Pilate’s questioning is not centered on the accusations against Jesus, no his questioning is centered on his kingship and what it means. This is Pilate’s concern, could Jesus become a threat? A king in the making? Could Jesus start a revolt against the Roman empire? Just what are Jesus’ intentions? For Pilate it’s all about the politics, he doesn’t care at all if Jesus is the Messiah. It has no meaning to him.But he does care if Jesus is someone who could instill an uprising, someone who could threaten his own authority.

Now Jesus on the other hand, when questioned, answers Pontius Pilate by talking about his kingdom, a different kind of kingdom, a kingdom that is about truth. So both Jesus and Pontius Pilate have as their central concern the kingships that govern their lives!

Pilates kingship is focused on politics and Jesus’ kingship is focused on truth. Hense we are back to the sermon title, “Politics & Truth.”

This is Christ the King Sunday so today we celebrate the kingship of Christ and what it means to our lives that Christ is King? I’ve asking myself this question all week…what does it mean that Christ is King of my life?

At our Presbytery assembly meeting just last week, understanding what Christ’s kingdom looks like came into focus. We watched a video clip by the Rev. Amy Cantrell of Beloved Asheville. I had to look this up, what is Beloved Asheville? Well I found out it is an intentional community of people from the streets and margins who love each other and together work to create solutions to homelessness, poverty, and racism. Amy, a Presbyterian Pastor, had a passion to care for those in the margin of life and her passion turned into action when she created this community, the community called Beloved Asheville.

Amy lives at ground zero where the disasterious flooding by Hurricane Hellene occured. She shared about her experience of the hurricane and the resulting devastation, she talked about seeing neighbor’s houses being swept away and all the family members not surviving, she witnessed people floating down the river yelling help, help and not being unable to reach them. Can you imagine what that must have been like? There were 93 deaths in western North Carolina, 125,000 homes lost or severly damaged. About 200,000 people affected by the flooding. She said 31.33 inches of rain fell in a very short period of time totally about 40 trillion gallons of rain water. They experienced water rising 16 feet about flood stage. This is a quote from Amy, she said “One of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen was the way neighbors have loved and taken care of neighbors.” Then she told a story about her neighbor. The waters were rushing down the mountain and the water rushing up from the river and their neighbor’s house was caught in the path. The husband got his children out just in time and he went back to get his wife who couldn’t swim, they were caught in the waters. The husband holding his wife’s head out of the water was able to hang on to a tree while the water swirled around them. Can you envision this in your own mind? They are clinging to this tree branch with water all around them and out from no where another neighbor across the way, a neighbor this family did not even know, threw out a rope and literally pulled them to safety.

Amy gave many more examples of people stepping up and helping, nurses, medics, food supplies, neighbors helping neighbors…this looks to me like the reign of God right here right  now, a visible example of living out what we believe that Christ is King. Neighbor helping neighbor because of this deep connection, deep caring for one another.

This kingdom is indeed a different kingdom than Pontius Pilate knew; his politics was about power, wealth and superiority. In speaking about his kingship, Jesus said to Pilate,“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.” When it comes to politics how often have, we asked, “what is the truth?” How many articles have we read, how many discussions have we had all in search of the truth. Politics and truth are standing face to face in our passage this morning and I think we are asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking “what is the truth”, how about asking “who is the truth?” We live in a world where truth and politics co-exist how do we navigate this faithfully? Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Priest, and influential writer writes this, “Our temptation is to begin with politics and then try to figure out how religion can fit in. We start with the accepted parameters of political debate and , whether we find ourselves on the left or the right, we use religion to justify and bolster our existing commitments…But what if we make the inward journey our starting point? What if we recognize that our engagement in politics should be rooted in our participation in the Trinitarian flow of God’s love? Then everything changes. We are no longer guided or constrained by what we think is politically possible but are compelled by what we know is most real…Richard Rohr continues by saying, “We are invited to participate in the transforming power of this love. There we discover the ground of our being, centering all our life and action.”

I believe Amy and her Beloved Asheville community has already discovered the transforming power of God’s love; this is Christ’s Kingdom right before our eyes. We can and we must let Christ’s kingship govern our lives even as we engage in the political world. Because Christ is King of our lives the transforming power of his love will forever change us, now and forever. Amen