Christ the King Wilshire Baptist Church November 25, 2012 8:30 service Dallas, Texas Hearing the Colors of the Kingdom John 18:33-37 Neil Harbisson is a talented young artist who has a beautiful gift for depicting celebrities, cities, and even famous speeches in brilliant colors. He is talented not simply because he envisions London as a city of yellow and red or paints Justin Bieber s pop hit Baby in bubblegum pink and neon yellow, but because Harbisson was born without the ability to see color. To his eyes, the world simply exists as shades of gray in a universe of black and white. But that all changed in 2004, when, for the first time in 21 years, Harbisson had his first experience of hearing colors. That s right, I said it correctly he heard colors. After working with a group of scientists, Harbisson developed a lightweight eyepiece that he wears on his head and changes light frequencies into sound frequencies. 1 Colors have become musical notes to him. We might say that what he sees is what he hears. So now, when he sees colors like pink, blue, and yellow, he hears a key played in C major. In the same way, hearing a B minor key reveals a beautiful turquoise, purple, or orange color in front of him. Harbisson says that now he can listen to a Picasso painting; art galleries have become symphonies to him. Grocery stores, however, tend to be more like bad nightclubs, and he must be especially careful around the cleaning-product aisle. 2 Hearing has unveiled a brilliant world of color amidst what was once only a gray scale. When his sight alone was unable to show him the full beauty of a fall tree or a spring flower, hearing showed him what was truly in front of his eyes. Hearing as a way to discover new truths about the world around us is also something we find in our reading for today. Although I have my doubts as to whether Jesus went around hearing colors, we read about the importance of hearing throughout John s gospel not 1 Speakers Neil Harbisson: Sonochromatic Cyborg Artist < http:// www.ted.com/speakers/neil_harbisson.html>. 1 2 Harbisson, Neil. I Listen to Color. Jun 2012 < http://www.ted.com/talks/neil_ harbisson_i_listen_to_color.html>.
just hearing in the passive sense, but hearing as active listening. Jesus tells Pilate, For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. 3 Jesus statement resembles his words to the crowd in chapter 10 when he says, I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me and they will listen to my voice. 4 Over and over again we hear that those who belong to Christ listen to his voice. Jesus seems to be saying throughout John s gospel that there are truths that require more than just our eyes to see. Jesus wants us to listen to his voice so we can gain true vision. The conversation with Pilate shows how we can train our eyes to see only gray. Sometimes we are so busy looking for something we want to see that we forget to listen to the symphony playing around us a problem that Pontius Pilate seems able to relate to. Our reading begins just after the religious leaders have brought Jesus before Pilate, hoping the Roman governor will convict 3 John 18:37 4 John 10:14a, 16b 2 Jesus of treason. Pilate, annoyed that his work has been disrupted by Jewish infighting, hopes to take care of this problem as quickly and painlessly as possible. So the very first question Pilate asks Jesus is straight to the point: either confess your guilt or plead your innocence. We often forget that Jesus is on trial for treason because when we see the title King of the Jews, we think of the biblical prophecies about the Savior who will come from the line of David. But this is not what Pilate has in mind and not what the religious leaders are claiming Jesus is guilty of. When Pilate asks if Jesus is the King of the Jews, he s not asking whether Jesus is the Messiah. He doesn t care about Jewish prophecy or Jesus healing ministry. Pilate wants to know whether Jesus is a political leader, a Jewish rebel organizing an army. The first question might as well be, Are you trying to make yourself king and kick me out of Judea? To this Jesus responds in verse 36 that his kingdom is not of this world. I particularly like the Message translation of this verse, My kingdom doesn t consist of what you see around you. If it
did, my followers would fight so that I wouldn t be handed over to the Jews. But I m not that kind of king, not the world s kind of king. Jesus wants to point out that there is a problem with Pilate s vision. As Jesus stands trial, Pilate is unable to recognize who is truly in front of him. Pilate lived in a world of only gray scale. He relied on his eyesight to show him the truth. A nation could be seen by looking at a map and tracing its borders by examining the national debt, calculating unemployment rates, and observing the size of its military. By looking at bank account numbers, clothing, the number of toys in the garage, education degrees, and family pedigrees, Pilate s eyes would judge a person s worth. Hearing and listening were not as important because he could make good enough judgments based upon the material things he