In the time that’s ours, I would like to share with you from this thought: a question raised directly from the scripture, “What have you done?”

There is a simple question in a sea of questions that grabbed my attention about this text. Essentially, Pilate is asking Jesus, “What have you done?” Pilate was a shrewd politician and a keen observer of context. He wanted to know what this Jesus of Nazareth had done that put him into an irreconcilable situation with the ruling elite, now finding him sitting at the feet of a potential death sentence. What has Jesus done that has placed him in this position? What has Jesus done that has Peter denying him at the very moment he’s being interrogated? What has Jesus done that has caused Judas to betray him? What has Jesus done that has placed him in the crosshairs of an elaborate religious and political assassination plot? Pontius Pilate spent his entire career being the consummate politician, currying favor with those in power, neutralizing enemies, and acquiring strategic friends. If this Jesus purports himself to be King of the Jews, how could he not have done the same to stave off such an inglorious fate?

In verse 33 of John chapter 18, the text picks up the conversation between Pilate and Jesus—seemingly two emissaries of two kingdoms. This encounter, this contest between these two kingdoms, has been punctuated by questions. Pilate, asking Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus does not answer him but, in turn, responds with the question, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” This political banter sees and seeks where the other person’s power comes from. Where does the authenticity, where does the authority come from? Jesus is saying, “Were you sent, or are you curious?” Pilate responds, “I am not a Jew; I am not a Judean. Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me!” So, I’ve got to know, I must know, I need to know, “What have you done?” Whatever you’ve been doing is about to unravel this province. Whatever you’re doing has riled up people who have seemingly been dormant for so long. What you have done that has placed you in front of me has put pressure on me as a politician and may even change the dynamics of how we understand the world. If nothing else, what you’ve done has been a nuisance to my administration and empire.

There’s so much more to unpack about this narrative in full, even the part about the question or the statement that comes after verse 37. In verse 38, where it says, “What is truth?” there are so many things to get into, but for the sake of time, I want to focus on this question: “What have you done?”

If we go back to the beginning of the first chapter of John, we may have a clue about the answer to this question.

The Gospel of John begins in a different manner than the other Gospels because the writer of John is making this theological, existential, and spiritual intervention in the meaning and matter of Jesus’ ministry. Mark jumps right into the action. Matthew and Luke provide genealogies of ways of understanding who Jesus is, but John is reaching from the eternal, making the word of God concrete. John’s understanding of Jesus is important because he is saying that the fullness of God in flesh is this Jesus, and that should be a wonderful and hopeful understanding. This incarnation of God, being so consumed in the human understanding and the human condition that he wraps himself up in flesh, sojourns with the people, with the land, with the community, with an understanding of the world. And he takes this understanding, this logic from the bottom, and wrestles with the powers of the empire with this understanding. The God of the universe, not coming back as a Greek or Roman procurator, but as a lowly worker of the hands. And for Yahweh to not only be mindful of the poor, but to be one of them, was an indictment against the unjust, exploitative, and politically expedient processes that organized the so-called Pax Romana—the peace of Rome.

So, this incarnation was not just merely God coming down in the theological or in the philosophical. When we look at God’s intervention into the affairs of human beings, we see that God is in the midst of undoing oppression. In fact, the incarnation has become an invasion on the carefully crafted status quo, and it is a divine bulwark against systems that thrive off the normalcy of oppression and degradation. The incarnation has waged war through peace on empire. So, when we wonder, “What has he done? What has he done?” Maybe it’s this understanding, this being in solidarity, this being in mutuality that has placed him in the crosshairs of the powers.

John 1, verses 11 and 12, states, “He came into his own home, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, to all those who believed in his name, he gave them power.” How unsettling to empire is it for God to give the lowly, the least, the last, the lost, and the left behind power? So, maybe this collision between kingdoms is really a power play as Jesus came to give people power. And that power is not just the power to get wealth—no, it’s not just the power to be famous—no, it is not that power at all. For if we remember the temptation of Jesus, we recognize that he was offered all those things at the beginning of his ministry, and he turned them down because he understood that that was not power. The power that Jesus was giving was the power for those who believed to become children of God, manifestations of the incarnation. In fact, those people who did receive power received something that Rome could never give them, no matter what Rome’s bold claims were.

The empowerment of the masses who chose to believe in Jesus and his liberatory work was a threat to unseat the social order and the undue, careful alliances that formed between the people, the chief priests, and the Roman Empire. The incarnation was an ongoing statement of God’s care for the world and his notification that this Earth system was coming to an end. The Logos could not do anything less than confront the compromises of the leaders and confound the constricted imaginations of those who put their faith in the inevitability and invincibility of a clay-footed Rome and its representatives.

How can doing good lead to such a bad income? How does healing the sick, raising the dead, feeding the hungry, teaching the masses, providing hope for the hopeless, and giving meaning and purpose to a motley crew of disciples lead to the death penalty? The imperial theology of Rome named the emperor “The Sun God” and made divine justifications for gross economic inequity, asymmetrical power, and egregious violence. The peace and prosperity of Rome was embodied in practices that dehumanized the poor, the differently abled, and conscripted able-bodied persons for work. These measures were offered as methods of being—ones that bring about economic peace, economic normalcy, and global supremacy. The colonized Judeans found themselves caught between two kingdoms, two worldviews, and two ways of living.

If I may be honest, the incarnation seeks to not only invade the most powerful empire of the world at that time but also the empire that so grabs and controls the world now. It is on the verge of receiving another dose of the incarnation. For it is this incarnation that gives God’s people power in a world in which tremendous inequality, wanton violence, and the degradation of the living conditions of so many animate people to find a Jesus who is not wrapped in imperial glory, but one who walked the streets with dusty feet. It is this Jesus whose doings undermined the ways of oppression that came to be the status quo for so long that is now being made manifest in our day. It is the love and the need for perpetual warfare, the reorienting of natural resources, and the contempt and castigation of the poor that have led our nation to a place of moral bankruptcy. If it were not for the incarnation seeking to break forth through each and every one of us—the ones who have been given power to become children of God—if we are the ones who have been allowed to grow, to learn, to be nurtured, and to be discipled into being children of God, the incarnation of Christ should be made more manifest in our day.

Where are the Christians who are worthy of bearing the name of Christ and the mission of Christ? It could be easier for some of us to be Peter. The pressure from the world and the concern for our own welfare places some of us in a situation where we are willing to deny the mission of Christ and our connectivity to the incarnation. Maybe we find ourselves like Judas, tempted by the coin of the realm, seduced by the secrecy of political intrigue, and gripped by our own doings.

But the good news, my friend, is that God has come into the world in the person of Jesus, the Christ, and he has shaken the foundations of empire. God has waged war through peace through the person of Jesus, manifesting that the kingdom of stone, the kingdom of iron, the kingdom of warfare is no match for the doings of the Kingdom of God. We are to become children of God, continue in the way that Jesus commands us to go, and make disciples. He came that we might have life and have it more abundantly.

What have we done with what He has already done? The Pontius Pilates of our world are asking: What shall our testimony be?