For those of you who follow contemporary and popular music, you might be as astonished as I was this week to learn that an album by the great Canadian singer, Alanis Morisette, called Jagged Little Pill was celebrating its twentieth anniversary just this month. It is hard to conceive that it has been twenty years since Alanis broke on to the scene with Jagged Little Pill! It won every award imaginable throughout the whole world! But, there was one song within it that I think always, stood above the rest, as is often the case with an album and with composers, namely her very famous song, Ironic: “Isn’t it ironic?” she kept saying. There was power in this song. She thought some things were ironic in this song that actually aren’t irony at all, but we will forgive her that. She played loose, as only a songwriter or a poet can, with grammar and with language. Nevertheless, she did pick up some ironies in her song. For those of you who know it, I remind you:
“An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's like rain on your wedding day”
Not really an irony - but anyway, just unfortunate!
Nevertheless, this song caught the imagination of people, because irony does. Irony is really the incongruence of expectations and reality. It is when we anticipate one thing, and get something entirely different. It is that incongruence that grabs us and forces us to think about things. For example, it is an irony that it was Chinese alchemists who discovered gunpowder when they were actually looking to find immortality. Now that is an irony, is it not? You expect one thing, but the reality is in fact something completely different. Irony is a powerful tool: it is a powerful tool in drama; it is a powerful tool in language; it is a powerful tool in human experience. Often, we are confronted by irony and are attracted by irony, but we are not always sure that it is irony that is doing it. Irony winds its way through so many of the great plays, so much of the great drama and literature and of history, and it is in that tension between the expectations and the reality that we sit on the edge of our seats and find it enthralling. “Isn’t it ironic” catches our attention, and all of us think about it.
I want to suggest to you this morning that this notion of irony is also a very powerful biblical tool. You find it in passages where you perhaps least expect it. Our passage, for example, from the Gospel of John is a reading that has been selected in the Common Lectionary to be read today. Today is known as The Reign of Christ Sunday. It is important because it is the last day in the Church year. You see, the Church year runs from Advent to Advent, and the Church goes through a series of occasions and seasons: Advent; Christmas and Epiphany; Lent; Easter; Pentecost; and finally, it reaches its summation at the very end, before the next Advent begins, with the glory and the reign of Christ. Today is that day! In fact, it is one of the High Days in the Church’s life, though so often it is forgotten about because we are always looking ahead to Advent.
The Gospel of John speaks about the reign of Christ, but it does it in the most profound way, because what we have here is actually the second act in a five act trial of Jesus of Nazareth, as recorded by John. In this Second Act, Jesus appears before Pilate. When you look at the relationship, as we are going to do in a moment, we are overwhelmed by irony. There are three ironic moments that I find in this passage.
The first of these ironies is the fact that Pilate thought he was putting Jesus on trial when in fact it was Jesus who is interrogating and putting Pilate on trial. Let’s have a look at the evidence. Pilate summons Jesus and, as the Roman representative, he wants to put Jesus on trial. He asks him straight out the big question: “Are you the King of the Jews?”
Now, Jesus’ answer is fascinating. He says, “Did you come up with this yourself, or has somebody else put this in your mind?” In other words, “Pilate, are you so smart that you can figure this out or have you had to rely on somebody else to do this?”
Pilate, realizing that he has been caught in a conundrum, because he doesn’t know what he is doing, just says, “Well, am I a Jew? How am I supposed to know whether or not you are King of the Jews?”
Therein lies the great challenge and irony. In fact, Pilate is saying, “I don’t have a clue what is going on here. I have no idea what you have done wrong. I am not a Jew and I don’t understand if you are the King of the Jews.”
Jesus, by asking him if he is the source of all this, calls into question Pilate’s credentials and ability to put him on trial. It is a masterstroke, but it is an irony! It is Jesus who in fact interrogates Pilate, and not the other way around.
I love what one of my professors said in describing Pilate: He was a tin pot, second tier Roman functionary in an obscure part of a world that nobody cared about. And, he was! The fact that he’d been sent to Palestine meant that he wasn’t worthy of going anywhere else. Pilate was not really that brilliant. But here he is, summoning Jesus, as the Roman, as the representative of the secular state, trying to get to the point of knowing if Jesus was King of the Jews. How on earth could Pilate ever determine that?! Here was a man with secular power, the power of the state, trying to stand in judgement over a man accused of something profoundly religious. He doesn’t have the capacity to be able to understand who Jesus is.
I have thought about that a lot recently, because I often think that Pilate is sort of the new age secular person. This isn’t pointing any fingers; it is just describing the way things are. So often, the secular mindset has no structure really whereby it can try and understand matters of belief and of faith. I realized that, and I have listened very attentively over the last week with all the activities following the tragic bombings and killings in Paris that some of the commentators have been scrambling to understand what has happened, but they have done so only through the structure of secular thinking, when in fact, at the heart of what is going on, is a profoundly religious thing. The language that is used and the knowledge base to try to understand it gets lost and subsumed in a lot of other things. Secular powers like to stand in judgement, for example, on the claims of people of faith, and they do so from a point where they have no reference. Because of that, they don’t grasp the reality.
What we are learning and what we understand from all that is happening in the world right now is that what you believe actually does matter, and that belief and faith, either distorted or real, can in fact profoundly influence people’s lives. Notwithstanding all the other influences that are out there, faith is the major component in a lot of them. We are struggling to come to terms with this because we are thinking like Pilate. We are not trying to get to the very heart of what is in the minds and the souls and the thoughts of people. Pilate was trying to do this with Jesus. He was trying to get to the point, but he realized, “I am not a Jew. I don’t understand this. I don’t know what you have done wrong. And, here we are!” Irony! Pilate is exposed, not Jesus.
