If you’re a political junkie like me, you probably remember watching the CNN program “Crossfire” that used to run a few years ago. The show was aptly named—it was basically a political gunfight, with the strongest and loudest voices drowning out all the others. If you weren’t careful, you could get caught in the crossfire—caught between dueling arguments and surrounded by the shouting voices that sought to drown out all the others. Even though that show is no longer on the air, you don’t have to go far to find that same spirit—whether in the halls of power in Washington or in the local editorial pages. Our society tends to see power as the ability to dominate and control, whether that be through the loudest voices, the biggest guns, or the most money. Power is all about who wields the most influence and who is the strongest—or in the words of the old saying, might makes right. When we think about power, certain images usually come to us—we think of people like Bill Gates or celebrities like Oprah; people who have the money and the fame to get things done. We may also think of presidents, politicians, and military commanders. We may think too of the power of nature to build mountains or to wreak havoc through storms and destruction. Power is something that many people spend their lives seeking access to. And we also know that power can be destructive in the wrong hands—as the old proverb reminds us, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The truth is, human beings like to acquire power and authority. We often spend our days seeking after power and the ability to control others. People seek after power—and the more we acquire, the more we want. In our gospel reading today, we see how power conspires to control and dominate, and ultimately seeks to put to death an innocent man. The religious authorities and Pilate are playing a game with one another—both of them trying to gain the upper hand and each suspicious of the other. The drama of this scene should not be missed—in the broader narrative of chapter 18, we are told that Pilate is moving back and forth from inside his headquarters in Jerusalem to the religious leaders that are standing just outside. He shuffles between Jesus, held prisoner inside the building, and the authorities outside—who refuse to enter the building so as to avoid ritual impurity near the Passover. Pilate and the religious leaders are playing this power game with each other, and there in their midst stands Jesus. Pilate proceeds to question him—are you a king, he asks. Do you too claim power, do you play the game? At one level, Pilate is stalling for time, not sure of what to do with this man. But at another level, I think he sensed that there was something different about the way that Jesus approached the whole notion of power. Jesus replies with a question of his own—who do others say that I am? And who do you say that I am? Pilate, a man of great power, is not used to being asked questions. But he knows that something is different with this man. Especially after the religious leaders are asked the same question that he poses to Jesus, later in this narrative—and they reply that “we have no King but Caesar.” No king but Caesar. Ultimately, this is the question that faces us, and every generation—who is your king? Now, the category of king may seem foreign to our ears, but if you think about it, we know that the reality of what it represents is very much present in our lives and our world today. Many of the choices that we face demand that we declare our allegiance—to Jesus, or to Caesar. Now, we Americans like to think that we have moved past notions of royalty and kingship, but we have our own versions of it. Our obsessions with the movements of celebrities and political dynasties, even our love of gossip from the British royal family—we know that these kinds of questions will come our way. They may not be framed in the same language as Pilate uses—but we will sooner or later have to face the question of where our loyalty lies—Jesus, or Caesar. Yes, human beings like to acquire power and authority. We like to seek power, and we often find ourselves submitting to Caesars, to the powers of this world.

But often, our pretenses to power are an illusion. Often, the power we seek and the power that we think we, and others have, is illusory. In the gospel, Pilate is the one with all the power, or so it appears. But in reality, he is boxed in to a corner. He is being manipulated by the religious leadership and by his own position and ambitions. He is being manipulated into doing what the religious leaders want him to do, so that they can get rid of Jesus. And Pilate is attempting to manipulate them for his own power and ambition. All the while, standing before them, is the One with real authority, the One sent by God to save us and bring to us the presence of the only Kingdom that matters. Under arrest, beaten and humiliated, he seems to lack any power and authority; he seems to be at the mercy of the powers of the world. But in reality, the kingdom that holds him prisoner and all the powers that seek death over life, are passing away—in him stands the only power that matters, the power of love and the power of life. Even death, the last enemy as Paul calls it, cannot stop Jesus and cannot erase the message of the kingdom. Even the power of death is overturned in the Resurrection, as God vindicates Jesus and his message, in the face of the powers that seek to destroy that good news. The truth, unbeknownst to Pilate or the religious leaders, is that the powers of this world are passing away, and at the same time being redeemed. God’s power, found in the figure of this tortured and executed criminal, is the real power—the power of nonviolence over violence, the power of love over hate, the power of life over death.

Today, we are given an altogether different image of power. God’s reign is coming and present among us: and it brings a new kind of power. Jesus stands before us in the gospel today, looking like one who is the victim of power—looking to the world as one who is powerless and weak. But it’s precisely in his seeming weakness that Jesus is acclaimed as the king, the reigning ruler of all creation. Jesus, the slain lamb, reigns. This is a paradoxical image for us, for a world that is used to thinking of power in terms of glory and might, military victories and wealth piled high. It’s almost bizarre that we would be claiming that an executed criminal is in fact the one who reigns over all things—it turns everything upside down. And that, friends, is the good news for us today. We are followers of the one who called us friends, not slaves. We follow the one who overturns all that powers that the world offers to seduce us or control us or dominate us. Jesus brings a new definition of power—the power of love, the power of justice, and the power of peace. Power finds a new definition in the kingdom of God. We are given a picture, and image that disrupts the course of our lives and invites us into a new kind of living, a life that is set free from the domination and destruction of the world. 

And so, we have a new call on our lives. We have a new way to live, a new kind of power to show the world. We are called to be the body of Christ, the presence of Jesus in the world today. As Teresa of Avila said, Jesus now has no hands on earth but ours, no feet but ours, no body but ours—we are called to live the kind of life that Jesus lived, to bring to our world the good news that God’s reign has come, that the powers of the world do not have the last word. The power of life, the power of love, has come and is coming, to transform the world. One of my favorite movies is the film Ghandi, the biography of the great Indian leader. In the film, there is a powerful scene that occurs between Ghandi and his wife, who are living on a communal farm where everything is shared equally, including the chores that, in Indian society, were usually performed by the “untouchables.” At one point, Ghandi’s wife learns that it is her turn to rake and cover the latrines. She protests—this is too much! It is the work of untouchables, and a dignified woman, especially the wife of the great soul, the Mahatma, should not be doing such lowly work. Ghandi responds with a simple statement: if you will not, then I will do it. Upon seeing his reaction, his wife turns and takes up her rake, and takes up her work. She saw in his face that Ghandi would not use his power and influence to avoid his duty, and so neither would she.