If Sunday’s Gospel seemed a little out of place, this one is, at first glance, even more bewildering. We started Advent with Palm Sunday and now we’re continuing on to Good Friday. What’s the deal? This feels a little messed up.

For our Advent midweek services these next three weeks, we’ll be looking at the “second series” of texts, which is a list of alternate preaching texts corresponding to the Sunday lectionary first used in 1887 in Norway. These texts are parallel to but also build off of the themes and content of the ancient Sunday lectionary.

So this last Sunday we looked at Jesus as our coming King, coming into Jerusalem the same way He came into the world and that He comes to us today, in humility. Now, as we take a text from Good Friday, that question is asked more pointedly and directly, even scornfully. What kind of king is this? Jesus doesn’t seem to be very much of a king at all. But His is a spiritual kingdom.

I. No King at All

Our Gospel reading shows us a single scene from Good Friday and there’s a lot going on right now, the early hours of Good Friday were very busy.

Jesus has been tried by the Sanhedrin. They’ve been throwing all of these false accusations at Him, but none of them seem to stick and He remains silent. Until the high priest questions Him very directly, “I put You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!”

And that’s a charge that Jesus has to give an answer to. “It is as you said.” This causes an outrage. The high priest accuses Him of blasphemy and the Sanhedrin responds, “He is deserving of death” (Mt 26:63-66). But this puts them in a bit of a pickle.

The Sanhedrin handles Jewish religious disputes, but they don’t have the authority to put anyone to death. To do that they have to go to Pilate. And to get Pilate to care about what is essentially a religious dispute, they have to reframe it into a political accusation. Pilate isn’t going to care about blasphemy, so they need to make Jesus a political opponent. So when Pilate asks them for the charges they bring against Him, they say, “We found this fellow perverting the nation, and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, saying that He Himself is Christ, a King” (Lk 23:2).

The first two of these charges are blatantly false. In fact, when they tried to entrap Jesus into rejecting Roman taxes, He successfully evaded them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Mt 22:21). With the third charge, there is a grain of truth. Jesus is the Christ, He is a King, but not in the way that Pilate would have understood it, so even this more accurate charge is twisted and corrupted.

I think we’ve become used to this sort of false accusations, of our enemies twisting and perverting our goals. The Sanhedrin of this world sees our spiritual ambitions and twists them into political ones. Now, to be sure, our Scriptural convictions do have a certain amount of political implications, but certainly not as many as many imply.

We’re labeled as political extremists for holding to the truths of the Bible, wild radicals for following natural law when it comes to human life and sexuality. And sure, those stances are important, but that’s not the only thing we’re about, that’s not our primary goal. We’re concerned about people’s spiritual wellbeing and want to make sure that they’re in heaven but how often is that goal ignored and discarded by those who wish to slander us?

And how often do we fall into those stereotypes as well? Are you more comfortable talking politics than religion with your friends and family? Do you know your talking points and the latest headlines better than the Scriptures? Do we always let our primary goals be the primary things?

Now Pilate is smart enough that he can see through the accusation here, it’s not like all of a sudden the Sanhedrin started caring about Caesar and wanted to be loyal to him. But he’s the judge, he’s gotta do his job, he’s gotta investigate these claims. So he cuts to the chase and addresses the biggest one, “Are You the King of the Jews?”

Jesus asks Pilate to clarify that question: is he asking this question as a Roman, from himself, or as a Jew, from others. Because Jesus is the King of the Jews, just not in a way that Pilate would be concerned about. He is the Christ, the Messianic King, but that’s so much more than the charges the Jews are trying to convince Pilate of, so far beyond a political kingdom.

Pilate bristles at even being associated with Jews. “Am I a Jew?” He doesn’t care about their theological squabbles. But he’s saying, “Come on man, they arrested You and tried You and are calling for Your blood, You must’ve done something wrong.” You can just taste the exasperation and the scorn. Pilate can tell just looking at this guy, no way He’s a king. What kind of king looks like this, a beaten prisoner, shuffled around from one court to the next? What kind of king is betrayed and handed over by the people he claims to rule?

And perhaps Pilate’s scorn tastes all too familiar as the world judges us and finds us wanting. “What kind of religion makes you suppress your desires? Aren’t those good things? Doesn’t God want you to be happy?” “You’re a Christian. So why is your life so hard and difficult, I thought God was supposed to be on your side.” In the eyes of this world, we’re pitiful fools, duped by a book of old fairy tales, getting up every Sunday morning for nothing.