could see. This is the colorless world of Pilate s outlook. I wonder how often we look at the world in shades of gray as well. Our eyes look at our reflection in the mirror and tell us how much weight we need to lose and how our friends must look at us when our backs are turned. We see all 3 the bills that pile up, all the annoying habits that family member of ours have, and all the ways our lives could be so much better if we just had some lighter shades of gray. But Jesus says that we need to stop relying on what we ve taught our eyes to see. What we really need to do is to learn to listen. There is a world of color in front of our eyes if we just listen to him calling to us. We are not defined by black letters on white pages of bank statements and rejection letters. We are not defined by all the dismal gray commentary we give ourselves in front of the mirror and extend to others. We are defined by the words of the god of light and color. The God who tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. 5 Paul Tillich has a great way of talking about the way Christ s words change the way we see ourselves. He writes, [Grace] strikes us when, year after year, the longed for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that 5 Psalm 139:14
moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted. If that happens to us, we experience grace. 6 In a world of endless gray, Christ s words of grace bring color. The good shepherd calls us to a new way of looking at the world. We no longer define our self-worth by what we can do or accomplish but by whom we listen to, by accepting that we are accepted. But these are words we can also choose to ignore. We can continue to play the game of status-chasing and tire ourselves out trying to keep up with the Joneses. But when we do this, we become incapable of recognizing what Jesus is up to in this world. Like Pilate, we can become confused about just what kind of king Jesus intends to be. If Jesus isn t the world s kind of king, just what kind of 6 Tillich, Paul. The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Scribner s, 1948) 161-62. 4 king is Jesus? And what kind of kingdom is he the king of? You see, when Jesus says that his kingdom is not from here, he s not just talking about some heavenly city way over yonder beyond the clouds. He s saying that his kingdom is not built in the same way as earthly nations. The New Jerusalem is not built with bricks of money and power like they were for Rome. You don t get to be the king by building lots of monuments to yourself and increasing tax revenue. The Kingdom of God is a coming reality, but one that is already breaking into the world. Jesus is king of a revolution of the hearts and minds of his followers. His rebellion is against a way of viewing human worth and value in only material ways. God s people know that each of them is desperately loved by a king willing to die for his people. But if we want to be a part of this kingdom, it s not just enough for us to hear the words of grace; we must learn to speak them to others as well. We have to learn to listen to the words of others and respond in love as Christ does for us. In this way, we begin to join Christ in revealing a new kingdom of
color in the midst of a world of gray. That is why Jesus says that his kingdom is not like earthly ones because it lives not on a map but among us. 7 We can even see this happening here at Wilshire. Last week we brought paper bags filled with food so that many of our neighbors could have a good Thanksgiving meal. This is a splash of color on the canvas of our world. In February, a Wilshire group will go to the Dominican Republic to serve alongside some of our missions partners teaching VBS and helping support other projects that empower people. This will be another splash color. Each week, members lead Sunday School classes, visit one another in the hospital, and gather together to pray for one another. Here even more color is revealed. And these are only a few examples of the ways we make color come alive in our world. When we love God and love others, we change the way we see the world. Each week we can choose to help create a beautiful piece of art that we call the Church. But I wonder how much more color Christ is still waiting to reveal to us. families and friends would look, our schools and neighborhoods, our church and city, if each day we stopped to listen to Christ showing us the colors of faith, hope, and love all around us. What would the different parts of our lives look like if we helped others to listen for those colors as well? Today, we get to choose whether we will continue to watch reruns of the world in black and white or help Christ create a new world of color. Where is Christ calling you to serve today? What heavy burden is Christ telling you to lay down? Perhaps it s time to pause for a moment and take a deep breath, to stop and appreciate the beauty of this new kingdom by listening. And in that moment of listening, may our King greet you with all the colors of grace and peace that make this world beautiful. Amen. I wonder how different our 7 Luke 17:20-21 5