34BKing18. Daniel 7:13-17. Jesus uses this term ‘Son of man’ from the book of Daniel to refer to himself. I take it to be a practical way for Jesus to refer to himself as truly human, yet beyond the capacity of human perception, infinitely more than human. In this passage in Daniel, God, the Ancient One, makes the Son of man king receiving “dominion, glory, and kingship,” with “all peoples, nations, and languages” serving him. Unlike an ordinary human king, “his dominion is an everlasting dominion.”

John 18:33b-37. The religious leaders of the Jews felt greatly threatened by the popularity of Jesus and that Jesus had confronted them on their using religion as tool to serve themselves and not the faith of the people. They accused him before Pilate but it appears that Pilate could not get a handle on what the charges were that deserved such a furious upset against Jesus. Strangely enough he was trying to get Jesus to tell him what he had done. Jesus certainly did not appear to be the kind of person who was attempting to be king or military leader of anyone. Jesus answered Pilate, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” “You say that I am a king. 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.” To Pilate that response made absolutely no sense. It is as if, we might say today, they were from two different planets or worlds. Truth for Pilate was holding down his job with the emperor. Truth for Jesus is the reality that is eternal, the Alpha and Omega, the same that always was, is now and always will be. Truth is the very person of God. Everything else lives for a short while and is dead the next. As Jesus said in John 14:6a, “I am the truth, the life and the way.” Everything else is fraudulent, falsely claiming to be the truth.

Revelation 1:5-8. “Jesus Christ is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father.” He is the shepherd king, leading us by the sacrifice of himself on the cross from our being sinners to becoming saints into his kingdom, to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession.” (taken from Preface I of the Sundays in Ordinary Time) In Romans 6:5, Paul writes, “If, then we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” Daily we are priests, not as ministerial priests saying the words of consecration but as lay persons who offer up our lives with Jesus on his cross through prayer so that we may live with him in heaven forever.