Jesus initiates a radical paradigm shift for humanity when he teaches and gives witness to the Community of God, sometimes translated as the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ Kingdom of God shifts humanity to communion, love, and creative healing power thus transforming the kingdom of Caesar’s domination, suffering, and violence. Unfortunately, institutional christianity hinders that transformation. For example, it prioritizes a personal need to be saved – which Jesus never taught. At the same time, it ignores the social need to transform – which Jesus routinely taught in the kingdom of God. There is one time Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God is not ignored by institutional christianity. It happens this Sunday when Jesus is speaking face to face with a ruler in the kingdom of Caesar, Pilate. Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.”
Self-titled Christians who support the kingdom of Caesar, isolate and misinterpret Jesus’ statement that his Kingdom does not belong to this world. They make it support Caesar’s murderous kingdom by claiming Jesus’ kingdom is a heavenly entity available to us only after we die. But the claim proves their ignorance of Jesus’ full teaching on the kingdom of God. Jesus routinely teaches about the Kingdom of God. He routinely teaches that his kingdom is an earthly entity, present now, in the world. The Kingdom of God is a mustard seed, leaven, a treasure, a net, within you,… Jesus continues with that decidedly earthly meaning when speaking with Pilate. Jesus begins by telling Pilate, “If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting.” “This world.” “This world” means Pilate’s murderous world. Jesus’ Community does not belong to this world, in this palace, that in this moment is the process of murdering Jesus. Jesus is telling Pilate, who fights, that his disciples do not fight. A willfully ignorant interpretation ignores Jesus’ teaching against fighting. It ignores the fact that Jesus is speaking as a political prisoner held by the emperor’s underling who is in the process of carrying out the empire’s execution of him. Thus, when Jesus says, “My Kingdom does not belong to this world,” he is speaking of Militarism’s murderous world. He was not denying the Community of God’s earthly existence as a peacemaking power. That Jesus’ disciples do not “fight” as Caesar’s followers do exemplifies the difference between murderous kingdoms of Caesar here on earth and Jesus’ peaceful Community of God here on earth.
Jesus did not fight and kill people. That Gospel truth cannot be ignored. Jesus routinely healed people. That Gospel truth also cannot be ignored. To be Christian / Christ-like is to be a peacemaker. When self-titled Christians, especially U.S. politicians, promote fighting enemies like ISIS while they deny healing opportunities for refugees, like Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS, they prove they are not Christ-like. They prove they are Militarists, willfully fighting while willfully ignoring healing. The healing that is needed will not be easy. It will put us face to face with Militarists determined to fight us to enforce a murderous kingdom of Caesar.
Prayer: Spirit of Peace, may we be healing peacemakers when we engage with militarists.
Question: How have I feigned ignorance about Jesus’ nonviolence?
November 22, 2015 Gospel John 18:33b-37 Christ the King