(Readings: Dan 7:13-14; Ps 93:1-2,5; Rev 1:5-8; John 18:33b-37)
By Sister Céline Mangan, O.P.
Kingship and Kingdom language is not as overarching in our time as it was in New Testament times, but it is such an important aspect of the teaching of Jesus that every age needs to tease out its meaning for the world of its time. The story of the Bible can be read as the story of the oppression of God’s people throughout its history by one Kingdom or Empire after another. The first two readings today embody the people’s reactions to such Kingdoms. They are written in apocalyptic language, a language which is not about foretelling a disastrous future (as it is largely interpreted today) but, in coded form, it is a language that gives those suffering disasters and persecution by the current Empire, an assurance that they will be supported and rescued by their God. In the first reading God acts through one “like a son of man” and in the second that “son of man” is Jesus who will be a suffering “Son of Man” rather than a triumphant King. In the Gospel dialogue with Pilate, he challenges the might of the Roman Empire of the time, the Kingdom of “this world,” by announcing the incoming Kingdom of God, which he had spent his life proclaiming and would bring about by his death and resurrection.
One approach today has been to rewrite Kingdom as kindom – the People’s Companion to the Breviary goes down this road. While it is true that the Incarnation of the Word implies the kinship of Jesus (not only with humans but also with all creatures) I don’t think the term, kindom, exhausts the full meaning of what Jesus meant by Kingdom when he spoke to Pilate in today’s Gospel, as so often in his preaching. Maybe the Graffiti phrase, “God Rules OK” gets gets something of the meaning across!
Jesus by his preaching, but above all by his actions, tried to show us the kind of God he was revealing and what kind of Kingdom that God ruled over. The Kingdom Jesus speaks about is God’s unconditional love for humankind made visible in his own person and by his actions. We learn how to be citizens of that kingdom by participating in the same love and following the same kind of actions portrayed by Jesus in the Gospels.
The Gospel story of the dialogue between Jesus and Pilate powerfully sets up the contrast between the Roman Empire’s power of domination and Jesus’s saying that his “kingdom is not of this world” a phrase, which has been interpreted for modern ears as “The New Reality of which I speak does not take its rise from the Domination System” (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers, 1992, p.55) Domination Systems are alive and well in our world today, as we witness night after night in TV news bulletins. In the interchange with Pilate, Jesus stresses that he “came into the world to bear witness to the truth” to which Pilate of course famously replies “What is truth?” and, without waiting for a reply, condemns Jesus. Truth is often the greatest casualty in a world dominated by power, as we see in the rise of misinformation and disinformation especially in a time of elections. “False news” can even go so far as to say that God is on its side to make a country “great again!” As Dominicans we could double our efforts to work for the truth in situations: in our own dealings with others and by being critical of what is being given to us as “gospel” by social media.
As we say the Our Father so often in our lives, may we pray that God’s Kingdom may come again for today’s world, that it may hold sway in our lives in spite of the Domination Systems that threaten to engulf us. Repeating the words, “Thy Kingdom Come,” day after day could call us to shoulder our responsibility to be part of the in-breaking of that reality into the world around us.