Caught Between Truths
The Long Road Home - Part 7
Sunday, November 21, 2021
John 18:33-19:16, Psalm 2
They cried out, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” Pilate asked them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.”
John 19:15
Listen to this week’s sermon here:
For centuries Israel had been praying for a fulfillment of God’s promise, a king to sit on David’s throne for all eternity. For generations they had been a marginalized people under the oppressive rule of one empire after another, and they had gone through a number of “would-be messiahs” who promised to save them only to be killed in the end. Would God ever send a Savior?
Now the savior stands before the Roman authorities accused of treason. His own people declare that he is a threat to Ceasar. “We have no king,” they say, “but the emperor.”
How did we fall so far? We went from a people who would do anything to be set free from Roman rule to a people who would ultimately reject God’s own Son in favor of the Roman Emperor who the world calls the son of God.
We shouldn’t be so quick to judge. Perhaps we are more alike than we care to admit. How long have we awaited Christ’s return? How often have we wondered if things would ever get better? How many election cycles have we gone through putting all of our hopes in whatever candidates we think will make our religious lives just a little easier in the midst of an increasingly secular society?
At some point in the waiting, we begin to wonder, “What if this is as good as it gets?”
“What is truth?” This is the question Pilate poses to Jesus in his trial. This is the question we are all asking when we consider how to make the best out of our broken lives and our broken world.
Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world. If Jesus is truth, then the promises of our worldly leaders cannot offer us truth that will last. We may not have an emperor, but we still put our hopes of revival and restoration in the powers of our world, whether in presidents, congress-people, judges, governors, or even pastors and church leaders. One moment we despair the utter failure and corruption of our leaders and the next minute we campaign as if they are our only hope.
Honoring Jesus as king and living into his truth isn’t about who sits on the throne at various levels of authority in our lives. It is about living as citizens of an entirely different kingdom. Perhaps it’s time to stop trying to squeeze Jesus into the thrones and palaces of our earthly empires and start proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. We have no king but him.