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| Jorg Breu l'Ancien ~ Jesus Crowned withThorns |
Our Father...
Sometimes young people who have gotten themselves into trouble say in self defense: "We were just having fun." But these cruel men have gone way beyond anything that could be called fun. The royal thorn-crown, the genuflecting, the ridiculous cloak are all fake. Bullying is nothing new. The world is full of bullies who will not go away. I pray never to get laughs off of someone else's vulnerability.
Hail Mary...
There is a powerful scene in Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. Mary (somehow perceiving) is wandering around a courtyard. She stops and presses her face and hands to the pavement. The camera moves down through the ground to the prison cell where Jesus is chained. He looks up to the ceiling. Is this just melodrama? I would say instead: deeply human.
Hail Mary...
When the mocking thugs were finished with Jesus, perhaps his deepest pain was loneliness. The world is filled with loneliness: the asylum seekers who are told to go away, patients in hospitals and nursing homes, children and parents separated from each other, city wanderers, people forgotten in apartments. And there are those who, like Jesus, sit in prison cells. God sees.
Hail Mary...
We might recall the strange story of Abraham being told to sacrifice his son, Isaac. (Genesis 22:1-19). He is obedient, but just before taking the boy's life, an angel holds back the father's knife and a ram is discovered with its head caught in the thorns. For Abraham's obedience, the ram will suffice. But now Jesus wears the thorns around his head. There are to be no more animal sacrifices. Jesus, in his self-gift, made in love for us, satisfies every dark claim against us. Everything is new.
Hail Mary...
The thorns of the crown go deeply into Jesus' head. They seem to invade and punish the mind of Jesus where his thoughts of light originate. But do the thorns also somehow amend the worst thoughts of our world: the thoughts of self aggrandizement; ethnicity; the greedy thoughts that abuse the planet and every living thing; the demonizing, hateful thoughts of others; even the non-thoughts which are our personal blind spots?
Hail Mary...
In the ancient world, kings and planets wore crowns. Now Jesus wears his crown of thorns. He rules a new kind of kingdom. "The King of Love my Shepherd is..." Christians sing. Buddhism might use the word compassion: A kingdom of compassion. That I might wish everyone happiness and to be freed of suffering.
Hail Mary...
The brutes in this painting are working hard, pressing the thorn-crown into Jesus' head with long sticks, so they don't get stuck themselves. There are people like that - they cause pain and sadness from a distance. They then lie, distract or defend to keep blame from attaching itself to them.
Hail Mary...
This genuflecting guy in the ill-fitting underwear, who is making stupid faces at Jesus - he might be one of the spitters the Gospel mentions. There is physical spitting but also verbal spitting. Ugly. Bishop Untener asks: The men who spit at Jesus turned their rejection of him into a physical act, and that we must remember the other Gospel scene where Jesus mixed his saliva with dirt, making a mud paste to heal the blind man's eyes (John 9:1-41). Is this ugly spitting of the soldiers the world's way of repaying Jesus for that act of mercy?
Hail Mary...
In Lent we sing, "O Sacred Head surrounded by crown of piercing thorn..." I won't be expected to wear a thorn-crown. But God might otherwise stick, poke or prod me with some new idea about Himself. God might puncture some old much-protected idea I have about the meaning of my life or about how I perceive other people. Whatever it is, once I meet Jesus wearing the crown of thorns, it can't be business as usual.
Hail Mary...
Through this long night of abuse, the Gospels record no word of Jesus. He did not curse or threaten. What were his thoughts? The people making all the noise were the brutish guards. Social media airwaves are filled with people objecting and complaining about everything - much of it about unimportant things in a world of great suffering. Sometimes we're silently tolerant of terrible injustices. Our priorities are way off.
Hail Mary...
Glory be to the Father...
