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The Truth of Politics

The Truth of Politics

by Rev. Alexandra Robinson on April 02, 2025


John 18:28-19:16

“We have no king but Caesar!” the crowd shouts in John 19:15. This is the final proclamation determining Jesus’ crucifixion in John’s gospel, and it is a political statement as much as a religious one. The crowds choose the correct political answer to protect their religious position. Though we wish it were not true, politics and religion are connected. I know most of us would like to avoid the reality that coming to church meant wrestling with the week’s headlines. I continually have people ask me to leave politics out of sermons. I understand why: we would prefer to escape our difficult reality on the Sabbath day of rest. We want to feel peace and experience church as an escape, not a place to process the world’s pain theologically.   But John’s gospel does not let us. Instead, John 18:28-19:16 takes us into the most in-depth conversation between Pilate and Jesus of any gospel author, one that is filled with political power plays as Jesus’ fate is determined. At one point Pilate responds to Jesus’ identity as proclaimer of truth by saying “What is truth?” In Pilate’s politics, truth’s definition is molded to his agenda.

The same is true today. With so many definitions of truth given by our partisan ties, national loyalties or personal ideology, politics and faith have become intertwined for specific interests. Whether we realize it or are even aware of it, manipulative tactics are utilized. Truth is determined absolute with minimal facts or selective information. Leaders are allowed to determine truth based on what is personally or financially beneficial. Truth becomes aligned with what continues to make leaders more and more powerful. These are the same tactics Pilate utilizes with Jesus. And like Pilate’s power plays with Jesus, this game of truth continues to result in loss of life.

It makes me wonder: what have we learned 2,000 years later?

What did Jesus die for, if this is how we are still behaving?

John’s gospel starts with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God(John 1:1).” That perspective gives us our reason: God has known humanity since its beginning. God knows we keep repeating the same mistakes. God knows we are not learning from history: whether how bigotry and prejudice result in discriminatory practices, or how abuses of power manifest themselves in authoritarian regimes, or how our selfish need to be correct stops us from listening well to one another.  History repeats itself, God knows it, and Jesus died because of it. 

Jesus also died for it, and the crucifixion is the way we receive peace, knowing that even when history repeats itself, Jesus’ sacrificial love will always be there as the example of servanthood waiting to be followed. Jesus sacrificial love never goes away.

“We have no king but…”                          …It is our choice how to respond.


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