A good Sunday to all.

It was customary in the Ancient Middle East to attribute to the supreme God the title of king. Amon in Egypt was called king. Morduch in Babylon was called king; and this appellation served to indicate the sovereignty of God who, like all the kings of the earth, demands the obedience of people and protects those who are subject to him. In the bible, the God of Israel is rarely called king but is often spoken of as the God who reigns, the God who will one day take over the destiny of his people into his hands and create a new world in which justice and peace will reign forever.

And Jesus begins his public life proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come, the kingdom of God is here. It is here that the expression kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, that is at the center of Jesus' preaching, appears no less than 104 times in the Gospels. He has come precisely to usher in a new kingdom in the world, the kingdom of God.

Pius XI referred to this 'kingdom' when he instituted the feast of Christ the King in 1925. Those were dramatic years for Europe; the Second World War was on the horizon and the madness of the absolute powers was spreading everywhere. In Italy, the Fascist regime had already begun. Russia was already in the hands of Stalin. In Germany, Nazism was about to arrive. Spain and Portugal were about to fall into the hands of the absolute powers. It seemed that everyone aspired to dominate and colonize the world.

In this context, Pius XI, with the institution of this feast, wanted to affirm that history belonged to Christ not to the great ones of this world. But we must approach the feast of Christ the King with a certain caution because it is easy to mistake the meaning; and the risk, not at all remote, is to attribute to Jesus a kingship with which he has nothing to do. To ascribe to him that kingship which Satan offered him at the beginning of his public life and which he refused when Satan took him to the top of the mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and said to him: 'I can give them to you if you listen to me; if you do anything, I will suggest it to you.' And Jesus rejected this kingship.

Monarchies today have almost completely disappeared, but the image of kings, of the emperors and pharaohs are very much present. The kings were the holders of power, those who won wars, those who extended their dominions, those who subjugated other peoples. Jesus has nothing to do with this royalty, so we must be very careful when the image of a king is applied to him. Even the Popes didn't always have a clear understanding what the kingship of Christ consists of; they confused it with the kingships of this world.

Jesus was well aware of this danger and, in fact, made it clear: 'The kings of the nations rule them; those who have power over the people rule them and even pretend to call themselves benefactors. Among you, it is not so,' he said to the disciples. A distinction that the disciples had a hard time accepting; a distinction that has been forgotten even by the Church over the centuries. We all know the mistakes made: the alliances made with the powers of this world, the holy Roman empire, the struggle for investiture; but, without going that far, we all remember that up to Paul VI, the popes boasted of the tiara, the triregnum (the papal tiara), and that at the moment of their coronation were proclaimed 'fathers of princes and kings, rulers of the world, vicars of Christ on earth.' Well, it is not these kingships that we refer to when we speak of Christ the King.

In today's Gospel passage, we will see two kingdoms confronting each other: one is the kingdom of this world, that of the Roman rulers represented by Pilate; and the other kingdom, the new one, introduced into the world by Christ. They are two incompatible kingdoms because they are based on opposite principles. The Gospel puts today two kingdoms in front of us because we have to make the choice to which kingdom we want to belong; we must be careful because we must not let ourselves be deceived by appearances because we may run the risk of siding with the wrong kingdom. and in the end, find ourselves among the losers.

Let us begin by situating the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate on the issue of legality:

 

"Pilate entered again into the praetorium, and called Jesus, and asked him, Are you the king of the Jews?"

 

Pilate is a person whose name no one would remember today except that he was the king of the Jews on Friday, April 7, in the year 30, on the eve of the Passover, when he met Jesus. Who was Pilate? The philosopher Philo of Alexandria, his contemporary, tells us about him and says that he was a man of an inflexible nature, arrogant, hard, only capable of executions, violent, robber, brutal, torturer, executioner without trial, of terrible and unlimited cruelty. He resided in Caesarea and was in Jerusalem in those days on the occasion of the Passover; he came had come with 500 soldiers to keep order.

Let us try to locate the praetorium spoken of in the Gospel. It was his residence where the meeting with Jesus took place. It was indeed the palace which had been built by Herod the Great and where Herod had gone to live since 23 B.C. It consisted of two stupendous buildings to which Herod the Great had given the name 'Caesareon,’ in honor of Caesar Augustus, his great friend and protector; and 'Agripéion' in honor of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, the son-in-law of Caesar Augustus, who had married Julia, the daughter of Caesar Augustus, and he also was a great friend of Herod.

To understand what the evangelist John tells us, let us look at the gate in the middle of the courtyard that separates the two beautiful buildings. It was the gate overlooking over the 'agorah,' the upper marketplace of the city of Jerusalem. Therefore, we can imagine that being the eve of the Passover, that market began to be animated early in the morning. The high priests, the scribes, the members of the Sanhedrin arrive at that gate; those who during the night pronounced the sentence of death upon Jesus; they come to the agora, in front of that gate; they cannot enter because if they pass through it, they enter into the house of a pagan, they become unclean and cannot celebrate the Passover. Therefore, they ask Pilate to go out and talk to them, they want to meet him. Because of the religious scruples of these people, Pilate will have to pass between this gate, where he meets the accusers, and the interior of the palace, where he will interrogate Jesus.

