Feast of Christ the King, November 21, 2021 – Daniel 7:13-14; Revelation 1:5-8; John 18:33B-37

Why do people write? Sometimes they write because they have a story to tell. Sometimes because they have a creative itch. Sometimes, like with textbooks, to inform, to provide facts. Sometimes to motivate people, whether in enthusiasm or in anger, or with some prejudice. And, almost always, to make money. So you have to ask yourself why each of the New Testament books was written. With the letters of St. Paul, sometimes it's obvious. Someone has written to him from a church, and he is writing back to answer questions or to provide guidance.

But it’s very different with the four gospels. Everybody already knew the essentials of the story of Jesus and, most importantly, His passion, death, and resurrection. Everybody knew that. But each of the four gospel writers feels the need to tell the story again. Each one has a particular focus responding to the needs of the people in his community at that time. The gospels are separated by almost a half-century from the first one to the last one.

John’s was the last one to be written. And there are four things that prompt the writer, whose gospel is named the Gospel of John, to write to his people. The first is two separate heresies that are beginning to emerge from this very ancient church. Only sixty or seventy years following the Lord Jesus, they’re already beginning to diverge in their understanding of the Lord Jesus. One group finds it difficult to believe that He is anything more than a human being whom God has chosen for a specific work. The other group is only too happy to believe that He’s divine, but they want to fold him into all of the other divinities of the Mediterranean Basin - the famous Greek and Roman gods - and to see Him as some sort of link to a different kind of life. It’s as though you’re in the know, and being in the know by belonging to Jesus gives you a leg up against this miserable world in which we live. And that theory sounds so much like the promise of everlasting life that Jesus actually made, that it’s easy to confuse true Christianity with this other kind of notion that goes by the name of Gnosticism.

The second thing is that this author hates the Jews. Now, we don’t like to talk about prejudice, but this gospel is written with an enormous prejudice that was very well-founded. After the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, all of the friendly, or at least contentious, relationship between the followers of Jesus and the rest of the Jewish population broke down completely. And restored Judaism had nothing to cling to except the Torah. And so, that made Christians completely anathema since, from the time of Saint Paul, it was taught that Jesus had moved beyond the Torah. More to the point, among all the different religions in the Mediterranean Basin, only Judaism had a preferred status in the empire. It was a protected religion; people could practice it without breaking the Roman law. So, very often highly placed Jewish officials would connive against groups of Christians in this town or another to try and get them on the bad side of the Roman officials. So there’s ample reason to be angry with the Jews of the turn of the century.

That leads us into the third thing; and that is that, at this point, Christianity is suspect in Roman circles. And, in order to make sure that nothing bad happens, area governors, and even the emperor himself, are forcing Christians to worship at the pagan temples, to offer sacrifice. Now keep in mind that sophisticated Romans really didn’t believe in all of those gods. They recognized them as all mythology. But for the sake of public order, good Romans were required to offer sacrifices in the temple of Athena or the temple of Zeus, or somebody else like that, just pro forma. More to the point, they had to agree that the Roman emperor, ever since the time of Augustine, was themself divine. So, Christians would be hauled before a judge and told, “Offer sacrifice, or you’ll be executed.” And, because they wouldn’t offer sacrifice, they were executed. This is the climate into which St. John brings his gospel, to offer comfort, courage, and consolation to beleaguered Christians.

So, that’s what this story is all about. Pilot represents the entire political and cultural structure of the Mediterranean Basin in the year 100. He’s the spokesman for it. That’s why I asked you to listen for what you thought was the most important word in the story. The most important word in the story is the word “the.” The simple article “the.” In the Greek language this little article is a very particular thing. It says, “this particular item,” not just simply “the item” but, this particular, special item.

So, all during the conversation, Jesus talks about “the truth,” which is one particular, specific truth. “The truth.” What was the line that was missing? The famous line that ends the conversation. “.. and Pilot answered, ‘What is truth?’” When Pilot uses the word, he leaves out the article “the” because, for the cultured people of that time, truth was an intellectual concept. The words matched a reality. So, if I said, “The sun is shining,” and it was, that was truth. If it was pouring rain and I said, “The sun is shining,” that was falsehood. But for people of Jewish background, as Jesus was, truth was an action. It was something you did. It was the way that your life accorded with genuine human living. If you were a mensch, that was truth. So, what is “the truth” for Jesus?

Early on in John’s gospel, in chapter 3, John says that Jesus came into the world to save the world. He prefaces it within the line, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” God so loved the world. That’s “the truth.” That God loves the world with an immense love. Later on in John’s gospel Jesus says, “I am the truth.” So notice what Jesus says He does when Pilot asks Him if He is a king. Jesus says, “The reason I came into the world was to testify, to give witness to, the truth. The way I live my life - by teaching, by healing, by comforting - all of that is a testimony, a witness, to “the truth” that God loves the world.

So, what does all of this got to do with us in the 21st century? Even though the issues I described, that troubled the church of John’s time, are long ago gone, the underlying things below them are still there. There is still persecution of Christians. There are still philosophical points of view that are inimical to really good human living. There is still bigotry and hatred to overcome. There are still all of those things that with the motivations that percolated beneath the issues of John’s day. So, for all of us, the takeaway from this story is that, from His birth, to the present day when He lives in His church, and lives in you and me, Jesus comes as witness to “the truth.” That no matter what else is going on, God so loves the world that he gives his only Son.