“You say I am a king.” So Jesus responds to Pilate, when Pilate presses him on his kingship.
“Are you then a king?” asks Pilate.
“You say I am a king.” So Jesus admonishes Pilate, with this half-affirmation at best, because he knows what kind of king Pilate has in mind: the beastly kind, the prophet Daniel’s tyrant of ten horns, who rules by the lie that might makes right. The kind of king whose reign begins and ends steeped in others’ blood. As Jesus stands before Pilate, he stands ready to shed his own blood for a different kind of reign. He’s not Pilate’s kind of king at all.
The church’s choice of this gospel passage for the Solemnity of Christ the King invites us to solemn reflection. We would do well to heed Jesus’s admonishment ourselves, for too many times in Christian history we’ve made Pilate’s mistake. When Christians marched under the banners of the Crusades, they marched under a false flag; when the Inquisition bled its opponents with the blade, it sought truth with lies; and today, in this age of anxiety, do we not face the temptation to hitch ourselves to a leader, any leader, who has the seeming strength to save us? Or to any power, or any technology, or any means whatsoever, no matter the ultimate cost—so long as it seemingly helps us through the terrible now?