Thorns

Notes from a sermon on Good Friday 2011

One of the aspects of Jesus' suffering and death that we always seem to gloss over in our hurry to the cross is the crown of thorns.  We can probably make several assumptions about this crown of thorns right away:

These were not branches from rose bushes, with their tiny thorns.  More likely, they were from some other bush or tree with longer thorns (a bush in my back yard has thorns about an inch long).

The longer thorns would have been better and stronger and so, in the eyes of the Roman soldiers, more suitable for torture.

The soldiers probably did not place the thorn gently on Jesus' head, but pushed it into His scalp so that it wouldn't come off when they crucified Him.

I've been poked and scratched by the thorns in my back yard, and it's not a pleasant experience.  I can't imagine what kind of torture it must have been for Jesus to have the thorns pressed into His scalp so that the blood ran down over His face, around His ears, and down the back of His neck.

One implication of this is the realization that, even if I can congratulate myself that my hand did not hold the nail or the mallet of huge sins that nailed Jesus to the cross, I'm not off the hook.  All the little sins that I cover up with my denials and dismissals and defensiveness and redefinitions are like so many thorns pressing into the scalp of Jesus for torture and pain and blood.  He forgives us, yes, but our freedom from sin does not come with our denial of sins but with our confession of them. 

So on Good Friday the worshipers were given twigs from the thorn bush; asked to contemplate the "small" sins that they hang on to for whatever reason; confessed and renounced those sins, and then went forward to the cross and placed the twigs at the foot of the cross as a sign of their rejection of their small sins.

Another implication of Jesus' crown of thorns goes back to the "surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" - the big ones, to be sure - the huge griefs and losses and sorrows and tragedies - but also the smaller ones.  He has borne the griefs and sorrows alongside us when others have said, "Oh, that's not such a big deal" or "It can't hurt that much" or "Stop crying - you're a big boy now" or any such thing. 

You know how much it hurt - and so does Jesus. 

And if there were times when you remember yourself saying "You don't understand" to others who tried to comfort or console or even control your sorrow and frustration, then please know that Jesus did and does understand.  Every thorn is proof of His suffering, His understanding, His presence with you in every sorrow.