This Week

This week at praxis...Whose King?

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

As an educated, American woman aware of the way religious language 
and imagery convey implicit ideas and support all sort of social 
institutions and practices - not all of which are in sync with 
the gospel - I cannot claim that the image of Christ as king is 
always for me a comfortable one.  Especially when it is linked 
to triumphal notions of church or colonial ideologies that seek 
to dominate.  But I can do the image when I join it with other 
images that refract the Christ-event: Jesus riding a donkey into 
Jerusalem in a manner that confounds our ideas of kingship, 
the vulnerability of a child in a manger, the deep self-emptying 
of the man hanging abandoned on a cross under the sign 
"King of the Jews." 
----Wendy M. Wright, The Time Between



The form of service which would have been used was probably 
not very different from that still used today, 
or indeed from that used at the coronation of King Edgar 
at Bath in 973. The service has four parts: the entry 
of the Sovereign into the Abbey; the formal recognition 
of the right of the Sovereign to rule - 
this is when the Archbishop presents the Sovereign to 
the congregation and asks them if they agree to the 
service proceeding, and they respond with an assent; 
the oath, when the Sovereign promises to respect and 
govern in accordance with the laws of his or her subjects 
and to uphold the Protestant reformed Church of England 
and Scotland; and the presentation of the Bible to the 
Sovereign, to be relied on as the source of all wisdom 
and law. Next, the Sovereign is anointed with holy oil, 
seated on the Coronation Chair. Thirdly, the Sovereign 
is invested with the royal robes and insignia, 
then crowned with St Edward's crown. The final ceremony 
consists of the enthronement of the Sovereign on a throne 
placed on a raised platform, bringing him or her into 
full view of the assembled company for the first time. 
There, he or she receives the homage of the Lords Spiritual 
(the bishops and archbishops), the Lords Temporal 
(Dukes, Marquesses, Earls, Viscounts and Barons) 
and the congregation, representing the people of the realm. 
----www.westminster-abbey.org/tour/coronations.htm

Pilate's question could be, and has been, 
answered in many different ways. For the title 
"king" did not remain on the cross; it 
moved out into the world of nations and of empires. 
And the cross itself moved out to decorate the 
crowns and flags and public buildings of empires 
and of nations...Before the entire process of the 
enthronement of Jesus as King of kings was finished, 
it had transformed the political life of a large 
part of the human race...Much of the "divine right of kings" 
and of the theory of "holy war" rested on the 
presupposition that Jesus Christ was King, and so 
did much of the eventual rejection both of all war 
and of the divine right of kings..."So you are a king?" 
- Pilate's question has continued to be a very good question indeed. 		
--- Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries


Questions:

• Is the image of Jesus as King difficult for you? Why or why not?
• Why is the King image generally more difficult for us than the image of little baby Jesus?
• Is the image of King salvageable, considering what Pelikan says about how the image has been abused?
• Why did Jesus respond to Pilate's question the way he did?
• Why would we look at this story right before Advent, when we talk about Christ coming as a baby?