On political football and living in the Kingdom of God

Reign of Christ, Proper 29 (34), Year B
24 November 2024

2 Samuel 23:1-7 and Psalm 132:1-12, (13-18)
Revelation 1:4b-8
John 18:33-37

 

It is a fact that minorities are more often the victims of violence than those who belong to the majority. To let oneself be identified as a minority requires courage, sometimes great courage.

Last Wednesday was the 25^th Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day when we remember transgender people whose lives were violently taken from them.¹

So it bothered me when on that day (of all days!) the Republican Speaker of the House let it be known that a newly elected transgender legislator would not be permitted to use the women’s washroom.

The statement by the Speaker was not about discussing a complex issue and trying to find solutions. It was about banning one person from the use of the women’s washroom in one single building. And it was done on the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This was done for the sake of politics. Fears were stoked for the sake of scoring political points. On a day when we remember victims of violence.

Perhaps you find it difficult to imagine that someone is born a certain sex but identifies as the opposite sex. That’s how it was for me. But this is not about our need to understand but whether we can affirm someone else’s basic humanity. You weigh those two. Me understanding something versus someone finding acceptance as a human being.

This may not help us answer all questions we want to address, but we would know that someone else’ humanity and dignity are not our political football.

And while we’re on the topic, let me tell you that my first name is Johann. I have only ever gone by my middle name. The only Johann I have ever known was my grandfather, who gifted me with his name. If my teachers had insisted on calling me Johann instead of Christoph, it would have been disrespectful. The wish of students to be called by their chosen names and pronouns is nothing new. All it asks is that we honour the way they understand themselves.

This is not about parent’s rights or control but about relationship. Don’t, we all know that we can only guide our children but cannot tell them who they should be? It is when we try the latter that we stand a good chance of losing them.

The Gospel reading for this Sunday is from the passion narrative in John’s gospel. Pontius Pilate interrogates Jesus, although Pilate could hardly be less comfortable in his role. He regards this as an internal Jewish matter and would prefer to have nothing to do with it, yet Jesus’ kingship is a threat to any ruler, thus the crowd’s declaration of loyalty to Caesar, and Herod’s infanticide much earlier in the story.

In the exchange, Jesus turned the tables by asking Pilate whether the charge he brought, he brought on his own, Jesus says, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” Often this is taken to mean that Jesus’ kingdom is only about heaven, about spiritual things that have no bearing on the world or on our politics. And yet, what Jesus is not saying is that his kingdom is “in heaven”. Rather, his kingdom is grounded in a reality that is foreign to the “world.” The world is home to might is right, to rationalizations and thus our rejection of moral culpability, to conspiracies, and to violence and repression.² The world says that for the greater good casualties must be accepted, that the Sermon on the Mount has no practical significance, that in the Magnificat Mary is only dreaming. It is in this way that the kingdom of Jesus does not belong to this world for it promises and affirms a world in which we have moral culpability and in which the hungry are filled with good things.

Remember also that we pray for God’s kingdom to come. We may pray that we go there but in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus taught us to pray that God’s kingdom come to us, here and today.

On Christ the King Sunday I am leery that we would misunderstand the reign of Christ. That we unconsciously embrace past triumphalism that authorized the church’s own misuse of power and made the church complicit in so many of society’s sins while we remained unaware of them for we saw the church merely as an extension of the world around us. I am leery because what the world understands as rule, reign, or kingship is fundamentally different from the rule, reign, and kingship of Christ. Even hymns that say the right things often come with tunes that make us want to march to them. The reign of Christ is counter-intuitive to our ways which implies that in order to follow Jesus we must restrain our impulses to seek some kind of domination, even if our cause is good and righteous. But self-restraint is not in vogue.

Chapter 18 and 19 of John’s Gospel chronicle the passion of Jesus. Near the end of the interrogation by Pilate and before Jesus is led to Golgotha, Pilate leads Jesus to stand before the crowd. Here he seats Jesus on the judgment seat (19:13). While it isn’t entirely clear who the third person singular pronoun belongs to, in the evangelist’s mind only Jesus can be seated on the judgment seat. His condemnation to death is the crisis of the world, in the judgment of the innocent victim Jesus the world itself is judged.³

This is the fulfillment of what Jesus said in chapter 12, “When I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all people to myself.” Jesus reigns from the cross.

This is consistent with the blessings pronounced on the last, the least, the lost, and the little. It is consistent with gaining our life by losing it for his sake. It is consistent with being each others’ servants, with loving our enemies, and with the last being first.

This is what Jesus came to do. Jesus and the Father are glorified in his death.⁴

If this is what the kingdom of God looks like, it must have implications for his followers. Jon Guerra, a contemporary Christian artist, sings,

“Power has several prizes
Handcuffs can come in all sizes
Love has a million disguises
But winning is simply not one.”⁵

And yet our political landscape is all about winning, while the ministry of Jesus was all about bearing witness. It can therefore not be the goal of the followers of Jesus to win the culture wars, but the politics of the followers of Jesus must be to give witness to the truth.

To put this in the context of a new movie about the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a reviewer writes, “In the movie’s political and moral universe, the only dilemma is whether the good guys can set aside their squeamishness and start killing the bad guys. For the real Bonhoeffer, this was exactly the fantasy of moral purity that led so many into complicity with fascism’s escalating spiral of violence.”⁶

And this is what offended me when I read of the washroom prohibition for the transgender lawmaker. It is not that someone has a different opinion than I do. But the use of power against minorities for political gain is not the way of Christ.

The writer Anne Lamott warns that we have created God in our own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people we do. Of course, this applies no matter where you find yourself on the political spectrum.

And so the festival of Christ the King proclaims not only the reign of Christ but it also asks us whether Christ is our king, whether his rule affects our daily lives and our politics, whether the grace we have been given we can extend to others, whether we see how we are caught up in the power structures of the world, whether we use self-restraint so we would not dominate or silence our enemies, whether Jesus shapes the principles we live by, and the way we spend our resources, for he is a different kind of king.

That, I would argue, requires soul searching, and it requires prayer, and scripture, and somehow living in and with the church, which is the body of Christ.

Jon Guerra sings,

“Power has several prizes
Handcuffs can come in all sizes
Love has a million disguises
But winning is simply not one.”

Amen.