Matthew 27:27-31
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole cohort around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on his head. They put a reed in his right hand and knelt before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
The great irony of this scene is that the soldiers, in seeking to mock Jesus, only repeat the action he himself has already taken. They dress him in a robe as if he were a king, twist thorns into a crown to place on his head, and then laud him with sarcastic cheers as “king of the Jews.” Then, after spitting on him and striking him in order to humiliate him, they strip him of his raiment and put ordinary clothes back on. Now consider: is this not precisely the dramatic movement of Jesus’ whole life?
We confess that Jesus was and is God and that in the Incarnation he became human. As John writes a decade or so after Matthew in the opening verses of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1) Yet this eternal Word, for our sake, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14), putting off his kingly and eternal attire to take on our flesh, sharing our lot and our life. And as Paul writes several decades before Matthew, borrowing the words of a hymn written still earlier: Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8).
The physical suffering and humiliation that Jesus suffers at the hand of these soldiers is immense, difficult for most of us to even contemplate. Yet at the same time it only mirrors his own decision to forsake his divinity to understand fully, take on, and experience our lives: the hopes and hurts, the dreams and disappointments, the ups and downs of what it means to be mortal, vulnerable, born to die.
The soldiers, of course, know nothing of this. They seek only to taunt, hurt, and humiliate. But in the end they unwittingly pay tribute to his true identity as the king who allows himself to be stripped and dressed as a slave…all for our sake. Matthew, of course, knows this and invites us to recognize the same. For from the beginning of his gospel he has described Jesus as Emanuel, “the God who is with us.” And in Jesus’ embrace of the cross we see just how far God will go to show us that this God is, indeed, with us always, everywhere, and to the very end.
Prayer: Dear God, as we contemplate the cross, remind us that you took on our lot and our life that we might know and share your profound love. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Post image: “Christ with Crown of Thorns,” Dirk van Baburen (1623).
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