THE “CROWN OF THORNS” of the Christ is in the whole world of our representations the emblem of the deepest contrast between scorn and honor, outrage and glory.
In the idea of the crown, honor and glory. In the cruel, wounding thorn, scorn and mockery.
Yet let no one misjudge also in this, the soldiers who had to perform the service of executioners.
With us the word “crown” suggests at once the idea of a beautiful covering for the head, shining with gold and sparkling with precious stones. But in the world of the times to which these soldiers belonged, such was not the case. To the Greek and Roman, crown and wreath were almost of like significance.
Among the Greeks every person of authority when functioning wore a crown, which consisted of braided twigs and leaves. He also who spoke in public meeting covered his head with such a wreath. And the wreath of laurels, handed out as a prize to the winner of the race, still lives in the wreaths, with which, less among us, but of frequent occurrence in France, the winner of the prize is crowned.
Among the Romans likewise the crown originally was nothing but twistings of tree-twigs, in keeping with the Roman character, and mainly used as a military emblem of honor. With the triumphal entry into Rome by a victorious general and his troops, both he and his brave warriors wore a wreath or crown of braided laurel branches. With the ovation the myrtle twig took the place of the laurel branch, and the brave general who had saved a city, even received a wreath or crown, woven together of grass spears. Only the emperors of Rome had the right to wear such a laurel wreath or crown continually, and then the natural laurel branch was changed into a laurel branch of gold. And from these golden laurel wreaths every later form of the European crown has been developed.
In itself, therefore, there was nothing strange, that the soldiers, who had Jesus in charge, wove together by way of a crown a handful of stems, and put it on Jesus’ head. They did not invent it, for that was a Roman military custom. Thus they always wreathed and crowned their victorious generals. The contrast here lay merely in the thorn-branch in place of laurel twigs, and their scorn in honoring a helpless man, who had announced himself as a king, as though he were a mock-image of Rome’s emperor.
The emperor of Rome bare rule at Jerusalem, and they had heard that Jesus had been sentenced, because He had put Himself forward as a rival king.
The mere thought, that this defenceless, helpless man had undertaken to set himself up against the mighty emperor of Rome, roused their love of ridicule. This seemed to them the highest point of folly and of frenzy. And it was this ridicule, aroused in them by the sentence itself, to which they gave expression, when they put the mantle of a Roman soldier about the shoulders of this defenceless fool, gave Him a sceptre of reed in the hand, and as though he were Caesar himself, placed a triumphal wreath, but one made of thorns, upon his temples.
Only when after this they struck Him on the head, was cruelty added to ridicule.
Could these same soldiers now rise from their grave, and see the outcome of the drama, which was played in Gabbatha and on Golgotha, in the course of history, how surprised and astonished they would be.
The empire of their supreme emperor for more than a thousand years tracklessly gone from the earth, and that sentenced Rabbi of Nazareth worshiped throughout the world as One greater than Dives Augustus, as King of kings, as the Savior of the world sent from God, as Lord of all and God of all.
In this the combat expresses itself between the two powers, which dominate all human life: the power of violence and the power of the spirit.
That antithesis springs from our duality, which shows itself in our body and in our soul. These two belong together. In pure harmony they should cooperate, the soul governing, the body serving. But both turned away from each other. The strength of the body, the hand that grasps, the foot that tramples down, took a stand of its own, and opposed the power of the soul. Cruel external violence arose. The seeming right of the strongest, i. e. of the strongest physically; and hand in hand with this, the oppression, the humiliation, the trampling underfoot, the usurpation of that inward power, which works up from the soul.
But that power of the soul, that power of the spirit did not yield. It maintained the combat. Not with the weapon of violence, but with the weapon of endurance, of silent suffering, of protesting submission. And where the power of the soul was defeated and trampled underfoot, the dying eye looked into the eye of the inhuman monster with an expression which inwardly wounded him and spiritually overcame him.
This combat between the spiritual power of the soul and the supremacy of the strong hand, goes yet deeper than the antithesis between soul and body. It goes down to the relation in which God stands to His creature, and the life of heaven to the life of this earth.
God is Spirit and by the power of the spirit He created this whole earth, and when you look up to the heavenly choirs about God’s throne, it is all one host of spirits, equipped with nothing but spiritual powers, who are the bearers of His Almightiness.
