Why the crown of thorns? (Mark 15:16 - 20)

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church exploring the background, context, meaning, and significance of the account of Jesus of Nazareth in the book of Mark.

Transcript

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Hey, hope you're doing well. Tim here, and we are diving deep into the book of Mark for Lent. So we uh last week we wrapped up um with Jesus before Pilate, and we're continuing now into um you know the religious leaders um said Jesus was guilty. They brought uh brought Jesus to Pilate, who sentenced him to crucifixion. And then it just so happens somebody emailed me a question over the last couple days and asked, Why the crown of thorns? Because the next thing that happens is Pilate hands Jesus over to these Roman soldiers, and this mocking um is what takes place. Um and somebody said, What's the crown of thorns about? And so um I was just gonna uh talk about that a little bit. Um so first of all, I'll remind us of how how this happened and then I'll make a few comments. So what happens is Pilate um releases Barabbas and then had Jesus flogged, and that would be a whipping, a whip with some either like metal or um stone chips in it, um, and then handed him over to be crucified. The next thing we read is these soldiers led Jesus away to the palace called the Praetorium, um, and they put a whole they put a purple robe on him, set a twisted, uh, they twisted together a crown of thorns, set it on his head. They began to call out, Hail King of the Jews, struck him on the head with a staff, spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him, and when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe, put his own clothes on him, and then led him out to crucify him. So there's this whole mocking event. The crown of thorns is just one part of it. Also, there's this purple robe, and then the hitting, the spitting. And so, what's the the question somebody said, what's the crown of thorns about? And um we don't, there's in one sense, there's not um, well, maybe say it this way there's no other recorded instance anywhere in ancient literature of someone having a crown of thorns put on their head. And so there's no obvious, like, this is exactly what it means. That being said, in the in the Roman Empire, the Roman world, this idea of humiliating um your enemies was a very common theme. And in fact, specifically dressing people up like kings is part of the humiliation that was known. There's uh um one of the ancient uh, there's an ancient Jewish writer, Philo, who wrote a little before Jesus' uh time, I think he's from Alexandria. He records, um, and this is uh in um a writing called Inflaccum 6, chapter 6, beginning in 36, but he writes of uh he he um shares a historical account of a man, he calls him a madman, some clearly somebody with mental illness, uh, who um these youths gather around him and they put like uh they made a crown of leaves that put it on his head, they put a doormat around him as a cloak, they put a small stick of uh like a reed in his hand as a scepter, and then they they um um it says when the actor uh it says he had when he had received, that is this this men with mental illness, when he had received all the insignia of royal authority and been dressed and adorned like a king, the young men bearing sticks on their shoulders stood on each side of him um like spear bearers. Um and so they're they're they're they're making fun of him. They're they're making fun, they're mocking him, dressing him like a king. So this is, you know, it's this uh it was a known thing. Um add to that just the fact that the Roman Empire um and just in the ancient um the entire kind of Mediterranean society, it was an honor-shamed society. In our world today, we are not an honor-shamed society in the Western world. There's other parts of the world that still are, but in an honor-shamed society, honor is the most important thing. Honor is more important than money, honor is more important than your life, and dishonor, shame is the worst thing possible. And so um it was dishonoring or shaming to have physical violence done to you, to be captive, to be violently attacked, to be shown to be weaker. These were dishonoring. And so the entire crucifixion process is meant to be maximally dishonoring, maximally shaming. And um, and this is part of it is too, the the humiliation, um, the mocking. And then even within kind of the Roman Empire, they had these things called Roman triumphs. And when um when Rome would win a victory, they would then take, uh they would take the treasures and they would take the populace who would then enslaved, and particularly the rulers if they could, and they would chain them up and then bring them back to their cities and have a parade, a victory parade, with all these um now enslaved, uh defeated people in tow. And this was, they had the the these victory parades to shame and humiliate um those who they had defeated. This is part of the honor-shame society, because this is you, this is how you show yourself to be honorable, powerful, uh, victorious. And so this moment uh plays into all of this. Um and the crown of thorns then is part of if his if his quote unquote crime is to be the king of the Jews, which is that's what uh that's what Pilate was talking about. That's the the the crime that's posted above his head on the cross, the king of the Jews, well these soldiers are gonna just mock him for being the king of the Jews. And in some ways, probably mocking the Jewish people themselves, these soldiers. You know, they they they're in one sense, these are very violent uh men on this, they're you know, they're stationed um hundreds of thousands of miles away from home and probably grew to even resent the local population. Um and so they're they're mocking, uh, they're mocking Jesus. And of course, uh maybe the final thing that I would say is just the crucifixion process in general. And I'll I'll say more of this in upcoming episodes. The crucifix, we we um we need to not think about crucifixion as like an orderly, organized way to simply execute someone. Um, and that James, even in the sermon today, he he said, you know, the cross is kind of like an echo uh electric chair, which in one sense is true, but there's another sense that if you think about it, like in the electric chair, the goal of the electric chair in modern society was to um kill people quickly and painlessly. That was the idea behind it. Uh and the cross is the opposite of that. Um the cross to crucify, the fundamental goal was to kill it was to kill someone as slowly and publicly as possible. It was maximally shaming. Um, and and so once Pilate sentences Jesus to crucifixion, he has begun this process that this kind of ridicule is part of. Now, what do we do with this? Um, so this crown of thorns, this mocking, this shaming, what do we do with this? Um maybe just maybe just two comments. And because it's incredibly, you know, it's incredibly sobering. This is when we even when we come to the Good Friday service on Friday, we we relive these things with Jesus. And it's meant to, it's meant to be heavy. But I think uh maybe two things to say. Um uh, you know, when when Paul writes like in Philippians, that Jesus uh came down and became like a servant, um, humbled himself and emptied himself and even all the way to death and death on a cross. Like um, the the idea that Jesus um bore shame on our behalf, maybe one way to say it is that Jesus uh bore our shame, that those that we who deserve shame could bear his honor. This is the great exchange. And I even I even wonder just, I mean, I think it's particularly powerful in honor-shame societies to understand Jesus the one who takes our shame upon himself. But even in our world of there is there are elements of honor-sham in Western societies still still, I think particularly with like cancel culture and um the way uh, you know, if you say the wrong thing, you can kind of get this big black X on you. That the idea that Jesus takes, Jesus is canceled, Jesus is shamed, Jesus is dishonored on our behalf, that we could be given his honor. Um, this is the story of this is the story of the cross. And that um and that so that's the one thought. And the second thought is then this had direct implications for how Christians lived. Because the early Jesus followers became convinced that if the whole social ranking system of the ancient world declared the Son of God to be worthy of mocking, there that meant the entire social ranking system of the uh ancient world uh was worthless and to be ignored. And this gave these early Jesus followers such courage to live faithfully and to be, yes, to be made fun of, to be rejected, to be misunderstood. But they, uh, when they internalized this, they found themselves set free from needing to chase after the approval of the world because they said, This is the same world that rejected my king. And if they would reject my king, why would I chase after their approval? The only approval that I need is the approval from my king who gave his life for me. And that, friends, is a truth that could get back into our hearts that we would do well to live into today. So grace and peace.