Vestavia Hills Methodist Church
Is He Your King? (Trad.)
This morning, our gospel lesson comes to us from the gospel according to St. John the 18th chapter. Begin reading in the 33rd verse. I invite those who are able to please stand for the reading of the gospel. Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own or did others tell you about me?" Pilate replied, "I'm not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to 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." Pilate asked him, "So you are a king." And 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." As we have heard the word of God this morning, let us now affirm our faith in God in the words of the Apostles Creed. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day he rose from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sit at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Rose, as it was in the beginning. You may be seated. Well today is the last day, the last Sunday in the Christian year. And next Sunday begins the new Christian year. The Christian year doesn't really fall with a calendar necessarily, but it starts with Advent and runs all the way around until this Sunday. The Sunday that we focus on Christ the King. When we celebrate that Christ is King. This whole year we have been focused on walking with Jesus. And today as part of that we celebrate that Jesus is our King. That Jesus is a different kind of King, reigning over a different kind of Kingdom. And so maybe that's the question we ask on on this Sunday is well if we are walking with Jesus and we know that Christ is King, well the question is, is Christ my King? If I'm going to walk with Jesus, is He my King? The story that we're we're using today that we have before us today that from the gospel it comes from well the last hours of Jesus' life and ministry. He has been arrested the night before in the Garden of Gethsemane. He'd then been taken to three different trials. He was taken first to Anas who was the former high priest and then to Herod and then to Caiaphas who was the current high priest and Anas' son-in-law and at the home of Caiaphas, he had been tried before the entire Sanhedrin, the high Jewish counsel and they had treated him horribly. Not just trying him, asking him questions, but they also spat on him and slapped him and treated him like a criminal and now we find him in this moment. Having been taken to the Antonio fortress which was in the in the wall of the city of Jerusalem, the temporary headquarters of Pilate, the Roman governor, taken there to be tried again. You see Pilate, if you think about it, he's the only person in the whole story of the crucifixion that finds his way into the Apostles Creed that that we spoke, we recited, we affirmed just a few moments ago, but we really don't talk about Pilate that often. And so let's back up in time a little bit and see how Pilate gets there and see why Pilate is the one that they bring Jesus to. When Herod the great died, when Jesus was just a toddler, he had left in his will that he wanted the kingdom of Judea, he wanted it divided among his three sons because he wanted to ensure that none of his sons would ever be as great as he was. So he split the land among them. His youngest son Philip was given the far north and that that's where he went and and he took the principal city and he added his name to it and so it became Caesarea Philippi, a place where we see Jesus and the disciples go during his ministry. His other son Antipas was given ruling over the place to rule over the Galilee. So the village of Capernaum where Jesus lived in the home of Peter and his family in Capernaum and Magdalene, all the cities around the Sea of Galilee, those were under the reign of Antipas but his oldest son, Arkelius. Herod gave him the largest piece of land and that land included Jerusalem, the capital, the place of the temple, the center of who they were as Jewish people. But Arkelius, he was a lot like his father. Herod was brilliant but he was also maniacal and so was Arkelius. He was cruel and he went out of his way to make the Jewish people angry over and over again. He messed with their religious order when he could. He violated their religious law just to prove he could and there was even a point where he killed 3,000 Jews at the temple mound because he just thought they might form a riot and so he had them slaughtered. It grew so bad that the Jewish people cried out to Rome and Rome had to act and so they removed Arkelius from power and they sent in Roman governors to rule the land, to rule over Antipas, to rule over Philippi and then also to rule all of Jerusalem and Judea. Pilate comes to town. When Pilate arrives in Judea he is the fifth governor that has been appointed there and while all the four other ones that had really short stints, Pilate arrives in 26 AD and he's there for a decade through the entire ministry of John the Baptist and of Jesus. And like the others before him he liked to live in Caesarea by the Sea, another city named after Caesar but this one was a Roman-style city built by Herod the Great and it was beautiful on the coast of the Mediterranean. That's where Pilate lived but every year, every time there was a Jewish festival in Jerusalem when the Jews from around Israel, around the world would come together, Pilate and his wife and about three to five thousand soldiers would leave Caesarea by the Sea and make their way to Jerusalem. He went there as the governor to flex his power to keep the peace. So on Friday morning, early in the morning, he finds out that it's that there's people there to see him. It's the day that Passover will start. Surely they don't want anything from him but here they are. They've come to the fortress and they want him to try a prisoner on the day that Passover begins. Pilate's probably frustrated. I mean who wants to start their day that way? I mean he's only there in the Jewish capital to keep the peace, the the Poxelmana, the peace of Rome to do that by force if needed. He doesn't know who's outside but maybe he can calm them down or maybe he could send them on to the Jewish authorities and let the Jewish authorities deal with them with their law. I can't imagine the surprise that must have overwhelmed him when he walked out of the fortress that morning and he looked out