Inside this palace there will be a dialogue with Jesus on the subject of kingship. Since the late 1800's scholars had realized that this going back and forth of Pilate, between the door that leads to the agora and the interior of the palace gives rise to seven scenes: those that take place outside the palace and those that take place inside where Pilate dialogues with Jesus. When he arrives at the door, Pilate asks: "What accusation do you bring against this man?" And the Jews answer simply "If he were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered him to you." So, there is no precise accusation.

Here begins the second scene, the one narrated in today's Gospel passage. Pilate re-enters the palace and inside the praetorium, there is now a confrontation between two powers, between two kingdoms; the one represented by the Roman official Pontius Pilate, and the kingdom represented by Jesus. Pilate's only concern is to make sure that Jesus is not a ringleader capable of causing disorder or question the power of the emperor. That is why, immediately, he asks Jesus the question he wants to ask: "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus does not answer him and asks him a counter-question.

 Let us listen:

 

Jesus answered: “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?”

 

“Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?” This counter-question of Jesus simply means, 'Have you investigated, have you gathered evidence that I am an insurgent or did somebody from my people just tell you?' In other words, 'Is the accusation coming from you or from the Jews? For my answer will be different.' If the question comes from Pilate, then, 'king of the Jews' means that Jesus intends to exercise political power over the Jews; if, on the other hand, the accusation comes from the Jews, then 'king of the Jews' means something else; it means the king they are waiting for, the messiah, the anointed one, the one the prophets have spoken of, and a king that above all has a religious dimension; he will be the one who will lead the people back to God, the one who will bring back the blessings of Abraham to all the peoples of the earth, the one who will defend the wretched, the poor, those who find no help will have mercy on the weak; he will save the lives of the wretched.

And, of course, Pilate replies, “I am not a Jew, am I?” - 'I speak as a Roman procurator, not as a religious Jew. I want to know if you are the king of the Jews; the messiah thing, I'm not interested in prophecies, I'm interested in politics and security.' That's what it means, ‘I'm not even a Jew!’ 'Forget about what those who think about the future, what have you done?' Jesus could have answered: 'Ask the people, they will tell you that I have always spoken of love, peace, justice and sharing of goods, of service to the needy, I healed the sick, I defended the poor; I helped those who had made mistakes in life; it is true, I have also overturned money changers' tables, and I have expelled sellers and buyers from the temple, but this is a matter of our religion, and you are certainly not interested in it. I have indeed spoken of the kingdom of heaven, but far be it from me to want to rule over the Jews.’

Jesus could have answered like this, but instead of that, Jesus enlarges the discourse because he wants to make it clear to Pilate what he means by kingship and what kind of kingdom he has always spoken of. Throughout his public life, he has never spoken of the kingdom of the Jews, he has only spoken of the kingdom of God. Let us listen to how Jesus introduces the subject:

 

Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”

 

"My kingdom," says Jesus to Pilate, "is does not belong to this world.” Therefore, he does not deny that he is king, but he specifies that it is a different kingship, that it does not come from this world. Let us pay attention to the translation because it does not say that 'his kingdom is not of this world,' ‘does not belong to this world,’ because this would give the idea that Jesus then builds his kingdom in another world, in paradise, and where things can go on with different principles and values. NO. His kingdom has to do with this world, but it is a kingdom that has no origin in this world.

His kingdom has a different origin; it is not born spontaneously from the world. From the world, from our material nature, come the kingdoms that we know well, the ones that have succeeded each other through the centuries; kingdoms guided by the impulse that comes from the biological nature that pushes people to compete, fight, try to dominate others, and subdue those who are weaker. From the world, from nature, come the kingdoms described by the prophet Daniel in chapter seven.

They are the kingdoms of the beasts; they are the ones that have succeeded each other throughout history and that the prophet presents with those images of the lion, that are the Babylonians that dominated, mutilated other peoples; but then came a bear, the Medes, who defeated the lion that had dominated them. These are the beginnings of the kingdoms that come from the world. Then came a leopard that defeated the bear; these are the Persians, who dominated the whole world; then came another stronger beast that is not even said which beast it is because it is worse than all the previous ones, it was Alexander the Great.

Well, the beastly empires described by Daniel tend to disappear, but others arise; always of the world, always guided by the same principles, they change the names, but the script remains. It is always the same. What are the objectives that guide the new kingdoms coming from this world? The kingdoms of technocracy, the kingdoms of the multinationals, the kingdoms that control the exploitation of raw materials, the kingdoms that manage the world finances; these are kingdoms that regulate themselves according to the principles and values that come from this world, from the earth.

Even Jesus was tempted to start his own kingdom from these worldly principles. The evil one had said to him: 'Look, that's what everybody does; if you want to conquer the world, you have to adapt, you have to impose yourself in every way, even with lies, with dishonesty, with injustice, even with violence if necessary, otherwise in this world, you lose, you cannot succeed.' Jesus explains to Pilate: 'If my kingdom were of this world, from these principles and values, I, too, would have had to resort to force, and my followers would adapt themselves to what everyone does, they would have taken up arms and fought for me.' It always happened that way; it's part of the logic of the competition between kingdoms seeking the domination of power.

