“Pilate asked Jesus, ‘So you are a king?’ 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.’ Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’” (John 18:33-38a)
This Sunday, we will enter into this conversation between Jesus and Pilate, which occurs at a climactic part of the fourth gospel: Jesus, having been betrayed by Judas and denied twice by Peter, is arrested and brought forth to Pilate for questioning. The dialogue that ensues is one laden with meaning. Politically, Pilate’s questions about kingship have life-or-death consequences, as Jesus could be charged with sedition for forsaking his allegiance to the Roman empire; theologically, Jesus’ claim about truth and belonging threaten to undermine the systems of religious hierarchy; existentially, Pilate’s question (“What is truth?”) reaches through the generations to confront us with our own questions of truth, belonging, and authority.
Many Christians celebrate this Sunday as “Christ the King” Sunday, celebrating “king” as one among many titles for the divine that we find within the Christian tradition. Though such a title does not tell the whole story – no single title does! – we may find that to call Christ “king” is to redefine the terms of kingship and authority as we know them. Empires seek power, assert dominance, create structures of exclusion, perpetuate patterns of violence, exploit our desires for belonging, and shun difference; Jesus resists power, deconstructs dominance, creates inclusive community, reverses patterns of violence, orders our desires for belonging, and welcomes difference. To call Jesus “king” is to flip our notions of kingship and empire upside down and to call us into new ways of being as we seek to answer Pilate’s question: What (or who) is truth?