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John 18:28-40 · Jesus Before Pilate
Thou Sayest I Am King
John 18:28-40
Sermon
by Maxie Dunnam
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It’s something for a commoner from rural Mississippi to be in the presence of royalty, but I want you to know I was there. I shook hands with Prince Philip. And my wife Jeri was standing beside the Bishop of Kenya, when he was introduced formally to the Queen of England. It was the occasion of the reopening of Wesley’s Chapel in London in 1980. It was a great occasion and people from all over the world, Methodists from all over the world had come for that exciting event. I’ve never experienced anything like it really.

Following that worship service, at which the Queen of England was present, and this was the first time that a ruling monarch had ever stepped foot in a Methodist meeting house, the Prince was there too, having read or reading one of the scriptures in the worship service that day. And then all of that was followed by a reception for the Queen to which about 150 of us were invited, and I was moved. I was impressed. I confess to you probably overly impressed.

I will never forget it – the elegance of it all, the royal chamber music. But there was something else, an indescribable feeling of anticipation and excitement as we awaited the arrival of the King, Queen. And I confess I was, I was probably over impressed, unexplainably impressed with a kind of mystique that surrounds royalty. We were almost breathless in anticipation as we awaited her arrival. And I think it was all summed up really in Dr. Albert Outler, the imminent Wesley scholar, who looked at me in the midst of the excitement and said, Maxie, for people who have been the champions of democratic institutions for over 200 years, in the presence of royalty we’re quite beside ourselves. And we were – we were.

It was no royal occasion, really, that happened 2000 years ago on Palm Sunday, but those people were quite beside themselves too. They were quite beside themselves because King Jesus, a king unlike any other king, was turning their world upside down.

A poet reflected upon the meaning of it all because it was a paradoxical experience, saying, I saw the conquerors riding by with cruel lips and faces one, musing on kingdoms sacked and burned, there rode the mongrel Ghengus Kahn, and Alexander like a god, who sough to weld the world in one and Caesar with his laurel wreath, and like a thing from hell, the Hun. And leading like a star the van, heedless of up stretched arm and groan, inscrutable Napoleon came, dreaming of empire and alone. Then all they perished from the earth like fleeting shadows from a glass and conquering down the centuries same, Christ the swordless on an ass.

He rode into the city on a lowly donkey, there was no pomp and circumstance here, yet at the same time, those people gathered there in Jerusalem, greeted him with adulation, hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, hosanna to the king, hosanna in the highest.

Of course those shouts were changed a few days later, as they cried with derision and hatred, crucify him, crucify him. Jesus had been arrested and brought before Pilate, and the claim that he made before Pilate that day was unlike any other of the other claims that we’ve been considering during this Lenten season. It was a claim which was really a response to an accusation that had been made against Jesus.

Luke says that the crowd rose up against Jesus, and they brought him before Pilate and told Pilate that he had been perverting the nation, that he was telling people not to pay tribute to Caesar and, and that he was claiming to be Christ, a king. So Pilate can’t understand what’s going on. It must have been confusing to him. Here was a pale, meek, weak man; his hands bound behind him; pale in the face because of pain and mental anguish, and Pilate sneers beneath his breath, what are these Jews up to now? What do they think they’re doing? And, who is this they’re bringing to me? And then he sneers aloud, you, you’re a king?

If Jesus had answered no, he would have been answering a right as far as Pilate’s understanding of what a king is. But had been, had he answered yes, he certainly would have been answering wrong, as far as that understanding was concerned. And yet, in the deepest sense of the word, he was a king. And that claim that he made, in an indirect way, is the claim that we want to focus upon this morning.

Thou sayest I’m a king. To this end was I born and for this purpose came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth.

Everything that Christianity means to us, I believe, centers around how you and I respond to that claim. So let’s look at it. But in looking at it, let’s get an entire sweep of our scripture lesson today, and discover there some significant truths that grew out of the people’s response to that claim, indications of what was going on in their life and really significant aspects that brought Jesus to the cross.

There are two of those truths that we can recognize immediately. First there is the deadly poison of hatred. And then there’s the distorted perception of religion. The deadly poison of hatred and the distorted perception of religion – let’s look at that.

There’s nothing, absolutely nothing that distorts reality more than hatred does. It’s a terrible thing. It’s a kind of madness. And once we give way to hatred, we can’t think clearly. We lose control, we can’t see with perspective, and we act irresponsibly. And that’s what happened to the Jews. First, they knew that Jesus was a threat to their established religion, they knew that he was threat to everything they held Holy, so they began to hate him. And that hatred turned them into a mad, shrieking crowd who called for Jesus’ death. That was 2000 years ago.

