The image and concept of the thorny crown is powerful to me. As heirs of the King, I think our “crowns” are, also, thorns–in this present world. We’re not here for glory in any human sense. Our “success” will look very different. It will be counter-cultural, or even unapparent.
The story of the thorny crown is a provocative one:
Imagine a mighty and good king coming from another place, and he is “welcomed” with the “honor” of huge, piercing barbs smashed down into his head.
This strange irony is such a perfect picture of our rejection of God and his ways. We pick our own way. Absorb the idea that God paid for your foolishness.
The thorny crown is also a most vivid depiction of God’s condescension (click here for and explanation of that precise meaning) to human form to bear our wrongs, and give himself over to our brutality to, in fact, truly redeem it, and pardon it.
Let this crown you see pierce your heart with it’s potency, and the doom that is our rebellion. We need a Savior.
How does the Crown of Thorns affect you?
Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
O polish’d perturbation! golden care!
That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
That scalds with safety.
– Henry IV, Part 2, Act IV/Scene 5
So Shakespeare reminds us that any crown is a crown of thorns, even if the goads are made of gold. Perhaps in one sense Jesus (as he always does) simply insists on telling internal truths externally: He came to rule over us, which, properly understood, means to suffer for us. This is not just the truth about Christ’s reign – it is the truth about leadership of any kind. I’m not denying the uniqueness of Jesus, or the cross, nor am I questioning substitutionary atonement, but I need the reminder that Jesus didn’t just clear the way; he also shows the way.