The True Rule of Christ

This is the last Sunday of the liturgical year, Reign of Christ Sunday. It was inaugurated in the early twentieth century as a response to rising nationalism in Europe, to call people to remember that nationality is arbitrary and our highest allegiance is the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a bad message in the early twenty-first century either.

The text for today is John’s telling of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. The reading ends with Pilate’s hanging question, “What is truth?” Some things are hard to define: what is life, what is consciousness, what is art, what is truth, what is the best sandwich, etc. In such cases, it may be more helpful to consider what a thing does or doesn’t do first, before trying to nail down what it is or is not. We’ll take a shot at a couple of these big ideas in the sermon, but you can already figure that in the end we will be saying, “Jesus Christ is Lord!”