“What is truth?”  Oh, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.  In Jesus Christ, Superstar, what Pilate goes on to say has always stuck with me: “We all have truths!  Are mine the same as yours?”  Pilate’s response was not an invitation into conversation or debate about truth.  That’s exactly what Pilate didn’t want, the last thing he needed: another headache in this life of headaches.  No, no!  No talk about truth.  I have mine.  He has his.  She has hers.  They have theirs.  That’s fine; it’s okay.  Don’t judge!  Well, you can’t change their minds—and don’t let them change yours.  Personal truth—maybe not true for you, but true for me.

Sounds like psychosis.  Sounds like fiction, fantasy—wildly entertaining and by its very nature not true.  Oh, like reality, perhaps, if you wish, if you like.  But that’s it, isn’t it?  “Personal” truth is, ultimately, about what you wish, what you like.  By definition then, what is and must be false is precisely what you do not like, what you do not wish to be true.

What is true is true whether you will or no, whether you like or hate it.  Truth is.  And that is why it’s hateful and must be hidden away, at least or, best of all, destroyed.  Truth is what exists independently of me, without reference or deference to me, not requiring or even asking my permission to be so.  Herein is the key to all we just heard.

John the apostle eventually came to understand it.  Paul understood it.  In this world, in the crossfire of political positions, truth is always the first casualty.  Truth must die so that our falsehoods may live.  People are not likely to say they worship falsehood, though we cling to them tightly enough.  But who am I to judge?  What do I know?  Beloved, I don’t claim to know anything.  I confess my great ignorance about a great many things.  I don’t claim to know something.  I do claim to know someone, because someone has made Himself known to me.  The key to all we just heard is that I didn’t seek Him so much as he found me, like he found you, too: bruised and battered by the side of the road, left for dead.

They want Jesus dead.  They have him now—they’ve waited so long for this day!  Now is their chance; they must act swiftly.  They need to be free of Jesus before the high celebration of their freedom from slavery, the Passover.  They must be quick, or they won’t be able to eat (18:28).  No one sat at the Passover table without eating or drinking: it was a feast!  A celebration of God’s goodness, God’s power, God’s special favor upon His chosen people, His elect.  They were eager to be part of that feast, so Jesus had to die.

They needed Jesus dead before they could celebrate, so that they could celebrate—how prescient and how obtuse!  So right and so wrong.  They didn’t want to do anything that might prevent them from participating in the Passover.  They want the Messiah dead.  Oh, he wasn’t their Messiah!  Yes, how true, how sad and how true.

Pilate was so tired of religious squabbles.  Seven years of having to listen.  Oh, he was no ally of the Jews, but he did represent Rome, and Rome meant law, law and order.  Trial, evidence, testimony, verdict: the verum dictum, the true word.  They brought him to Pilate.  He had the authority to condemn to death.  “So Pilate came out to them and asked, ‘What charges are you bringing against this man?”  “If he were not a criminal,” they replied, “we would not have handed him over to you.” (18:29-30).

They don’t specify—of course he’s guilty!  That’s why we brought him to you: so you can order his death, his well-deserved, necessary death.  Pilate knew what they wanted, but he couldn’t just kill a man because the religious leaders wanted a man dead.  If the priests and elders wanted a man dead, Pilate knew it was for power reasons, political reasons.  Pilate might not have had much interest in or experience with religion, especially Jewish religion, but he did understand about power and politics.

“[W]e have no right to execute anyone” (18:31).  They wanted him dead.  He had to die.  Oh yes, beloved, indeed he did: we could not live if he did not die.  God’s hand is in it all, accomplishing His purposes without compelling anyone.  John understood, later, and tells us, that “This took place to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death he was going to die” (18:32): “mocked, and flogged, and crucified” by the Gentiles (Mt 20:19).

What would it cost Pilate to order the execution?  What would it gain him?  That’s what he’s wondering.  As for truth, Pilate isn’t thinking about truth.  What is truth, that Pilate should be concerned about it?  Such questions may be fine for philosophers and people with too much time on their hands, but not for a governor.  How would “the truth” help him to maintain order and keep the taxes flowing?

“Are you the king of the Jews?” (18:33).  This is a political question, a legal question—Pilate’s concern—not a religious question.  Is this the charge the Jewish officials have brought against the man? “He’s our king: kill him!”  No, at best, all they might have been able to bring by way of a charge was that the man had claimed to be their king.  If he was, well that was one thing, and if he wasn’t, why, just another crank in a land of crazy, crazed cranks.  As the ancient Philistine king had said long before: “Look at the man!  He is insane!  Why bring him to me?  Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?  Must this man come into my house?” (1 Sam 21:14-15).

