SYMBOLS OF HOPE: The Crown of Thorns Dianne E. Deming Wicomico Presbyterian Church March 26, 2017 John 18:33-19:6

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1 SYMBOLS OF HOPE: The Crown of Thorns Dianne E. Deming Wicomico Presbyterian Church March 26, 2017 John 18:33-19:6 There has always been an association in the human mind between the person of God and the person of the king. Early in the history of civilization, from the Pharaohs of Egypt, to the kings of the great Middle Eastern empires such as Assyria and Babylon, to Alexander the Great, to the Caesars in Rome, there was an identification of the King as being a descendent of a god, or actually being a god. In Judaism this did not happen, but the link between god and king was that the king was God s Anointed. The people did not choose their king, God chose the king and God s blessing rested on the Lord s anointed one in a unique and powerful way. In the history of Israel there were good kings and there were bad kings. There are many variations in the types of kings. We probably know best King Saul who started off well enough, but who became a mad king; David, part warrior king and part poet king who succeeded Saul, and who had his strengths and his weaknesses; and Solomon, a philosopher king. Rulers can be warrior kings, magician kings, poet kings, philosopher kings, philandering kings, tyrannical kings, weakling kings, demented kings. The history of Israel, and of the world includes them all. But with Christ we are introduced to a new kind of king altogether. Story of Leo in Hesse s Journey to the East. The Journey to the East is a story by Hermann Hesse which is a parable of the spiritual quest. In this story the writer speaks of the League, -- a confederation of seekers looking for spiritual truth and fulfillment, who go on a journey. Hesse describes various members of the League and their fine qualities, and in a last breath mentions a man named Leo who was a servant of the members as they traveled. Leo handled the baggage, ran errands and generally waited upon the others. 1

2 Towards the end of the story, Hesse finds himself put on trial by the League for violations of certain of its ordinances. The judge is to be the President of the League. The president up to this point has remained a mysterious and anonymous personage, but it is agreed among all the members of the League that the president is the most important and worthy member. As the trial begins the President enters to take the judgment seat. Hesse sees to his surprise that the president is none other than Leo, the servant. Leo, the guy who schlepped the bags. Leo, the guy who did all the gopher work. Leo, who served the food, polished the swords and basically did for the others anything they felt was too beneath them to do themselves. Leo, the humble servant, was also Leo, the esteemed president! Pilate was thrown off balance and confused by the charge that Jesus claimed to be king. In the Roman governor s experience, he had probably never known a servant king. Are you the King of the Jews? Pilate asked when Jesus was brought before him for trial. Are you a king? How ridiculous, Pilate must have thought. Where is his army this man who is accused of claiming to be the King of the Jews? How could anyone take this peasant seriously? How could they possibly be threatened by one such as him? Did Pilate know of the Jewish hope that someday a branch would spring from the root of Jesse, that from the line of David a new king would come to rule Israel? Is it possible he had heard of how some Magi from far to the East came to Jerusalem when King Herod was still alive, looking for the child born to be King of the Jews? Was he aware of how the previous Sunday, a crowd entered the city waving palm branches and claiming that an unpretentious man astride a donkey was hailed by the Jews as their long-awaited King? Jesus said, Does this question come from you or have others told you about me? Pilate answered with sarcasm and possibly contempt, Am I a Jew? In other words, Of course I ve only heard of you from your detractors. Pilate, regarding all Jewish beliefs as superstitious nonsense, was nevertheless intrigued when Jesus went on to say, I am a king, but my kingdom does not belong to this world; if my kingdom belonged to this world, my followers would fight to 2

