This coming Sunday is Christ the King Sunday. The readings for the day (from RCL Track Two) are Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:4b-8; and John 18:33-37. All four readings emphasize Christ as King over all creation; I was interested to notice today that three of the four readings also have something to say about Truth.
Psalm 93:6 says in part, “Your testimonies are very sure, … O LORD.”
Revelation 18:5 refers to “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness.”
And, in a passage that has hitherto been rather obscure to me, John 18:37, Jesus says to Pilate, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
It sounds like a non sequitor: Yes, I’m a king, and then some statements about truth. What does truth have to do with kingship?
Well, what if one of the offices of a king is precisely to tell the truth to his people? God is King: his testimonies are very sure: they are reliable, they help his people deal with reality (pace Dallas Willard). Christ is King: he is a faithful witness to God and reality, he came for the express purpose of testifying to the real nature of God and his creation. If this is true, Jesus’s words in John 18:37 are perfectly coherent after all, as I should have realized a long time ago. He tells Pilate that, even though he’s not a Jew, he should still recognize the true king, because the true king is the one telling the truth. Truth-telling is one of the ways — maybe the most important way? — we can distinguish the true king from a false king.
I’m afraid that much of our government, which was set up as a replacement for a king that did not have his subjects’ interests — their ability to deal with reality — at heart, has forgotten, or ignored, or never known this duty. We have health officials who tell the so-called “Noble Lie” for ulterior motives of their own; we have prosecutors who distort the truth for ulterior motives of their own; we have corporations who lie about a whole litany of subjects for ulterior motives of their own. We ought to demand that our officials tell us the truth. And, for the sake of our integrity, we can start by telling the truth to our officials, as well as to each other. There may be some rare exceptions, but keeping silent about the truth is very like telling a lie.
Verba Antiqua 