John 18:28-40 on March 15th, 2026
Above is audio of the sermon pulled from the video and amplified.
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This statement from Jesus really gets me wondering, "my kingdom is not from this world." If his kingdom were from this world, his followers would be fighting to keep him from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, his kingdom is not from here. So where is Jesus' kingdom? If it's not from here, then where? Is it in heaven? Is it in our hearts? Where?
But I think that might be the wrong way to look at it. There's more to this than mere location. There's the sense that Jesus' kingdom is foreign, not just by place, but by the way it acts. Yolting it from around here means more than you just didn't grow up in this town. It means you act in a way that's different than the norms of that place. And I think that's what Jesus means. If his kingdom were from here, we're to act the way that worldly kingdoms act, his followers would be fighting for him. Instead, those from Jesus' kingdom don't act that way. This is not what his kingdom does.
I just think of all the interesting upside down ways that Jesus has shown God's kingdom, pointing it out wherever he went. The kingdom is like gallons of the best wine when all you were expecting was the cheap stuff. The kingdom is being able to see clearly when all you've known is blindness. The kingdom is bringing life, life for a deadly sick boy and a tomb that has been sealed for days. It's not that Jesus' kingdom isn't here. It's not that it's in some heaven light years away. It's that Jesus' kingdom achieves all these things by doing them in ways that are so different than the ways of the world.
Conversely, Pilate knows how kingdoms work. Despite his wishy washi responses here, he is known historically as a pretty violent leader. He fought each step of the way for what he had and fighting as how he held on to what he had. Beyond that, we too know how kingdoms work. We don't need to look very far to see examples playing out right now in Iran, Israel, Ukraine, you name it. Might makes right. It's a world of power, oppression, force. It's okay to use violence as long as the ends justify the means. By any means necessary to keep the peace. We can't imagine a kingdom. Any kingdom that isn't built by war, fighting overpowering someone else, violence has become an idol. It is what we trust, what we rely on, what we cling to. Our only response to violence is more violence. And the end result of how we respond is death. That is the ends to our means. All the kingdoms of our world lead to death.
So when Jesus says that his kingdom is not of this world, we try to imagine it, but we have been so shaped by the norms of our world that we can't even fathom anything other than what our world offers. And when Jesus lived his kingdom out in front of us, we couldn't handle it. We responded in the only way we know how. Killing him. The world's response to Jesus, living out a kingdom of love, service, healing, and peace was violence, the cross, death. And how did God respond to our actions? With violence back? No, with resurrection, with life, with the promise that this is just the beginning. Resurrection is God's stamp of approval for Jesus' way of life, a new way of seeing, a new way of living, a new way of loving. This is where Jesus is kingdom leads, not just to death, but through death, to life, to forgiveness, to peace.
Jesus comes to show us something different, to be something different for us. He will not use violence, but love. He won't establish his kingdom by force, but by serving. He won't make followers through brutality, but through forgiveness. And because Jesus is raised to life, eternal, that that not of this world kingdom is still here, shaping us, changing us, empowering us to break the cycle of violence and live in a new way. To live in a way that fosters life, to be this kingdom in a world that can't imagine things any other way. Amen.