John 18:33-38a
Reign of Christ Sunday: November 25, 2012
Christ
the King Sunday is a great time to think for a moment about how we talk about
God. And this really isn’t just a little
side trip, or a time out from the rest of the Sundays. Since words about God are one of the primary
ways we come to know God, the words we use to describe God, and our
understandings of what those words mean, have enormous power over us and who we
are and what our faith looks like.
For
example, we say God is our father. There
is no way to use the word “father” without it evoking all of our associations
with that word – whether we become conscious of that or not. In fact, the only way this word can be
helpful to us in getting to know God better is if we do have preconceived notions about what “father” means. Otherwise, the word is, literally,
meaningless.
But
we always have to remember we are talking about God, and so any word we use for
God will never finally describe God. The
language is symbolic, and when a word points to God it always both is and is
not God. God both is and is not a
father. God both is and is not a
rock. God both is and is not a judge. And on and on. There is simply no way around this.
But
because we have a fairly small repertoire of images for God, we use them over
and over until, I think, we lose the “is not” part of the whole thing. The words become over familiar
representations of God and over time become synonymous with God, not symbols
for God. When we say God is father, we
usually only think about how God is like a father. We haven’t trained our brains to immediately think
about how God is not like a father. God does love us with the fierce love of a
parent, so God is like a father. But God
is not a gendered human being that, treats us like children who can’t be
trusted with our own lives.
This
is the world of faith. It comes with the
territory. And it’s not a problem to be
solved by just looking for more precise words that get closer to defining God
without having the “is not” problem. In
fact, the “problem” of the limitations of language and words in describing God
itself points to a truth about God: God can’t be known fully through
words. They fall short – they obscure as
much as illuminate. That is saying as much
about God as calling God father. But we
don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this or being conscious of this.
I
admit it. I read a fair amount of the
chatter online about the Tuesday night Grinnell basketball game this week. I really enjoyed seeing what “the world” had
to say about a basketball player scoring 138 points in one game. I enjoyed it almost as much as being at the
game when he did it. I think part of the
reason I enjoyed it so much is because I am on the inside. I am in the know. I enjoyed watching people struggle to
articulate why it bothered them, or why they loved it, when they didn’t know
much – or anything at all – about Grinnell basketball.
Understanding
Grinnell basketball requires holding on to two realities that seem
contradictory – it requires the “is” and “is not” thinking that we have to do
with words about God. What they play
both is and is not basketball – and that’s what makes it so great. It is basketball – it is in relationship with
all the other teams and people who play basketball, it follows the technical
rules. To try and claim – as some people
actually do – that it’s not basketball is to lose the ability to talk about it
in any meaningful way at all.
But
in order to really be in the know about this team, to really “get” it, you have
to know that what they play is not basketball – at least not in the sense that
most people immediately associate with the word basketball. It may follow the technical rules, but not
the conventional ones. And I would even
go out on a limb and say David Arsenault is trying to be both in the world of
basketball and upset the world of basketball by playing in a style that both is
and is not basketball. Because that’s
the beauty of it – the “is” and “is not.”
It means it is doing more than just participating in something that is
already determined…it is trying to shape, make more complex, interesting, and
fun, disrupt and deconstruct the very thing in which it is participating. In this case, not understanding this means one
misses out on something fun. Which in
the scheme of things is a fairly trivial consequence.
But
In the case of words we use to talk about the divine, forgetting the “is” and
“is not” reality of those words means we miss out on connecting with God in meaningful
ways. For me, that is not a trivial
consequence.
That
is what we see in the conversation between Jesus and Pilate. The author of the gospel of John uses this
scene to help his readers better understand God. Pilate becomes the foil, the example of what
happens when we don’t understand the ability and inability of common words to describe who God is. Through Pilate’s interaction with Jesus, the
author is drawing on what the readers know of the world, but only to help them
transcend what they know so they can grasp a little something of the
transcendent God, the God that both participates in what we know and changes
it.
