The Pope & Palm Sunday:'Power, Politics & Prophesy'.A homily for the world?or the US Administration?

About this sermon

Please consider Subscribing to my Substack https://drgavinashenden.substack.com/ Palm Sunday, Power, and the Question of War When Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate, two worldviews collide—and in that collision an agenda is set, one that has shaped centuries of struggle and misunderstanding in the two thousand years that have followed. At the heart of the confrontation lies a single question: Did Jesus have a political message? The Sanhedrin had tried to force Him into a political role, but He refused to cooperate. During His trial before Pilate, He remains largely silent—until Pilate asks Him directly whether He is a king. And then Jesus makes the crucial distinction: His kingdom is not of this world. At that moment, Pilate attempts to release Him—and fails. It would fall later to Augustine of Hippo to give one of the most profound and articulate accounts of this tension in The City of God: the relationship between two paradigms, two worldviews, two entirely different and competing forms of power. Politics concerns itself with power on earth. The Gospel concerns itself with the transformation of the human heart. And yet, the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the state—between Church and state—has been interwoven ever since. One of the great achievements of Catholic political theology, particularly in the age of monarchy, was the way in which raw political power was made accountable: the conscience of the king or emperor was, in principle, subject to the moral authority of the successor of St Peter. In the secular age that has followed the Enlightenment, this balance has become deeply unstable. Modern sensibilities grow uneasy whenever a pope speaks into political questions. It is as though secular philosophy, wishing to operate free from religious ethics, rebukes the Church: remain within your spiritual sphere, and keep out of political affairs. But the Catholic position is more subtle than that. The Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdoms of this world are distinct—but the human person is not divided. There is no sealed “religious compartment” within us. The human heart, more open to the Holy Spirit than the calculating intellect, cannot be separated from the moral life we live in society. Morality and ethics cannot be divided neatly into “sacred” and “secular.”

Topics

• Second Coming
• Easter
• Christian Living