For this reason also everything here below, that springs up in man from God, utters itself spiritually, and only the lifting up of spirit makes our life flow into one with the life of heaven.
And against this power the violence of the stronger upon earth arrays itself. So does the highwayman as he overpowers the traveller, murders and robs him. The thief who breaks into your house and steals. The rich self-sufficient one who oppresses the poor. The usurper who with a host of soldiers invades a country. The strong man who subordinates his tender wife to his will. The big boy who embitters the life of the smaller one. The superior power of the majority that makes the minority dance to its fiddling. The mighty man of the people, who makes that people work for him, and grinds them down. The injustice that dares to violate the right of the weak. The violence of arms that smothers the voice of the conscience.
All this has come upon man because of sin. Rooted in God the power of the spirit stands invincible. Torn away from God the spirit must yield before the violence of the strong hand.
And therefore there is but one way that can lead the spirit within us back to victory again. The faith that makes the spirit join itself again to God, and, trusting in Him, endures and suffers.
The crown of the laurel twig is fallen away from the spirit, and only by willingly wearing the crown of thorns, is the outlook upon the crown of finest gold renewed to us.
This is the tragedy of every one who belongs to the spiritual nobility of mankind, written in blood and tears upon every page of human history.
This is still the stirring tragedy in the life of present times.
But it is alone in Christ, the Divinely Anointed King, that this awful tragedy focusses itself as in its central point and finds its heavenly unravelling.
These soldiers of the head-watch at Jerusalem, are no figurants, but rather the undisguised representatives of impetuous violence, as at that time found expression in the uniform of the Roman soldier.
These soldiers, the Roman legion, the Roman eagle, that Roman army vanquishing everything before it, the armed body-guards of the Roman emperor, were exponents of the greatest power of violence then known in the earth, that trod and trampled underfoot and struck down everything in its way, and with irresistible pride subjected the world to itself.
And before these soldiers Jesus stands as the highest thinkable revelation of the power of the spirit. There was nothing nobler, purer, holier than He. And Jesus stands before them with nothing but that Spirit. No body-guard surrounds Him. No disciple comes to His aid. No weapon rests in His girdle. When it comes to violence He is utterly defenceless. Great, above everything great and glorious is He through nothing save the Spirit.
In this exalted power of the spirit Christ is King, the Anointed of God, over all the quick and the dead. In the power of that Kingly spirit speaks a prophecy of glory before which all glory of earthly tyrants, even that of Rome’s emperor, pales.
But the Roman soldier does not observe this, sees nothing of it, has no eye for it. The only power he knows is the violence of the sword. And those altogether insignificant mannekins, who at that hour constituted the chief watch, had a feeling that they were everything; Jesus nothing; and therefore they made game of Him and encircled His head with twigs of thorn.
Yet, while they made game of Jesus, they made not Him, but themselves objects of ridicule.
Even that crown of thorns to Jesus has become an emblem of honor.
When the choice lies between violence of the strong arm, and the hidden power of that crown of thorns, every nobler character still prefers that thorny crown; though it has never been our privilege to wear that crown of thorns with as pure a nobility of soul as Jesus.
What we ask as highest honor, is not that we might wear that crown of thorns like Jesus, but under Jesus in fellowship of soul with Him.
And pressed by Jesus upon the head, that crown of thorns is to us the emblem of courage to endure, of power of soul to suffer, of inward assurance that the spirit shall prevail, and that violence shall no longer enoble but dishonor.
How highly is the triumph of the spirit already now exalted above the violence of the strong arm throughout the world.
What disgrace and shame because of violence, that still dares to trample right under foot. And on the other hand how nobly tuned is that song of praise from the human heart for what the soul that suffered, the spirit that knew to endure, the hidden man in us who persisted and put things through, at length was able to achieve against that violence.
Yet bitterly at times the struggle still goes on.
Noble souls still weep; spiritual superiors are still worsted, so that even God’s angels mourn for those that suffer wrong; and a chill goes through the heart at the sound of the shrill laughter, that greets the triumph of what is coarse and mean.
So we are still unable to dispense with the inspiration of Jesus’ crown of thorns.
That crown of thorns remains to us the symbol of our confidence. It must inspire us still, comfort us and keep us standing.
In Jesus’ crown of thorns glitters to the eye of faith the diadem of the high victory that awaits us.
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