Today’s readings: Daniel 7, 13-14; Apocalypse 1, 5-8; John 18, 33-37.

The pianist playing John Lennon’s Imagine just outside the Bataclan concert hall after the terror that struck Paris last weekend has become iconic of how in the darkness there is something more one can do then just perpetuate darkness. The Christian world dares to celebrate the sovereignty of Christ as king of the universe and of the hearts of people at a time when, even within the Christian world itself, many ask deep questions on who really is governing the world and giving shape to our daily living.

It is a question we shouldn’t be afraid to face this Sunday when the spectre of terrorism is so controlling on people’s feelings. Many empires have succeeded one another throughout time and have determined the lives of entire populations and the way people think, speak and behave. Like Jesus in today’s gospel, we happen to also be face to face with the Pilates of our times, enquiring what exactly we stand for.

It may, of course, sound mythological that in contrast with the earthly empires that matter, God’s kingdom comes “on the clouds of heaven”, because, as Jesus himself told Pilate: “Mine is not a kingdom of this world”. This is the conflict we all carry within us in the depths of our hearts, between our loyalties to the world where we have our share of political responsibility and to the Lord.

The kingdom of Jesus is a kingdom of truth and built on truth. Truth is what distinguishes this kingdom from all other empires that claim our loyalty in daily living. The emphasis Jesus puts on the fact that “I came into the world to bear witness to the truth” is very telling as regards our being Christians and our commitment to set up God’s kingdom in the here and now of history.

Hannah Arendt, a political theorist who escaped Europe during the Holocaust, has written extensively on issues dealing with power and truth. In her Truth and Politics she writes: “When a community has embarked upon organised lying on principle, and not only in particulars, where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truth-teller, whether he knows it or not, has begun to act.”

We cannot celebrate the feast of Christ the King without first grounding ourselves in the crude reality we experience around us. In today’s readings we have two visionaries – the prophet Daniel and John in the Apocalypse – in contrast with Pilate the politician. Pilate is checkmated, having to choose between the truth and self-interest, not finding it easy to decipher what Jesus meant when he affirmed that “all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice”.

That was not only Pilate’s problem. Very often we are also faced with the same dilemma of having to choose between the truth and public opinion. We have been made to believe there is no such truth, or that truth can be fabricated. Pilate was blocked from seeing through Jesus more than his eyes could let him see. So for him, the story was to stop there, where he made it stop. But the story continued and his political manoeuvering was unable to interrupt it. He feared public opinion more than the demands of truth and justice.

The text from Daniel in today’s first reading is spot on: he gazes “into the visions of the night”. It was through the ‘night’ that Daniel the prophet could see clearly and identify the one on whom sovereignty was conferred, and whose empire was never to be destroyed. It is the same thing with John in the Apocalypse. Through the suffering of those persecuted, he kept seeing the truth, and that truth sustained him all along.

We cannot afford to play with the truth, not being true to ourselves and pretending to navigate on in life.

In the film A Few Good Men, taking place incidentally at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Jack Nicholson playing Colonel Jessup bawls out to the idealistic young lawyer: “The truth? You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

If there is no authentic and constant ‘listening’ to the Lord’s voice in our lives, we would simply be putting ourselves in the situation of not being able to handle the truth not only about God or so many other issues, but also the truth about ourselves.

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