Gospel Notes by Michael Whelan SM
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 am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from 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?” 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” (John 18:33-37 – NRSV).
Introductory notes
General
In John’s Gospel Jesus has already been referred to as “King” in 1:49 and 12:13. In 1:49 Jesus avoids addressing Nathaniel’s acclamation and in 12:13, Jesus does not respond to the cry of the crowds as he enters Jerusalem. However, when Pilate asks him directly, Jesus affirms that he is “King”: “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.”
Ironically, the truth of Jesus will be finally affirmed when Pilate crucifies him.
One commentator contrasts this account of the kingship of Jesus with that which is found in the Synoptic Gospels: “The synoptic tradition had already used the trial of Jesus before Pilate and the sign on the cross to proclaim Jesus as ‘king’ (cf. Mark 15:2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32; Matt 27:11, 29, 37, 42; Luke 23:2, 3, 27, 38), but in the Johannine story the theme of Jesus’ royal status dominates the interrogation of Jesus by Pilate (cf. 18:33, 37, 39; 19:3, 12, 14, 15) and continues into the scene of the crucifixion (cf. 19:19, 21). …. The decisive issue is how Pilate and ‘the Jews’ respond to Jesus’ royal status” (Francis J Moloney, The Gospel of John, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1998, 493).
Specific
King of the Jews: Kings and kingdoms were well-known to the people of Jesus’ time. Kings were all-powerful. They also lived with the possibility that someone would want their power. The Jews would remember Judas Maccabaeus. He “had established his dynasty, two hundred years before Jesus met Pilate, through military revolution against the Syrians, winning for the Jews their independence, and for himself and his family a royal status they had not previously aspired to. Herod the Great, thirty years before Jesus was born, had defeated the Parthians, the great empire to the east, and Rome in gratitude had allowed him to become ‘King of the Jews’, though he, too, had no appropriate background or pedigree” (N T Wright, John for Everyone, Part 2: Chapters 11-21, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004, 113).
We could reasonably conclude that Pilate might have been fearful of Jesus leading a revolution and thus disturbing the Pax Romana – potentially, at least, a capital offense. We could also reasonably conclude that perhaps Pilate sees no threat in Jesus. It is entirely possible that he thinks Jesus is a poor deluded but harmless peasant. If this is the case – and that is what I choose to believe – we must at least suspect that Pilate is playing some other game here. He would in fact have seen the threat coming not from Jesus but from the religious authorities.
My kingdom is not from this world: The “Kingdom” referred to in all four Gospels is not a worldly kingdom. One commentator writes: “No: the point is that Jesus’ kingdom does not come from ‘this world’. Of course it doesn’t. ‘The world’, as we’ve seen again and again, is in John the source of evil and rebellion against God. Jesus is denying that his kingdom has a this-worldly origin or quality. He is not denying that it has a this-worldly destination. That’s why he has come into the world himself (verse 37), and why he has sent, and will send, his followers into the world (17:18; 20:21). His kingdom doesn’t come from this world, but it is for this world. That is the crucial distinction” (ibid).
Kingdom: “Best understood as the kingship, or sovereign and saving rule, of Israel’s God yhwh, as celebrated in several psalms (e.g. 99:1) and prophecies (e.g. Daniel 6:26f.). Because yhwh was the creator God, when he finally became king in the way he intended this would involve setting the world to rights, and particularly rescuing Israel from its enemies. ‘Kingdom of God’ and various equivalents (e.g. ‘No king but God!’) became a revolutionary slogan around the time of Jesus. Jesus’ own announcement of God’s kingdom redefined these expectations around his own very different plan and vocation. His invitation to people to ‘enter’ the kingdom was a way of summoning them to allegiance to himself and his programme, seen as the start of God’s long-awaited saving reign. For Jesus, the kingdom was coming not in a single move, but in stages, of which his own public career was one, his death and resurrection another, and a still future consummation another. Note that ‘kingdom of heaven’ is Matthew’s preferred form for the same phrase, following a regular Jewish practice of saying ‘heaven’ rather than ‘God’. It does not refer to a place (‘heaven’), but to the fact of God’s becoming king in and through Jesus and his achievement. Paul speaks of Jesus, as Messiah, already in possession of his kingdom, waiting to hand it over finally to the father (1 Corinthians 15:23–28; cf. Ephesians 5:5)” (N T Wright, op cit, 178).
A life grounded in truth
In today’s Gospel – John 18:33-37 – we see Jesus before Pilate. Here, as in each of the Synoptic Gospels, we are told that the first question Pilate asks Jesus is: “So you are a king?” Jesus answers: “‘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.’”
In John’s Gospel there are twenty-five references linking Jesus to truth. In one of those references Jesus actually identifies himself with truth: “I am the way, the truth and the life” (14:6). The only other mention of truth in the Gospel, other than these references about or by Jesus, is found in Pilate’s question: “What is truth?”. Pilate does not know it, but in John’s thinking, this is a hugely ironic question.
As if to drive the point home, in chapter 8 of John’s Gospel, a stark contrast is drawn between the truth and the lie. In verses 32-33, we hear the instruction of Jesus: “‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” Then, in verse 44 there is a combative exchange in which Jesus tells his opponents: “‘You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.’”
Jesus informs Pilate: “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from 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.” The kingdom of God is built on truth, not ideology or political power or military might, but truth.
John has already revealed to us in the prayer of Jesus for the disciples: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth” (17:14-19).
Truth is manifest in time and place but it transcends time and place. Our access to the kingdom of God is through the truth we encounter now, at this time, here, in this place. Discipleship is life grounded in truth.