Today is the feast of Christ the King, renamed Christ the King of the Universe. (Apparently the growth of the universe in the eyes of modern science requires an corresponding inflation of God.)
The gospel concerns the famous encounter between Christ and Pilate where Pilate asks Christ," Art thou the king of the Jews?" Christ answers with a question and in the next several paragraphs Pilate attempts to get an answer as to who Christ is and why He is brought before him.
Christ's initial response is curious, "Sayest thou this thing of me?" as if he is struggling with Pilate's idea of kingship or the word "King." He is like an alien before Pilate, speaking in absolutes to a man captured by a crazy human concept of temporary and provincial hierarchy. Finally He says "came I into the world that I should give testimony to the truth." He is speaking in universal concepts to a mortal man in a small community in a tiny area of a miniscule planet in one solar system that is one of one billion star systems in the galaxy whose super-cluster occupies one millionth of the known universe.
Later Pilate asks, "What is truth?" I doubt it was in jest. But Pilate was likely smart enough to know it was rhetorical as he placed his mundane and changeable concerns before the singularity of God.
And the rest is silence.
The gospel concerns the famous encounter between Christ and Pilate where Pilate asks Christ," Art thou the king of the Jews?" Christ answers with a question and in the next several paragraphs Pilate attempts to get an answer as to who Christ is and why He is brought before him.
Christ's initial response is curious, "Sayest thou this thing of me?" as if he is struggling with Pilate's idea of kingship or the word "King." He is like an alien before Pilate, speaking in absolutes to a man captured by a crazy human concept of temporary and provincial hierarchy. Finally He says "came I into the world that I should give testimony to the truth." He is speaking in universal concepts to a mortal man in a small community in a tiny area of a miniscule planet in one solar system that is one of one billion star systems in the galaxy whose super-cluster occupies one millionth of the known universe.
Later Pilate asks, "What is truth?" I doubt it was in jest. But Pilate was likely smart enough to know it was rhetorical as he placed his mundane and changeable concerns before the singularity of God.
And the rest is silence.
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