and all of the Jewish authorities were there. The high priest, the previous high priest, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, the chief priests, they're all there in full vestment. They're guards from the temple there in full regalia, all assembled in his courtyard and there's a crowd. This crowd that has has emerged out of their homes to follow because it must have been a spectacle to see this parade beginning at the home of Caiaphas and making its way through the streets over to the Antonio fortress, people coming out and following. This has to be big, this has to be important. And Pilate looks down to see what's so important. And standing in front of this assembly is a man and he's bruised and he's battered and he shackled. This man that Pilate would soon come to know his name Jesus. He's the reason that they're there. They brought him there for a simple reason, really. They want him dead and they want Pilate to do it. Pilate asked what Jesus has done that has caused this and their answer really is horrible, isn't it? He asked you know what Jesus has done and they replied back, well if he weren't guilty we wouldn't have brought him. That's really not much of an answer is it? That sounds like something our children would say to us if we asked them a question but that was the answer they gave Pilate. And so Pilate takes him in and says why don't you take him and why don't you judge him yourself? Why don't you judge him by your law? But that's when they admit and we can't. We can't take him and judge him by our law because we need you to kill it. We need you to kill it. And so Pilate takes him inside the headquarters away from the the listening leaders and he asked Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? And the reason I think he jumps to that conclusion is maybe that's why they brought him there. Maybe that's why they aren't planning to stone him to death like they would usually. This maybe they feel like that this is above their pay grade as the leaders of the Jewish people. They can't kill their own king and so they brought him to Pilate because they figure that Pilate will. That Pilate will take out any kind of threat to his authority. Maybe they think that Pilate will kill Jesus just so that he doesn't provoke Rome. Make Rome mad at him. So Pilate asks, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus says, do you ask if I'm a king because you think that I'm a king? Or what? Somebody tell you that? And Pilate admits that he really doesn't care who the king is. What has him fascinated is the courtyard. The courtyard that is filled with every Jewish leader he has ever seen or had to deal with. They are all out there. So he asked Jesus, what in the world have you done to make everyone mad at you? And then Jesus starts talking about a kingdom. A kingdom that's not of this world, a kingdom that's different. Different kind of kingdom. So Pilate feels he has his answer. So you are a king and Jesus says, you say that I'm a king. For this I was born. For this I came into the world to testify to the truth. I've always been amazed at the depth of what Jesus says there. You say that I'm a king. For me it's like Jesus is saying, you say that I'm a king and I'm going to allow that. I'm going to allow that idea because reality is I understand you can't comprehend all that I really am. King is something that a term, an idea that you can relate to because you can't grasp who I really am and what I'm really about. You can call me a king but I am the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. You can call me a king but I am the way and the truth and the life. You can call me a king but I am part of the eternal trinity, the eternal Godhead. I was there at the dawn of creation and I will be there when the final curtain of time is finally drawn upon this world. You can call me a king but I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last but you can you can call me a king even though I'm much much more than that. Pilate's not really in a hurry to pass judgment on Jesus. In truth he can't find any fault in Jesus, no reason to do what they're asking him to do. He tries to bargain with the crowd. Why don't you take Jesus and I'll keep Barabbas but that doesn't work and finally he literally washes his hands of this situation but nothing he does will change their mind. He brings him forward and says here is your king and they shouted take him away, take him away, crucify him. Shall I crucify your king? He asked, we have no king but Caesar. That was how they responded and so Pilate sends him off to be crucified. Even though somewhere in this it seems that Pilate began to understand that he might be more than a king. In his own way Pilate seemed to understand what we need to understand, that Jesus really is king. And we know that one day he'll be king of kings and Lord of lords but right now he is still king. And so it's appropriate today as we think about Christ the king Sunday to ask the question Christ is king but is he your king? Is he your king? What difference does it make that he was born? What difference does it make to you that he was born, that he came into this world? Not just because in a few weeks we'll celebrate Christmas and that means parties and gifts and all those fun things but does it make a difference in your life day to day that Jesus came into this world for you? Have you allowed him to change your life, your attitude, your behavior? Do you submit to his rule over all other rules? Do you rely on the truth of scripture or are you more inclined to accept the truth of the voices around you that seem to speak so loudly and so convincingly with such self-proclaimed authority? Do you listen to all of that or do you listen to Jesus? Are you willing to listen to and to trust the one whose kingdom is not of this world and calls you to live in that kingdom with him? Or do you listen to him only when it's convenient and only when it's easy? Years ago Thomas Jefferson decided that well in the grand scheme of things he only liked some of the things that Jesus said and some of the things that Jesus did and so in 1803 shortly after he became our third president he decided to create his own version of the New Testament. He sat down with two Bibles and a pair of scissors and a blank book and he simply cut out