And sometimes we get so used to that scorn that we start believing it. “What’s the point of battling against my desires when it’s so much easier to give in? What’s the point in following Jesus if my life just gets harder? What’s the point of following this King if we only ever seem to suffer defeat?”

All too often we fall into doubt and despair, we wonder if the Pilate of this world is right after all, we betray the King because of His humility.

II. King of a Spiritual Kingdom

Jesus responds to Pilate’s scorn and dismantles the charge that He is some kind of political ruler. “My kingdom is not of this world.” In a certain sense, Pilate was right. If Jesus had been an earthly ruler, He’d be a pretty weak one, His followers didn’t even put up a fight. In fact, when Peter fought to try to defend Jesus from being arrested, Jesus rebukes him. “[B]ut now My kingdom is not from here.”

This piques Pilate’s interest. What on earth is Jesus saying. “Are You a king then?” He’s making claims about a kingdom but He certainly doesn’t look the part. Jesus answers, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.”

Jesus is a king, but in a deeper, truer sense than any of the kings of this world. The kings of this world are kings because they have power and subjects, because others have made them king. Not Jesus. He is a king in and of Himself. He is true God, the king of the universe. He is still the King even as He is stripped of the praises of Palm Sunday, even as He stands in humility before Pilate.

Pilate’s right, Jesus doesn’t look like a king. But His purpose is unlike that of any other king. He came to “bear witness to the truth.” That’s what He’s doing right now, standing before Pilate, telling Him the truth, that He is a king, a king unlikely any Pilate has ever seen.

“For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world.” Here we can see a hint of Christmas. Jesus speaks of His birth and of the mystery of the Incarnation, that God, the king of the universe, has entered His creation. And it’s all leading to this. The Incarnation has a purpose.

We see Christ trade the wood of the manger for the wood of the cross. As Pilate doubts His kingly ambitions, Jesus is doing exactly what He came to do. He has continued in this humility all His life and now it reaches its climax. Accused of blasphemy, convicted on false charges, executed like a criminal. But it’s all part of the plan. It’s the King doing what He came to do.

He came to silence the devil’s scorn with His precious blood. The charges against you have dropped. Your sins are forgiven. He came to overcome this fallen world by His humility and He stands glorified and victorious. He came to defeat death by His death. The King has taken His enemies captive and delivered us who lay bound in their slavery to become His subjects and to make us His own.

Jesus tells us about His kingdom and what it consists of. He came to bear witness to the truth, and “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Brothers and sisters in Christ, we have heard the true voice of our King. He says, “Your sins are forgiven.” We are members of His kingdom. His reign is in our hearts. His kingdom is not of this world, it transcends this world. His goals and ambitions are not earthly but heavenly. His victory is not temporal but eternal.

This is the King we have. One who suffered in humility but was raised into glory. One who has vanquished our enemies and conquered our foes. One who leads us from this world of sorrow into His everlasting kingdom.

Our King reigns from the tree of the cross. There He displays His victory. There He has purchased our deliverance and He bestows it upon us through the water and the blood flowing from His side. He makes us His own in Baptism and gives us His blood to drink. We gather around these things and to listen to the truth of His Word, to hear His voice. Here is God’s kingdom, in you. Here is God’s kingdom as we gather as those of the truth.

We share the ambitions of our King. Not political ones, we’re not seeking to establish an earthly kingdom. But we seek to further this spiritual kingdom as we spread the Word, as we spread Christ’s domain into the hearts of men, as we invite others to hear His voice and be of the truth.

We do not need to be dismayed at our current political system or at the actions of the rules of the kingdoms of this world. We are members of a spiritual kingdom and we have every confidence that God’s kingdom comes to us through His Word and Sacraments, that His will is done among us as it is in heaven, and that we will safely be delivered into His heavenly kingdom, translated from this world of sorrow into the kingdom of glory.

This Advent, as we prepare for our King to come, we see what kind of king He is. When He first came to this world and as He comes to us now, He comes in humility, in a manner completely unlike the kings of this world, for His is a spiritual kingdom. But He will come again in all of His glory as the mighty King of the universe. Although we must endure the accusations and the scorn of this world, we gather today as subjects of our King as we hear the truth of His voice and we joyfully await the day when He will return and we will be brought into His kingdom. Amen.