Who is the king?

by Editor · April 1, 2009

For nearly two millennia, Christians have ascribed collective guilt to all Jews for the execution of Jesus Christ (deplorably, some Christians still do). They usually overlooked that not only did the Jewish hierarchy and their rent-a-mob want Jesus dead, but so did the Romans.

The respective reasons probably were not dissimilar. For the Romans, represented by the ruthless Pontius Pilate, the expedient for killing Jesus was political: the Galilean was a potential agitator who threatened to disturb a fragile peace in Jerusalem. Those who put at risk internal security were routinely executed.

The Jewish leadership, through its Sanhedrin (supreme court), surely shared the political rationale, for they had come to a delicate arrangement with the Roman occupiers by which they could exercise their religious, cultural and social leadership.

For the high priest Caiaphas and his colleagues, the procession of self-acclaimed messiahs was a nuisance at the best of times. Now the latest messiah, the Nazarene Jesus, had made statements that alarmed them.

A few days earlier, Jesus had caused considerable excitement when the locals afforded him a hero�s welcome into Jerusalem. The people might have received him as the portended Messiah, or perhaps as a political liberator from the oppression of Roman occupation. Either way, the Galilean was a threat to the status quo.

For the Jewish leaders, Jesus must have been an enigma. He called himself a king. They interpreted this as a reference to Isaiah�s prophecy, which had forecast the coming of a king who would liberate Israel in an eternal kingdom. The hierarchy may well have understood this kingship to be temporal.

It was one thing for Jesus to proclaim himself Messiah� �� many people did, and not all of them were executed � but quite another for Jesus to declare himself a king, at a time when kings were all-powerful, not today�s ceremonial figureheads. Here was not another one in a long line of deluded pretenders, but one who threatened to upset the political, social and even economic order.

The authorities would have known about Jesus and his activities in Galilee (and his angry actions in the temple, of course). They witnessed his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. His threat was not so much theological as political.

Even if the accusation of sedition wouldn�t stick, the pretext of alleged blasphemy was enough to condemn Jesus in the religious court � but the death penalty was the sole prerogative of the Romans. Rome brooked no kings other than the puppets it patronised, such as Herod. Even with no evidence to prove Jesus� supposed political ambition, Pilate and the Jewish leaders colluded in finding a cause for Jesus� execution: his claim of kingship. And so an example was made of this Galilean agitator.

Jesus was right, of course. He came as a king, but not in the ways the Jewish and Roman authorities understood. His resurrection proved what he had promised: that his kingdom was not of this world, but of the next.

For Christians, Christ is the King of both worlds. Often we allow other kings to displace Jesus: sometimes these are politicians, celebrities or ideologies; other times they are sins such as greed, power, lust, addiction, vengeance and so on. But in our lives there can be only one king.

Like the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities, we are always faced with the challenge of recognising Christ�s kingship. In our times, we must always question ourselves: is Jesus just a ceremonial king, or does he truly reign over us?