(This was the homily I delivered on November 21, 2021, the feast of Christ the King. The readings were Daniel 7:13-14, Psalm 93, Revelation 1:5-8, and John 18:33-37.)

Last week Jesus spoke to his followers about the destruction of the Temple, as a metaphor for the end of the world. This week’s readings begin with another reference to the end-times, the passage from Daniel, which Jesus himself quoted in last week’s gospel: “I saw one like a Son of Man coming on the clouds.” Jesus calls himself the “Son of Man” throughout his public life. It’s an odd-sounding phrase to our ears, so try hearing it as “The Human One.” When you hear “the Son of Man,” think, the Human One, the model of what it means to be a human being, the one who jumps into this thing we call life, and gets it right. The “faithful witness” we follow, so that we too can be human beings.

It’s important to remember that Jesus is both divine and human, and that he does both perfectly. The second reading calls him the “faithful witness,” and it also speaks of him “coming amid the clouds.” He is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last; he was present for Creation, and he is the king of the universe.

All three scripture passages today include the word “king”: In Daniel’s vision in the first reading, the Human One receives a lasting kingship. In Revelation, Jesus has made us, his people, into a kingdom. In the gospel, we have this dialogue between Jesus and Pilate. Jesus tells Pilate that his kingdom does not belong to this world; if it did there would be violence in the streets. Pilate knows the local religious leaders feel threatened by Jesus and want to get rid of him, so they are using the Roman occupation forces to do their dirty work, portraying Jesus as a rebel, a threat to Rome. Pilate also senses that Jesus means something different by “king” from what Pilate is used to.

This scene is about power. Look at the picture: The Roman governor comfortable and backed by the military. He thinks he’s the one with the power. The prisoner before him has been up all night and perp-walked back and forth between the chief priests and the praetorium. But we know, all the power resides in Jesus, the Christ, the king of the universe, not in Pilate. That power is love, and it’s ours if we want it to be.

After the jury verdict in Kenosha on Friday, keep an eye on your heart. Work at keeping your heart full of love. I say “work” because it’s going to be hard. Be suspicious of the people who will strut and gloat over the outcome of the trial, and be suspicious of those who provoke outrage too. Be aware of them reaching for your wallet and competing for power. Be grateful that the issue of the suspect’s guilt was adjudicated in an orderly jury trial and decided not by a mob. Be aware that a 17-year-old busybody with a people-killing machine in a tense and fraught situation on a summer night is not a good thing, and don’t be afraid to say so. Our responsibilities as parents, as neighbors and as citizens, which were always demanding, have just gotten harder. Rise to this challenge.

Because our choices boil down to fear or love. Pilate knows how kings achieve and maintain power through fear. Pilate also knows this about kingdoms: there will always be rivals, and someday, someone else is going to be king. Not so with Christ. We hear in Daniel that the Human One receives an “everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away.” Then the second reading from Revelation tells us the kingdom not about territory but about people. Our baptism anointed each of us to be a Priest, a Prophet and a King.

To Pilate, nothing about this kind of a kingdom makes any sense. What the heck is a “kingdom not of this world”? Pilate’s whole job was to keep this world running smoothly. Make sure the taxes get collected; make sure there are no insurrections; keep the barbarians outside the gates. Let the subjugated peoples have their own customs, including their own local king, but only so long as they didn’t get any big ideas about who was really in charge, about where the power is. When Pilate asks Jesus if he thinks he is some kind of king, it’s like he’s asking Jesus, “What’s your deal? What are you about? Because you don’t fit into my way of seeing the world. At all.”

When you’re all about love and truth, you don’t give in to fear. Jesus was hours away from losing his life and he was facing the Roman governor, the most powerful person in all of Jerusalem, but there is no fear in him. When Jesus responds to Pilate, he says that what he is all about is the Truth. It struck me that this is the very last thing we hear in scripture as this church year comes to an end today: “I came to testify to the Truth.” Pilate couldn’t take that in. He was practically incapable of accepting Jesus as the King, the Human One.

What about us? Are we open to The Truth, to the good news that everything we see and understand is not all there is? That there is something we don’t see, and we don’t understand, and that it’s unifying us, preserving and saving us, and that it’s not the power structures that this world runs on. I’m not saying none of what we can see and experience matters: I’m not saying that at all. It all matters; it all matters a lot – it’s just not the whole story. And the rest of the story is so huge and so amazing that we can hardly imagine it.

We are connected to people who know the rest of the story. Each November we recall the lives of those who have gone into the next world ahead of us, all the Saints on Nov. 1, all the faithful departed on Nov. 2, all the loved ones we commemorated at Mass last Monday evening. The Sunday gospel readings turn our attention to the end times and ask us to reflect on the fact that all this will someday be gone, that each of us will someday be gone, and this world’s power structures, they’ll be gone too.

Choosing up sides with this world’s power is giving in to fear. Choosing to believe in God’s power means giving up fear, and getting through life without it. Our loving God has the only real power in the universe, and God wants to use that power for one thing: to pull us toward everlasting happiness. To show us how to be real human beings on the way there. We can let that power entice us and attract us. To ask us to dance, to embrace and caress us and never let us go. To be there when we’re down, drying the tears, and to surprise us with beauty we didn’t know existed. To invite us to fall in love.

Or, we can let the power of this world attract us. It will promise happiness too, and deliver it, sometimes. It will demand our loyalty and respect. But the power in this world will want assurance that we will conform to its rules. If we don’t, then like a latter-day Pontius Pilate, this world’s power will ask us, “What’s your deal? Do you think you are some kind of king?” Be ready to give the right answer to that question.