Pilate the Bitter Queen

November, starting with all the All Saints stuff around Nov. 1, more or less leads up to the last Sunday of the month. The readings all talk about death, the next world, and the coming Kingdom of God. Readings from the old testament that talk about the first coming of the Messiah are juxtaposed with readings from the New Testament that talk about the second coming of Christ. The readings from the daily and Sunday offices these days are suitably apocalyptic -- apocalyptic because they always are at the end of the year, and suitably so because of the war and all. In the old testament, the readings are from Malachi, talking about how Israel will be destroyed. And the gospel for next Sunday is actually a crucifixion scene, telling how Jesus was crucified with a placard that Pilate had put up -- JESUS, KING OF THE JEWS. So the last Sunday of the church year is designated "Christ the King Sunday."

This is why I've always liked Pontius Pilate. A hapless functionary who has apparently been promoted to his level of incompetence, he finds himself smack in the middle of a great historical moment -- a little like George Bush fils. The Jewish authorities have brought Jesus to him, accusing Jesus of breaking their laws and asking that he be executed. Several times, Pilate dismisses them, saying he has no jurisdiction in such matters -- and no interest in them, either, obviously. But they finally convince him that Jesus is a threat to public security, so he goes along with the execution idea.

Though Pilate has failed his greatest test, knuckling under when he might have resisted the attempts to manipulate him, he manages a few dramatic gestures. He tries to engage Jesus in a philosophical debate, getting off a great line -- "What is truth?" He publicly, and literally, washes his hands of the affair to show the crucifixion is not his idea. Finally, in a gesture of scathing sarcasm designed to irritate the local authorities who had manipulated him, he has the placard made up and posted on the cross. Gratifyingly pissed off, the local panjandrums go to him and say, "Don't have it say 'King of the Jews,' rather 'He claimed he was King of the Jews.'"

"What I have written, I have written," Pilate harrumphs, and no doubt with a great sense of relief, withdraws from the spotlight. (It's not the last we hear of him, though. After the resurrection, he cooperates in a cover-up, in which the guards of the now-empty tomb are paid to go along, about how Jesus' body was actually stolen by his disciples rather than risen from the dead.) I appreciate these gestures, hollow though they appear to a believer from the perspective of centuries later. They ring with anger and heavy irony. They're the bitchy last words of a defeated drag queen who has been put down in public for the last time.

But anyway -- about the apocalyptic nature of November and the festival of "Christ the King" (or, as my gender-inclusive church has it, "Christ the Ruler"). It all has to do with the double-think nature of this time of year. In Advent (December), we sort of play-act looking forward to Christ's first coming. The month before, we actually look forward to Christ's second coming. Seems like it's in reverse order, but in fact Advent comes first in the church's calendar. We begin the church year looking forward to the first coming; we end the church year looking forward to the second.

This leads to a bit of whiplash come the first Sunday of Advent (which is the fourth Sunday before Christmas, 3 December this year). We all get down with the second coming and the end of the world. Then it's like the CD starts over again and we're back to the beginning. After Christmas, the secular events of New year's Eve and New Year's Day don't officially figure in things, although many churches do have services to commemorate these dates. On the evening of Dec. 31, 1999 especially, my congregation and many others had special services as a way of participating in what seemed, at the time, like momentous events. All the shit that was foretold for "Y2K" -- power blackouts, war, terrorist attacks, plague scares -- didn't happen then; it's happening now. But what's 18 months when you're talking about millennia?

That's why I say the apocalyptic readings are suitable for this time. The events of Sep. 11 and following may not be the end of the world, but they help set the mood. I won't cite all the biblical passages that can be matched up to current events -- war, plagues and all. That's always seemed beside the point, just as Halloween, to any adult, is beside the point. Of course we're all going to be skeletons and ghosts some day -- any adult over 40 feels that in his or her own bones. We don't need to dress up to remind us, because our friends have started to keel over. Kris Kovick, a terrific dame who founded the dyke spoken-word scene in San Francisco, and whose drawings appeared in my magazine Frighten the Horses and many, many other queer publications in the 1980s and 90s, died last month after an eight-year battle with breast cancer. Her memorial on Sunday was packed with "generations of baby dykes," as my friend Sara put it, whom Kris had encouraged to become writers and artists. Her influence will be felt in their work for many years. She becomes one of the saints.