Sermon for the Reign of Christ Sunday: Listening to His Voice

 John 18:33-38a
Listening to His Voice
James Sledge                                                   November 21, 2021, Reign of Christ

    When John’s gospel tells the story of Jesus’ trial, Pilate is something of a comic but tragic figure. I say Jesus’ trial, but in John’s gospel, it is actually Pilate who is on trial. We hear only a small portion of the trial in our scripture this morning, but if we had read the entire account, we would have seen Pilate scurrying back and forth between Jesus inside the headquarters and the Jewish leadership gathered outside. For all his apparent power, Pilate is buffeted about, and the situation seems to be totally out of his control.

When Pilate asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews, Jesus responds with a question of his own. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” It is a straightforward enough question, but Pilate seems uninterested in answering and changes the subject. To answer would be to engage in the truth, and Pilate has little interest in truth.

For his part, Jesus has just invited Pilate to step into the light of truth, just as Jesus has done with others before. If Pilate would engage Jesus, truly respond to him, there is hope, but Pilate shuts the discussion down before it can ever begin. The truth frightens Pilate.

Pilate has lots of company. Many people fear the truth. Politicians come to mind. They worry about losing the next election and that makes for an uneasy relationship with the truth. You almost never hear a politician say they were wrong or made a mistake. That is a truth most dare not speak.

But it isn’t just politicians. People in the workplace may fear that speaking the truth could endanger their job. If you saw something unethical going on where you work, what would you do? What if it were your boss who was engaged in this behavior?

I saw an article the other day that talked about how police who report the brutality of a fellow officer often face severe harassment and may end up losing their job. And so there is a “code of silence” where the truth dare not be spoken.

I hate to remember it, by I vividly recall a time when fear kept me from speaking the truth. It was my first year of junior high school in 1969. I was on the school bus with others from my neighborhood. Not surprisingly, all of us were white. But this bus had a final stop where all the students who boarded were Black.

One morning, we arrived at this last bus stop a little early. I could clearly see the group of Black students a hundred yards or so back down the long dirt road that led to the bus stop. When they saw the bus, many of them began to run toward it. But as they drew nearer, the driver, a high school student who was being egged on by many on the bus, pulled away before any of the Black students got there. Jeers and taunts rang out from the open windows as the bus drove away, and I just sat there.

If I had spoken up, would the driver have stopped? Perhaps. But I was too scared to speak the truth of what was happening. I feared the taunts and jeers being aimed at me. It’s a memory that still haunts me.

In our scripture, Pilate feared losing control of the situation. He feared a bad report about him finding its way back to Rome. And so he charted the path that best allayed his fears. To this frightened Pilate, Jesus says, “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."

But in his fear, Pilate has no use for truth. “What is truth?” he asks dismissively. And he goes back outside to negotiate with the Jewish leaders.

Do you belong to the truth? Or perhaps a better question: To what do you belong? The answer may well be found in the voices you listen to. The voices on TV tell me that I need the refined luxury of this car, or that I really need to have that streaming service lest I miss out on some exciting entertainment. In my own fears of missing out, these voices tempt me.

There are political voices that say we need to view those we disagree with as enemies, our enemies and enemies of the country itself. We need to hate them, go to any lengths to stop them. Out of fear, some real and some imagined, many people listen to these voices and poison our political processes.

There are voices that say that how much money you make matters much more than any good you might do in the world. And out of a fear of not having enough, perhaps the most primal fear of our time, people opt for a better paying career over the one they feel called to.

“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."

I think that most of us want to listen to Jesus’ voice. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t. But there are so many other voices, voices that sound little like Jesus. They beat upon our ears and threaten to drown out the voice of Jesus, the Jesus who says he comes that we might have life, and have it abundantly, the Jesus who says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” So how are we to listen to Jesus?

If you were a young parent, and you came across a parenting expert who truly seemed helpful, what would you do to take advantage of that expertise? When my wife and I had young children, we encountered such an expert and we bought and read his books and read his columns in the paper. We soaked in everything he had to say.

If you were an investor, and you heard about an investing guru who scores of people swore by, what would you do? Surely you would read her books and columns; you would watch her on TV and take in all she had to teach you.

And if you wanted to become a gourmet cook, wouldn’t you watch cooking shows by famous chefs and read books by people such as Julia Child or Alain Ducasse? You would want to sit at the feet of the greatest teachers in the art of cooking.

Surely it is not so different when it comes to learning how to have life and have it abundantly, when it comes to discovering the way, the truth, and the life. You need to soak in the teachings of the one who came so that we might have abundant life, the ways of the one who is the way, the truth, and the life. You would want to listen to his voice.

Fortunately, we can. The early followers of Jesus set down many of his teachings, his stories, his understandings of what it means live life as we were created to live it. And all of that is available to us in the pages of scripture. Yet a surprising number of Christians, people who seek to follow Jesus, rarely if ever read the Bible.

I once heard someone comment on how odd it is that a majority of Protestants, a group that began with the notion that every Christian should be able to access the Bible for themselves, now encounter scripture only when it is read to them in a Sunday worship service. If that describes you, perhaps this is a good time to change that.

Today we celebrate the reign of Christ, and we proclaim that Jesus is the ruler over all creation, the ruler of our lives. And I can’t think of a better moment to make a commitment to listen to Jesus’ voice, to take in all he has to say and teach us. And it’s easy to do. Most of us have a Bible. And you can go on our denominations’ website and sign up to have scripture verses emailed to you each day.

“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." Let us declare our allegiance to the truth. Let us listen to the voice of the way, the truth, and the life.