My kingdom is not from this world

In September 1974, Archbishop Michael Ramsey was invited to visit the Anglican church in Chile. He must have felt some trepidation because the year before the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende has been overthrown in a military coup, and the country was now under the control of a repressive dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. Ramsey was invited to preach in an Anglican church, and a journalist from The Observer turned up for the occasion. There was an armed guard outside the church and when the journalist left at the end of the service the guard asked him whether there had been any politics in Ramsey’s sermon. The guard then patted his gun in a rather menacing fashion and said:

“He must stay with the things of the soul because politics is for us.”

That’s a sentiment that you’ll still find from time to time in our own press when a senior cleric comments on a political issue. It’s a sentiment informed by the widespread and erroneous belief that you can neatly divide issues into “the sacred” and “the secular”, and that when it comes to contentious issues religious believers should not be expressing opinions, as though religious belief were merely a private hobby.

Those who take that view sometimes refer to today’s Gospel, using the Authorised Version’s translation of Jesus’ words in verse 36.

“My kingdom is not of this world…”

That version makes it sound as though Christ’s kingdom is other-worldly and purely spiritual, a kingdom that can be compartmentalised in the way that the armed guard who questioned the content of Michael Ramsey’s sermon believed that it should be. But that isn’t what the original Greek of St John’s Gospel is saying.

Much hangs on how you understand and translate a small two-letter preposition, the Greek word ek. Jesus uses it three times in verse 36 and he almost certainly did speak some Greek, for he had been a carpenter and Greek was the common business language at that time and we know that he gave one of his disciples a Greek nickname – Petros the rock – Simon Peter. 

As we have seen, the Authorised Version translates that little preposition as “of”

“My kingdom is not of this world…”

The New Revised Standard Version does a more accurate job.

“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.”

In saying that his Kingdom is not from this world, Jesus is speaking about the source of his authority. And the word which is translated as “world” is the Greek word “Kosmos”, which we apply not just to Planet Earth but to the whole universe, the whole of creation. And so, the Feast of Christ the King encourages us to look forward towards Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation, God’s entering into the created order in order to show us God’s true nature and to challenge earthly notions of kingship. 

We can’t, of course, know what if any emphasis Jesus placed on these words, but I don’t think it’s stretching a point to speculate that what he told Pontius Pilate was

“My kingdom is not from this world.”

Pilate’s authority was very much from this world. Historians have suggested that his family’s origins were relatively humble.  It’s likely that Pilate owed his promotion to effective military service, and he certainly owed it to the Emperor Tiberius who appointed him. As Procurator of Judaea, he had the authority to appoint the High Priest. Caiaphas had been appointed by a previous procurator, and Pilate kept him in post, so he in turn owed his position to Pilate and his authority was therefore also “from this world”.

The point that Jesus is making is that his kingship is not worldly in its methods. 

If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.

Jesus confronts worldly power with a new type of sovereignty which uses methods quite different from those of Caiaphas and Pilate. His is a sovereignty grounded in love and not exercised by force. He is not bent on worldly status or power, as the temptation narratives in Matthew, Mark and Luke show us. He challenges those of his disciples who are jockeying for status and power. He models a servant kingship when he shocks the disciples by washing their feet.

Above all, his is a Kingship based on truth, a quality sadly lacking in so much of our politics.

“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.”

That’s a profound challenge to the way we think and act politically, for the belief that we are in full possession of the truth – that the truth belongs to us – can lead to fanaticism, intolerance and violence, including religious fanaticism, intolerance and violence. Jesus challenges us to belong to the truth, and the truth to which he invites us to belong is difficult and challenging. It’s a truth that calls us to love our neighbour as ourselves; that calls us to love our enemies. It calls us to forgive and, when times are fearful – and they are very fearful at the moment – it says: “Do not be afraid” and it reminds us “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” To accept the kingship of Christ is to commit to belonging to truth.