We talk about kings, and our frame of reference is our own experience of our own world.  Christ’s “kingship” can’t adequately be expressed in human-political terms!  To Pilate’s question, Jesus responds, “Is that your own idea, [. . .] or did others talk to you about me?” (18:34).  Jesus knows all sorts of people are saying all sorts of things about him.  He has his disciples tell him, but he’s much more interested in the question he asks: “but you, who do you say I am?”  What is your idea?  What is your answer?  Pilate doesn’t want to have that conversation, has no interest in that conversation.  He isn’t the only one.

“‘Am I a Jew?’ Pilate replied. ‘Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me.  What is it you have done?’” (18:35).  I’m not interested in your crazy old religion!  The religious leaders of your own people want you dead—they think you’re a danger to them.  Why?  What have you done?  What’s so dangerous about you?  Beloved, the mistake we make all too commonly is to assume that Jesus isn’t dangerous, isn’t dangerous to anyone.  The sweet, dear, gentle Lamb of God is the most dangerous man of all: he’ll change your heart, he’ll change your life, he’ll change your loyalty; he’ll change your mind.

“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders.  But now [in this age] my kingdom is from another place” (18:36).  Pilate knew about the kingdoms of this world.  He had to deal with them constantly, with their representatives, occasionally with their kings.  Pilate knew about kingdoms, but what Pilate thinks when he hears the word and what Jesus means when he speaks of the kingdom are vastly different: the term can’t really do justice to what Jesus means.  The human word can’t bear the weight of what Jesus means.  My kingdom is not of this world—there’s a new world coming!

In that world, that life, God’s will shall be done on earth just as in heaven.  God’s will shall be lived and loved, and it will be joy and peace to do God’s will.  In that world, that life, those who could neither speak, sing, nor praise shall; those who could not hear shall, those who could not—would not—see shall, those who lacked shall be rich with God’s abundance, and those shut out from God shall be welcomed in like long lost loved ones.

The late Lutheran theologian Robert Jenson spoke of how, in a land and time of insurrections, Jesus pointedly neither started nor called for an insurrection.  The only sword he allowed his followers was the sword of the Word.  “But now [in this age] my kingdom is from another place.”

Oh, those words can be read as Jesus admitting defeat—if he were an insurrectionist after all.  He is also calling attention to a fact of our faith: the kingdom has not yet come in.  Indeed, in this age, it does not.  The kingdom comes at the end of the age: not now but then, the then that is coming, the then towards which we direct our hearts and daily living and prayer.  A kingdom from elsewhere.

Consider just for a moment how strange that is.  Where do kingdoms come from?  The will or avarice of men?  Conquest?  We don’t speak of kingdoms coming from anywhere: kingdoms just are.  Jesus speaks of a kingdom that comes from somewhere, somewhere else, as though it is on its way, originating in another time and place, another existence, another being.

Pilate listens, but he isn’t paying attention.  His own concerns are uppermost in his mind.  He wants to hear something he can use; Jesus has just given it to him: “You are a king, then!” said Pilate” (18:37).  You used the word.  You said it in reference to yourself.  You didn’t deny that you were.  Now I’ve got you, your high majesty.  “Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king.  In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth.  Everyone on the side of truth listens to me’” (18:37).  Pilate knows what he means when he thinks of a king.  Jesus is telling him—not that Pilate cares—that the term, from this side of eternity, is entirely inadequate.  King just doesn’t cover it, doesn’t do justice to the truth.  Pilate hears the word and thinks of palaces and taxes and armies and war and conquest, pomp and court etiquette, the pimpled little lickspittle who flushes the royal commode.

The religious leaders want Jesus dead for what he is doing and for what they fear he will soon enough be claiming for himself.  Jesus is a nuisance; Jesus is a problem.  Jesus tells Pilate what he has been doing, what he came to do (Came from where?  Sent by whom?): “the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth.”  He came to tell everyone and anyone who would listen about reality, how things really are.  The one who tells us how things really are, how matters really stand, tells us the truth.  Hearing, some will accept, others will reject.  Jesus has a name for the former category, the accepters: these are on the side of truth.  As for the rejecters?  What is reserved for them?  On what side are they?  On whose?

Oh, truth, truth!  “What is truth?” (18:38).  Why should that have to matter so much?!