Christ the King (Anne Empson)

Today’s Gospel reading recreates a small segment of a conversation between Jesus and Pontus Pilate. Jesus is being interrogated by a midlevel bureaucrat in the Roman foreign service. By definition an interrogation is marked by a severe power imbalance. When you listen to this exchange between Jesus and Pilate, it’s not a matter of one person holding more power than the other but rather a collision of two kinds of power. If I was writing the story and showing that Jesus is Christ the King, he would be interrogating Pilate. Jesus would be asking him about what he, the dictator, is doing to be an honest and just ruler. Does he care that people are suffering in Judea under his administration? Does he care that poor people are dying? This morning we will look at the ‘conversation’ through fresh eyes and see that Jesus is ‘Christ the King’.