There is a second point here, and there is a second irony: all of this, the trial of Jesus was in fact chaotic. When you read all the texts around it, there is this incredible chaos. The religious leaders are debating amongst themselves about who is right and who is wrong, and they are having contrary opinions as to whether Jesus is seditious or whether blasphemous, and they cannot agree. Likewise the crowds. If you have read the story of the Crucifixion you know they called for the release of a man called Jesus Barabbas. What were they calling for? The release of somebody who was a perpetrator of terror! Isn’t it ironic that the Prince of Peace is left to hang; the perpetrator of terror is set free?
It was all chaotic! Pilate is chaotic; he doesn’t know what is going on. Yet, in the midst of this chaos, what you find in John’s Gospel in particular, is this peaceful countenance of Jesus. He even says to Pilate, “If my kingdom was of this world, then I would be bringing in my disciples to fight for me. They would be my body guards. They would exercise force to overcome you. But my kingdom is not like that. My kingdom is not of this world, and it is certainly not like this world.” So, Jesus brings calm to the situation. He brings some peace. He is sort of like that Rudyard Kipling poem, you know, when all around you are losing their head, but you keep yours, yet they blamed it on you, then you are a man. Well, during the trial Jesus was a man! He was calm. He was at peace. You see, what had happened was that they had lost the plot. Pilate had lost the plot; the religious leaders had lost the plot; the crowd had lost the plot: they weren’t seeing Jesus as who he really is, and they had it wrong.
I read a story not long ago about President Cleveland, who met Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he was just a young boy. According to one historian he said this to the young Roosevelt. Now this is irony! “I am making a strange wish for you, little man. A wish I suppose no one else would make. I wish for you that you may never be President of the United States of America!” Irony! The man who was eventually elected four times President, who saw the country through the Great Depression, who brought the United States into the Second World War, this man was deemed by Cleveland in his wish not to become President. The chaos going on around the life of Jesus was exactly the same. They had missed the plot; they had missed the point. The Scriptures, when they talk about chaos, suggest that chaos is usually a result of sin, a result of brokenness, and when things are chaotic people often make unwise and irrational decisions. They do it for many reasons, but all of them are a result of sin and brokenness. Chaos is a manifestation of that. As we have seen, have we not in Paris over the last week, violence is the ultimate in chaos. It is the nadir of chaos. When there is violence, there is uncertainty. When there is uncertainty, there is fear. When there is fear, there is panic. Where there is panic, there is irrationality. And when there is irrationality, there is chaos again! It is a vicious circle!
I myself unfortunately, as many of you know, have witnessed firsthand extreme violence in Africa. When you experience violence, you realize how incredibly destabilizing it is, and how in the chaos of it all, so much is destroyed. That is what violence does. It throws chaos into the midst in order that strong people can try to grab power amidst the uncertainty. Pilate was doing that with Jesus. It was chaos, but though it all the Prince of Peace remains steadfast, and strong, for his kingdom was one of justice, and peace, and truth.
This is the third irony: Pilate tries to get Jesus to say the truth, to get him to say that he is the King of the Jews. At just the moment when Pilate thinks that he has trapped Jesus into making that affirmation, he then says something that I have left off the end of the text today, because I want you to remember it. Pilate says, “What is truth?” Now, here’s the irony: he was looking for the truth of Jesus saying that he is King of the Jews, but then he questions whether there is anything such as truth – the ultimate irony! Trying to find truth and wanting it; questioning whether that truth exists. Pilate says, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
And then, Jesus cleverly says, “Well, if you say that I am.” But then, he continues, “But my kingdom is not of this world.”
By that he does not mean that it is a heavenly kingdom and not an earthly kingdom. No, he is talking about the origins. My kingdom is not from this world is the better translation. In other words, it has come from God. And what is his mission? To testify to the truth!
Here then is the ultimate irony. Finally, Pilate gets him to almost say that he is the King of the Jews. If he does that, he can charge him with sedition, because only Caesar is the King. He has him! He’s got him! But then, he says, “What is truth?” In other words, “I don’t have a clue!” All of a sudden Jesus is set free. The irony of Jesus’ life is that he goes through this trial with a peaceful countenance, only to be executed unjustly. It is through the execution and the injustice Jesus is raised from the dead. The One who sent him to bear witness to the truth, and he did, has now raised him from the dead to affirm that truth, and there wasn’t a thing that Pilate and his henchmen could do about it.
I read a very touching story not long ago about a man called John Howard Payne. He was a famous nineteenth century playwright and actor. Payne produced the wonderful play Brutus. The problem with Payne was that he was driven from the U.S. stage by many other actors and producers who were envious of him. They wanted him to be removed from the scene because they couldn’t stand his success. So, Payne had to flee to Europe to try to rebuild his career, but he didn’t, and he lived in penury, and at one point in his life he was homeless. One day, when he was homeless, he listened to an organ barrel playing a song that he had written called Home! Sweet Home! Irony! At the time when he was most destitute, he hears one of his great creations! In the place where he had been rejected and despised, his greatest piece was being sung.
It seems to me that in a world of chaos, that sometimes does not understand what truth is, and in a world that is hurting because it doesn’t know how to react to the things that are happening, what we need more than anything else is the presence, the Reign of Christ. What the world needs is the Prince of Peace. What we need to see ourselves through this maelstrom, is a peaceful countenance that Christ can give us so we do not lose our compassion, our sense of truth, our sense of faith, and our sense of justice, for as Jesus exposed in Pilate, the irony is that sometimes it is those who make the accusation from the point of lack of knowledge who need to examine themselves. It might be ironic that the Prince of Peace is the Lord of Life. It may be ironic that the Crucified One is the Risen One. It might be ironic that the One who laid down his life is actually the King. That is precisely what we believe! Amen.