Scripture can be found here...
I have been thinking a lot about kings. For the past four months or so I have been watching movies and television shows about
British monarchs. It all started back in December with “Elizabeth R”, a 1971 miniseries
depicting the life of Elizabeth I of England.
That was followed by the movies “Elizabeth,” “Elizabeth the Golden Age,”
“Mary, Queen of Scots,” “Anne of the Thousand Days,” and then all four seasons
of “The Tudors.” After that, we went back to Henry II with “Becket” and “The
Lion in Winter.” Fast forward several hundred years to “Edward and Mrs.
Simpson,” and then rewind again to the miniseries “The Six Wives of Henry VIII.”
And back to his daughter with the “The Virgin Queen.” It still isn’t over. I
have a list of fifteen more films about Elizabeth I alone. We (the movie- and
TV-watching public) seem to have a bottomless appetite for the stories of kings
and queens.
And it was not unheard of for monarchs to be executed. Lots
of beheadings—Mary Queen of Scots, James I, Lady Jane Grey, Anne Boleyn and
Katherine Howard… not to mention courtiers such as Sir Thomas Moore and Thomas
Cromwell.
It is a fearful thing to watch a monarch walk to the place
of their execution. Even if you are aware that you are watching actors, on a
very accurate period set, all recorded for purposes of entertainment, your
pulse quickens a little. Your throat dries out. Anne Boleyn was convicted of
adultery, incest, and high treason, though most scholars believe she was in fact
innocent of all those charges, and the victim of the king’s fierce desire to
have a male heir. On the day of her execution she walked to the scaffold smiling,
in a grey gown trimmed with fur, an ermine cape over her shoulders, her long
hair tucked into a white bonnet to give the executioner, a particularly skilled
swordsman brought in from France, a clean view of her neck. She spoke to the
crowd.
Good Christian people,
I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged
to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to
accuse no man… but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over
you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was
ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord… And thus I take my leave of the world
and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy
on me, to God I commend my soul.
The gospel of John is very different from the other three
gospels. Are you tired of my saying so? I can’t help myself. Read John’s
account of the crucifixion, and then read any other account for comparison. In
John’s gospel Jesus goes to the cross with all deliberateness, with all
confidence that this is God’s will and plan, and that it is, instead of a
moment of despair or defeat, a moment of absolute, resplendent glory.
In our short passage today, Pontius Pilate pronounces the
sentence, though we don’t ever hear his words. There is one ruler, there is one
king here, and it is not Pilate. It is Jesus. He is not assisted by anyone; he
carries the cross himself. He is not led, or dragged, or carried; he walks,
under his own power. He is crucified alongside two other men, but their
backstory and their ultimate fate is no concern of John’s, so we don’t hear a
word from them. Our focus is on Jesus, and only Jesus: Jesus of Nazareth, King
of the Jews.
‘Pilate also had an
inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King
of the Jews”’ ~ John 19:19. This caused some amount of consternation.
Why not write, “This man said ‘I am
the King of the Jews?’” they asked. “What I have written, I have written,”
replied the prefect of Judea.
What are we to make of this? Are we to nod our heads and
think, “Ah, Pilate is convinced”? Or, do we look at the prefect and think, “Oh,
he’s figured another way to torment the Jewish population: show them a man on a
cross, and send the message, ‘No one is safe, not even your king.’” I think we
could go either way.
Me, I lean towards the “Out of the mouths of…” well, not
babes, in this case—more like ‘Out of the mouth of the enemy.’ Or, ‘Out of the
mouth of the oppressor.’ The person who you would least expect to get it, gets
it. The people with all the education, the ones who know their scripture inside
out, who’ve spent their lives steeped in God’s word—they don’t get it.
But really, why should they? Even now, even two thousand years
after the fact, with something like ninety-nine generations of preachers
between Jesus and us, interpreting the story, explaining it to us, helping us
to see him for who he is… even now, we read these words, or we close our eyes,
or we gaze up at a movie screen to watch a biblical epic, and we see this image
of a man nailed to a cross, and it is very, very hard to understand what in
blazes Jesus means by “his hour of glory.”
Irenaeus was a prominent figure in the early church, born
just about 100 years following the death of Jesus on the cross. “At the very
heart of his faith was a conviction that the unseen, unknowable God who had
created everything so loved humanity that he had become a human being just like
us.”[i]
And perhaps the statement of Irenaeus that is best-known and most often-quoted is one that
speaks to this text: “The glory of God is the person fully alive; and the life of
the person is the vision of God.”[ii]
John tells us that the vision of Jesus on the cross is truly
the hour of his glory, and the glory of God. The moment in which he is lifted
high on the cross is the moment at which Jesus is most fully alive, the moment
at which he truly gives us a vision of God and kingship unlike any we have seen
before, and unlike any we will see again.
We see the God and king who does not leave us alone in our suffering,
but who joins us there.
We see the God and king who does not cling to his power, but
who empties himself of it.
We see the God and king who does not flinch from love, but
who embraces it, arms stretched wide, whatever the cost.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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