Jesus says that the kingdom which he initiated does not come from this world; it does not come from the biological nature which takes us in another direction; the instinct does not lead us to forget ourselves, of our own benefit, of our own interest and seek the good and the life of our brother, even if he is an enemy, even if he has harmed us. Nature does not lead us to turn the other cheek but to return the slap. The new kingdom relationships that Jesus wants to establish in this world can only come from above, from a life that does not come from the earth, from a new life, from a completely different life that can only be given by God.

This life is the Spirit that was manifested in fullness in Jesus, which was love and love alone. The Spirit that was given to us leads to love unconditionally and freely; only from this Spirit is born the new world and the kingdom that Jesus wants to be installed in this world. And since this kingdom has nothing in common with the worldly realms, it cannot be imposed at all.

Now Pilate is in total confusion; he cannot understand what Jesus is saying because he cannot conceive other kingship than that exercised by Tiberius, the ruler of the world. Pilate has understood, however, that Jesus presents himself as king and must ask for confirmation. Let us listen to him:

 

So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For 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.”

 

"Then are you a king?" This time Pilate does not add 'of the Jews' because he understood that Jesus rejects the title of king of the Jews, but Pilate does not understand how one can be king without using force to win, to dominate. Then Jesus explains to him that he has come to bear witness to the truth. Truth in the biblical sense is different from the Greek concept of truth and also from the idea that we have of truth. For a Jew, truth indicates coherence with reality, with one's own identity, with life.

We also use in this sense the adjective 'true'; for example, we say 'this is true coffee.’ we mean that it is not a substitute, a derivative, or a by-product. Or we say, 'this is a true priest,' 'this is a true Christian;' we mean coherent with what the Gospel teaches; we do not mean that he does not tell lies, but that he is consistent to the identity we expect him to embody.

Truth for a Semite is life, not an abstract reality. Jesus came to testify the truth with his person. What truth? First of all, the truth about God, because there are so many lies about God, lies invented by people. The truth about God presented to us by the person of Jesus; he is the God who loves the world unconditionally and faithfully. God from whom only an embrace can be expected, even for his fugitive children. Jesus makes present this one true God; the others are idols that people have created and are substitutes for God. By his person, Jesus bears witness to the face of God which is his identity card. His identity card does not say master, dominator; it says servant, slave of people, slave for love. Then Jesus came to bear witness to the truth about man.

What is the true man like? Is the true man the corrupt, the self-indulgent, the violent, the murderer? No; these are still wild beasts. With his person, Jesus testifies that the true man is the one who loves, the one who is ready to lay down his life even for the enemy, even for the one who harms him; this is the true man attested by the person of Jesus. Being true man means to adhere to Jesus’ proposal. He presents to us the true man who becomes lamb amid the wolves, and so, let us keep him in mind when we celebrate the Eucharist, in the sign of the bread and wine, the Lamb of God is presented to us when we eat that bread and drink that cup; it means that we adhere to the proposal of the new kingdom, which is that of the lambs, who are willing to lay down their lives even for the enemy.

Jesus also came to bear witness to the truth about the kingdom, the true kingdom. The other kingdoms that come from this world, the values the principles the logic of the world, they are false, they are comedies; in fact, they are extensions of the kingdoms of the wild beasts; they are inhuman kingdoms. Jesus is a king, but not in the sense that Pilate understood. He came into the world to reign, but his kingdom is that of the one who becomes a servant, not of the one who can impose himself as master.

Pilate, at this point, does not understand anything at all. If he had been able to understand the new kingship, he also would have become a real man, a free man; he would have understood the new kingship; that to be a great man is to serve, not to be served. And Jesus didn't get Pilate to understand that, just as he could not get Peter to understand. An earthquake was about to come upon the world which would shake it, which would cause all the inhuman kingdoms to collapse and give place to the true kingdom.

Jesus goes on to say, "Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” 'Whoever wants to be true let him follow me, like a lamb following the voice of his shepherd.' Pilate answers him, 'What is truth?' Pilate has been reassured by the words of Jesus; he has understood that he is not a dangerous element for the political interests of Rome. However, with the question, 'What is truth?' he demonstrates his inability and even his disinterest in accepting the new light of Jesus. He could, at least, wait for Jesus’ answer; if he had questioned Jesus what he means by truth, he would have understood that the true men are not Saianus, Tiberius, the dominators, but the true man is the one in front of him, the truth is before him, is Jesus of Nazareth. Unfortunately, Pilate did not allow himself to be involved in this truth. Let's keep it in mind because we also can have in mind our own truth about God, our own truth about man, our own truth about society.

Let us let these truths of ours, which may be contaminated by worldliness, be called into question by the truth that presents us with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and that when we celebrate the Eucharist we are proclaiming that we want to adhere to this kingdom that Jesus brought to the world.

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.