The truth is still the same today. Hatred poisons us. It distorts reality, and it causes us to do things that under ordinary circumstances we would flee from. I never will forget those tumultuous days of racial upheaval in Mississippi, in the late 1950s and the early 60s. It really was an upheaval time all over the nation, but I knew it in Mississippi because I was a pastor there. I can still see the twisted faces, flushed red with hot blood. I can still hear the venomous hatred of people who were normally upright, educated, respectable, religious people, as they came together to discuss the stand I’d taken in relation to public schools, freedom of the pulpit, and voter rights. And I never will forget the mob that surrounded the church at an end of a meeting. A white missionary from South Africa had been at the meeting and was speaking against apartheid, that sinful oppressive system in South Africa. Only a few whites had attended the meeting in a black church and somehow the establishment thought it was clandestine and subversive and when we left the church, a mob surrounded us. And I never will forget the fear in the voice of that black pastor when he called me at midnight that the police chief was in his home harassing him and demanding that he give the name of every white person that was in attendance at the meeting. Hatred poisons us. It distorts perspective; it causes us to do things that we not under any circumstance do. And not always dramatic???

I know people who have been estranged from family members for years because of hatred. I’ve seen people dry up and become uncaring, callous people, because somewhere along the way someone did something bad to them, hurt them, and rather than dealing with that hurt redemptively, they allowed it to fester inside and turn into hatred. I even know couples, married people, in which one person in the relationship is eaten up with hatred because somewhere along the way something was done that needed to be forgiven, forgiveness was not offered, and again that hatred grew until it became a fester and a poison to the entire relationship.

Learn this lesson well today – hatred will poison you, and it will destroy all that you hold Holy.

No wonder Jesus said, don’t let the sun go down on your wrath. He knew what harbored hatred can do to us; but not only the deadly poison of hatred, the distorted perception of religion. The people who accused and condemned Jesus were religious people. They were almost religious beyond reason. But the deadly fact was their religion distorted their perception of life. Rightness – truth – and ultimate value.

You may have missed it in the reading of the scripture, but it’s there clearly in that 28th verse – when they brought Jesus from the house of Kiapus to present him to Pilate for the trial, they would not enter Pilate’s house lest they be defiled. The Jews had a law that all the houses of gentiles were unclean, and if you entered those houses, you became unclean, you were defiled, and you had to go through a ceremonial cleansing process. Do you see what’s going on here? These people were keeping the law meticulously. They were abiding by religious principles, ardently and religiously, and at the same time, they were hounding Jesus to the cross. It happens over and over again.  Don’t miss the point. It’s easy to turn our religion into a set of rules and regulations. Easy to keep the letter of the law and completely meet this spirit.

Have you seen the recent movie, Footloose? Some people in our congregation who recommended it saw it six or eight times. Now it’s not that good. In fact, it’s really not very good. But it does have a great message – it has a great message. I have an idea that most of the people who see it really don’t get beyond the fantastic dancing and the conflict between the youth culture and the adults. But beneath all that is a tremendous truth – the pastor in the film, who is a central character, is suffering tremendous pain because of the death of his son. His son was killed in an auto accident as a result of drunkenness. In reaction to that pain, the pastor turned that entire town into a wild, mad group of Pharisees. In the process, his lost daughter, almost lost his wife, and had to deal with the fallout of people who wanted to burn books and who wanted to become moral policemen over the action of every other person in the community.

It’s easy, at every level of life, to confess religious principles and at the same time crucify love. It’s easy to be religious and not live righteously. Righteousness requires giving cups of cold water in Jesus’ name. It requires doing it unto the least of these, as we would do it unto Christ. That means feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, and providing shelter for the homeless, and ministering to prisoners. It means living and proclaiming the acceptable year of the Lord. It means risking defilement. It means risking defilement in order to go into the house of the gentiles. It means identifying sometimes with the shadow side of life in order that redemption might take place.

I want you to hear this now. Our world is lost. Not because there are so many non-Christians in the world. Our world is lost because there are so few Christians who live and act like Christians. Now mark that down. Our world is lost not because there are so many non-Christians in the world, we’re lost because there are so few Christians who live and act like Christians. Jesus said, not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord. Not every one who has it real clearly understood about the rapture and about this dispensation and that dispensation. Not every one who has the proper understanding of doctrine. Not every one who cries to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom. But he who does the will of the Father.