3 keep me from being handed over to the Jewish authorities. No, my kingdom does not belong here. Who WAS this man? How could he dare to make such claims, and what did his claims mean, exactly? A king but not of this world? What on earth or not was he talking about? Pilate was disturbed. He was more superstitious than religious. His fear was that there might be something to Jesus claim. Pilate didn t want the responsibility of executing an innocent man, especially if such action may come back to haunt him in one way or another. Jesus spoke next about Truth. 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. Pilate answered, What is truth? Whether his tone of voice indicated cynicism, defeat, wistfulness or sarcasm, we do not know. Pilate was a successful man. He rose out of the ranks of Roman civil service to be governor-general of a Roman province. Yet something was missing in his life. Here in the presence of this simple, disturbing Galilean, Pilate felt that for him truth was still a mystery. What is success? What is truth? Where is the meaning? Pilate probably asked his question partially in jest, but it was the jest of despair. He may have realized at that moment that he didn t know the answers to the meaning of life. Philip Gibbs tells of listening to a debate between T.S. Eliot, Margaret Irwin, C. Day Lewis and other distinguished people of his time on the subject, Is this life worth living? Gibbs says of the debate, True, they jested, but they jested like jesters knocking at the door of death. In other words, they joked about the question as if not taking it seriously, but underneath their light banter was a realization that the topic of debate was very important indeed, and they didn t have a good enough answer to it. Pilate was like that. Here, in the presence of Jesus, he was suddenly aware that his life was missing something; something vitally important. 3

4 Pilate could find no fault in Jesus. He had committed no crime, certainly no crime worthy of death. He tried every way he could to appease the crowd and yet let Jesus go free everything short of showing courage and standing up to Jesus detractors. First, Pilate tried to refuse to deal with the case. I find no case against him, he said. Pilate must have realized right away that the crowd would not be so easily dissuaded, so he tried to free Jesus on the grounds of the old Passover tradition to release a prisoner in celebration of the holiday. But you have a custom that I release someone for you at the Passover. Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews? Not this man, but Barabbas! the crowd shouted in reply. According to the gospels of Luke and Matthew, Barabbas was a revolutionary and a murderer. John tells us he was a bandit. In any case, he was an unsavory character whose guilt of the crime he committed was not in question. Still, the crowd chose Barabbas over Jesus. Pilate next made an attempt at compromise by having Jesus flogged. I won t go into all the gory details describing what flogging at the hands of Roman soldiers actually entailed, but gory it was. Suffice it to say few men remained conscious throughout the ordeal; some died; and many suffered mental breakdown. By the grace of God, Jesus endured. It was then that the soldiers decided to have a little fun with this so-called king. They wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they dressed him in a purple robe. They came up to him repeatedly saying, Hail, King of the Jews! and struck him on the face. The crown of thorns: intended by the Roman soldiers to be a symbol of ridicule, of mockery, of derision. Humiliation, someone has said, is the experience of dying without death. To humiliate and embarrass an opponent is something that people do to demoralize an individual and through that person, a movement, which might attempt to challenge the might of an empire. It is common in everyday life as well. Often when we feel threatened by someone or something, we defend ourselves by 4

5 putting down the person or thing which threatens us. The tactics of humiliation can be heard on any school playground or at any office water cooler. The irony in the case of Jesus, with the crown of thorns cruelly shoved onto his bruised and bleeding head, is that the soldiers attempted to make a caricature of Jesus as king. All the while the truth of the matter was that he was more a king than any of them could even imagine. The crown of thorns, forcefully pushed down upon his head, to mock and disgrace him, becomes the glorious crown of the king whose realm is not of this world. God transforms this painful head ornament into a symbol of the suffering love of the one who died upon the cross that you and I might become citizens of his heavenly kingdom. It is a symbol of a kingdom which operates not by force, but by the power of love the opposite of the King of the Hill game I described in the children s story this morning. The crown of thorns symbolizes the wisdom of God and the folly of humanity. The kingdoms of this world rise and then pass away. Even the Roman empire couldn t last forever. Only the Kingdom of our Lord and Christ is eternal. And it is a kingdom based on God s love. God will not coerce us into the kingdom. We cannot take the kingdom of God by force. Obedience and submission and the rule of God in our hearts come out of devotion, not out of fear. And so once again, because of God s loving action in Christ, a symbol of despair, of mockery and humiliation is transformed into a symbol of hope. Hope for the world. Hope for a new beginning, a new order, a new way of life. Hope for you and for me. Thanks be to God. 5