Pilate
asks Jesus, “Are you king of the Jews?” And
Jesus doesn’t answer directly. He
appears cagey, in fact. But finally says
“my kingdom is not from this world.” The
way Pilate hears that is, “Yes, I am a king.”
He can’t hear anything else. When
Jesus says, “my kingdom,” that means he is saying, “I am a king,” and that’s
all Pilate needs to know to put Jesus to death.
My
kingdom is not from this world: When we hear this – this familiar, oft used
verse – we are vulnerable to the same thing Pilate was. When Jesus says, “my kingdom,” he is, in
fact, saying that he is a king. You
can’t have a kingdom and not have a king, right? But we tell ourselves, that means he is
beautiful, sparkly, Jesus wears a robe and jeweled crown, etc. His kingdom is out of this world, existing in
some kind of parallel universe, but operates the same as the kingdoms we
know.
The
problem is, when this verse is quoted, rarely do I hear someone go on to quote
the next verse – the one where Jesus is essentially saying, “I am not a king,
and my kingdom is not a kingdom…at least not in the sense that you, Pilate,
understand those words.” He says that if
his kingdom were like other kingdoms, when he was arrested, his followers would
have risen up and fought violently to the death in order to try and free
him. Because, that’s what you do when
your king is captured by another kingdom.
“My
kingdom is not from this world,” does not just mean it exists in some other
“world”. It means it is right here, it
grows out of this world, but shatters everything we know about kingdoms. It teaches us new things about how we can be
in this world, what power can look like, how we can live in community
together. Kingdoms were what people
knew…it was the only organizational structure for living together people
had. Jesus had to start there in order
to relate to people at all; it was the world in which they participated.
But
he was also turning it all on its head to say there is a new reality…an
alternative to what we know. It grows
“out of this world,” but is radically
different from this world, and that can actually change and affect the realm in
which we participate.
Christ
the king. The kingdom of God. We are well versed in the ways these things
do describe Jesus. Jesus is powerful
because a king is powerful. Jesus rules
over people, because a king rules over people.
Disobeying Jesus will invite immediate judgment and punishment, because
that is what happens when one disobeys a king.
You get the point.
But
the word king should also – at the same time – sound like fingers on a
chalkboard when we hear it attached to Jesus’ name. Jesus is not a king, because kings use force,
coercion, and power to keep people in line.
Jesus is not a king, because kings are wealthy and better cared for than
any person in the kingdom. Jesus is not
a king, because people aren’t required to serve him. Jesus is not a king because he bows down at
our feet and washes them. And so the
kingdom of God within this world is not like any kingdom we might know. The rules are different. That difference matters. That difference means there are new possibilities.
We are not trapped only in what we know.
We are given access to something transcendent.
Over
the years there have been both short and long conversations about God language
in our church. Over the years, choices
are made each week about how to talk and sing about God, and those choices are made
with great thought.
But
this conversation has at times been hard and frustrating. There are no easy answers. With each word we debate whether to use to
describe God, something is lost if we don’t use it and something is lost if we
do. If we don’t use words that evoke
easy associations in us – we risk losing the initial connection to God. It reminds us God does participate in our realm.
But if we use it, its very familiarity, its conventional nature, can
easily prevent us from remembering the “is not.” We forget God seeks to transform this world.
Again,
this struggle is not a bad thing – not something to avoid, and certainly not a
problem to be solved once and for all.
Our words will always both help and obscure; sometimes be well-chosen
and other times not. Imperfection is
inevitable, but can be instructive at the same time. Because the struggle itself is revealing
something to us about God that is invaluable.
It
is our tensions, even our disagreements, that illuminate God – that deepen our
understanding of God, and that allow us to grow in faith. We learn the necessary humility when trying
to talk about God. We learn that others
bring a part of the picture we ourselves could have never had, we learn that
different words affect people in different ways, and hopefully we learn that
God is in it all, moving through it all, changing us all in marvelous,
sometimes mysterious ways. Amen.