The deadly poison of hatred, the distorted perception of religion, all led to the crucifixion. And that was the response on the part of people to Jesus’ claim - thou sayest I’m a king. So let’s look at that claim ourselves, to see how we might respond.

There are two words that will help us in appropriating meaning as we consider this claim of Jesus. Those words are abdication and coronation – abdication and coronation. Unless a king or a queen leaves the throne by death, he or she must abdicate before ??another kind ascend the throne??. And we’ve had some dramatic examples of that in contemporary history. Now here is the truth of that idea as it relates to us. We occupy the throne of our lives. Our will is the seat of authority and this is where we must abdicate. To be a Christian, is to will that Jesus be Lord of our lives. It means that we have to come down off the throne of our lives and crown Jesus king.

Somewhere along the way, I read a pamphlet entitled, Annie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. It was the witness of a woman who was making testimony to the fact that something significant had happened in her life as a result of the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. She had played the field of sin – had gave reign to her passions and her actions without any kind of restraint – and then a miracle happened. Someone shared with her the gospel of love and forgiveness, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and she responded to that, and it transformed her life. In the pamphlet, she told about the, the problems and the pain, the seeminess and the sorrow of her life of sin. But she also told about how she was becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus, so that over her old life she had put the sign, Annie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. That’s what abdication means. It means, coming down off the throne of our lives and allowing Jesus to become Lord.

And that leads to the second word – coronation. Coronation. We don’t have any earthly models for the kind of king that Jesus is. Because Jesus is king only of those who choose for him to be king, only for those who are willing to abdicate and crown him Lord of their lives. Abdication is the beginning of that process, and coronation is the process of making Jesus lord. I began by sharing the story of mine and Jeri’s response to royalty. I close by sharing the experience of another friend with royalty.

I went to school with Mary Boseman. When she was a senior in college, something tremendous happened to Mary. I’ve seen very few such dramatic instances of the complete transformation of a person. She heard the gospel, responded to the gospel, and sought to make her life a coronation of Christ. I never will forget visiting her in Brussels, Belgium, when she was studying and making final preparation to go to the, what was then the Belgium Congo, as a missionary. I think that experience during my first year of seminary fired within me an intense commitment to mission. Because I saw in these missionaries there, but especially in Mary Boseman, something that I had not up until that point seen in other Christians. Here was a young woman leaving her home, leaving her family, leaving everything that gave her security in order to go to what was then a rather uncivilized and wild continent. It was a risk-taking commitment, and the radiance of her countenance indicated the joy of that commitment, and I know why the joy was there. I’d received a letter from her shortly after she got to Brussels, and this is a part of what she said in that letter – only a few days after arriving here, they celebrated an independence day very much like our celebration of the Fourth of July. So I heard that the King of Belgium was going to lead the parade and I wanted to see him. I was told by a number of Belgiums that I would have to get in line at least three hours ahead of time if I was going to be close enough to the street to get a glimpse of royalty. Well this was hard going, because when I awakened that particular morning, it was raining, the sky was dark, and it was dismal, and it was cold. Thank God for raincoats, she said. I certainly used mine, standing for three hours in the rain, waiting for a glimpse of royalty. But I did see him, she said, young, handsome, royal, and single. This was the first king I had ever seen in person, she said, but not the first king I had ever met. It was a thrilling experience to see the King of Belgium, but not the most thrilling. The most thrilling experience I’ve ever had was when I met the king of kings and gave him my life.

Mary knew – in a tone and in a spirit, altogether different from his word to Pilate, Jesus would say to Mary – thou sayest I’m a king. What would he say to you and me today? This is Palm Sunday. In Luke’s account of the events of that day, the Pharisees challenged Jesus for accepting the praise of his disciples. And they said to Jesus, teacher, rebuke disciples. But Jesus responded, if they remained silent, the very stones would cry out.

Whether we say so or not, Jesus is still king. If we fail to say so, even the rocks will cry out. Wouldn’t it be tragic today, wouldn’t it be tragic if any single person left this Palm Sunday worship service without abdicating their life to Jesus Christ? Wouldn’t it be tragic if a single person here today remained silent and left it to the stones to proclaim, hosanna to the king? Would you look at your own life now, your own relationship to Jesus?

Can Jesus say to you, affirming, tenderly, acceptingly, thou sayest I’m a king.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Sermons, by Maxie Dunnam