passages of scripture and put them into his Bible, his book and he called it the philosophy of Jesus. He took the entire New Testament and paired it down to 46 pages with only the things that he liked. Now years ago in a history class when I first heard about that I was surprised that Thomas Jefferson's arrogance in that moment I mean how could he presume to know what belonged in and what didn't belong and how do you make that choice? Where do you make that call and but to be honest we do the same thing. We just don't get scissors and glue and and cut up two Bibles to do it but if we're not careful we all edit the Bible maybe even every day. We pick and choose among the passages. We edit out where there are expectations that push us into directions we might not want to go. We purge out the parts that are difficult that call us to to think too far or maybe they don't really fit in with all the social media posts that fill our feeds every day and so we don't want to talk about that or think about that or we don't want to feel like that's something we need to be involved in and so we just cut here and edit there but if Christ is our king then it all stays in the book. If Christ is our king then we should be listening to all that he said and following wherever it is that he leads. If Christ is our king we should be reading his word and allowing it to call us to serve him as our king. We should be allowing him to be the king of all of our life as we submit our will to his and not just bits and pieces of our days or our weeks or our years but all of our life. Do we allow Christ to be king for us in our relationships in seeking to do we seek to please him in what we do in life and how we act and what we say. Do we allow him to be the king of the choices that we make and the decisions that we make. Do we allow him to be king Saturday through Sunday 24/7 all day every day or do we carve out little segments of time here and there where we allow him to be king sometimes even trying to force him to just be a figurehead is he your king that's who he is as king but is he yours a few years ago I received an email from an acquaintance who was pastoring a church in rural Alabama he sent the email out to me and to several others and and the subject line of the of the email was recent adventure and knowing the person that sent the email I knew that his life was sort of an adventure and I couldn't wait to read what he was about to tell me but then I opened the email and found it was much different what I thought it was going to be. He said that one day he was home by himself and he felt this onset of what he thought was really bad indigestion and he decided after a little while that it really wasn't getting any better no matter what he took and so he decided he would drive himself to the hospital and get it checked out. Now just as a public service warning here if you ever feel something's really wrong don't drive yourself to the hospital that's not good advice for people but he did he drove himself to the hospital they ran test and they came back and they told him that he would have to spend the night in the hospital at least because the reality was he had had a heart attack was an indigestion he said that the hardest thing for him to do was calling his wife and telling her that he was going to have to stay in the hospital that night he said that was really hard because I had not told her I was going to the hospital in the first place I'm sure that went well. Well the next day they did an arteriogram and while they're placing a stint that they thought would fix it something broke loose it was a fluke something moved and he found himself in the midst of a greater heart attack physicians and technicians did what they do best and they cared for him and they got him through it and when he emailed us he'd been out of the hospital for several weeks at that time and his health was improving he was getting stronger and he said he wanted to share what he thought about while he was laying in that hospital what filled his mind while he laid there what troubled his soul he said he began to realize that his life was filled filled with couldas, shouldas, and wouldas all in all areas of life in his relationship where he could have spent more time should have spent more time would have spent more time would have done this would have helped here would have put this person first would have all these kind of things and the things that he knew were important but he kept putting off should have gotten in better shape could have died it could have exercised could do this could invest more could save more could could serve more I mean the list went on and then he said he began doing that looking at that list even or around especially in his relationship with God about being a disciple we would say walking with Jesus about learning how to live as a Christian in the world a faithful follower he said he realized and in that area of life too there were so many could of wouldas and shoulda's putting off until later till this happens or that happens or this season or that season delay delay so many coulda shoulda's and woulda's he said but now I feel that I I have the opportunity to start dealing with him to start tending to this and he reminded each one of us who received the email that we should think about those things in our lives as well he said because you never know when a case of what you think is indigestion could actually change your life how many coulda should as a woulda's are you carrying around with you each day in your relationships and the things that you know are important but you keep putting off and especially in your relationship with God and being a disciple and learning to be a Christian in today's world and in walking with Jesus each and every day where are you putting those things off he should be king in your life in all your life but is he today's when we celebrate that Christ is king that's not something we vote on that's not something we get to decide it's reality it's eternal reality Christ is king and today is when we realize again that Christ should be king in our life that Christ should be king in all of our life and so today's the day I ask you if you want to walk with Jesus and he is king well the question you have to answer is is he your king is he your king amen