ the King” but has been renamed, ‘The Feast of Our lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe’, emphasizing that Jesus is sovereign over all creation.  Let’s plunge into our readings to see what they say to us in today’s world.

Our Gospel from John focuses on Jesus’ summary trial by Pontius Pilate, a name familiar to all of us from the New Testament.  It was only in 1961 that evidence of the existence of Pontius Pilate apart from the New Testament was discovered. The so-called ‘Pilate stone” was found during excavations of an ancient theatre in Caesarea Maritima, the seat of Roman power in Judea. The inscription on the stone refers to Pontius Pilate dedicating the theatre to Augustus Caesar.  

Pilate begins his questioning of Jesus with the famous question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” This question frames the dialogue about the meaning of kingship.  Pilate’s question to Jesus is a political question- are you someone who will encourage riots and uprisings against the Roman occupation? Or are you some harmless crank? For Pilate, a king is someone who can impose his will on others through power and domination.  A king can use his authority to benefit himself and his friends. Jesus draws Pilate into a deeper understanding of power as He replies, “My kingdom is not from this world.” If I were a king , as you Pilate think of a king,  then I would respond with violence; my armies would come and destroy yours. “But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”  As one commentator put it so well: “Pilate comprehends a rule in which the sovereign can enforce his will, in fact his every whim.  But everything that Jesus is about pertains to another plane, one based on loving relationships.” Domination, power, violence are Pilate’s understanding of truth as he asks the rhetorical question at the end of the passage our Gospel is taken from, “What is truth?” In Mel Gibson’s movie the Passion of Christ, Pilate tells us what his truth is: I will have to account for myself before the emperor if this ragtag preacher from Galilee disturbs the Pax Romana which I have to uphold by whatever means I have, even if it means bloodshed. 

Jesus does not claim the kind of kingship Pilate thinks of when he responds to Pilate’s statement, “So you are a king”.  Jesus does not claim to be a king, “You say that I am”. In other words, you are defining me in terms of your political category of a king as a man with power over others.  This vision of a king was rejected by Jesus during his time in the desert when he was tempted by the devil as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel.  “Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said, ‘Away with you Satan for it is written, ‘Worship the lord your God and serve only him.” (Matt: 4:8-11) I define my kingship as the good shepherd whose flock hears his voice. “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Jesus defines his sovereignty as someone testifying to the truth.  And what is that truth?

We find it at the very beginning of John’s Gospel.  “He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.“(John 1:2-5) .  The truth is discovered in listening to Jesus’ words and witnessing his actions in our lives. “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12).  Every day we say the words, “Thy kingdom come”; What is it exactly we are praying for when we say those words? Isn’t it precisely what our readings teach us on this great solemnity.  We are praying for an end to the kind of power and domination which grips our world today and is expressed in the terrorist attacks in Paris, Mali and Beirut and elsewhere. We are praying for an end to suspicion that true refugees, mothers and fathers and their children are all terrorists.  We are praying that we will treat all people as we would wish to be treated even though they may be quite different from us and challenge our ‘comfort zone.”  We are praying for an end to abortion and euthanasia which usurps God’s kingship over all of us.

If we respond to hatred with more hatred, then we continue the cycle of Pilate’s kingdom where the strong win over the weak.  This was brought into relief with the interview of a civil rights worker who endured violence as he attempted to struggle against racism. “At first I did fight back...But then I realized that by fighting back I wasn’t getting anywhere. The hatred coming at me in those fists and clubs was bouncing right off me back into the air and it could just continue to spread. I decided to let my body absorb the hatred so that some of it would die in my body and not bounce back into the world. I now see that my job in the midst of evil is to make my body a grave for hate.” (paraphrased from Rolheiser, The Sacred Fire p166). Thy kingdom come.  With every action in our daily lives we are capable of bringing about Jesus’ kingdom of light in the darkness, of truth over lies as long as we listen to his voice.  As we end this liturgical year, we can ask ourselves how well we testified to the truth, Jesus’ truth.  Where we failed, let us pray to our Sovereign King for the grace to testify to the truth always in this coming liturgical year which Pope Francis has designated as the Year of Mercy. There is only one certainty in our lives. Pilate’s kingdom, the Roman empire, no longer exists, defeated by violence.  Jesus’ kingdom is alive and well 2000 years after Pilate questioned Jesus. Jesus has freed us from earthly kingdoms through his blood and brought us into his kingdom.

“His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingdom is one that shall never be destroyed.” (First Reading, Daniel 7:14) “I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord, God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” (Second Reading, Revelation1:8)

Amen!