Behold the Man in the Crown of Thorns

Have you ever been laughed at?

Have you ever stood in front of people who were pointing and grinning, and felt your face go hot? You wanted to disappear. You wished you were big enough, strong enough, to make it stop. But you weren't. And they knew it.

Jesus knew that feeling too.

The soldiers took him into their yard. They were big men with hard hands. Jesus stood there alone, already tired, already hurt. Only hours before, out in another courtyard, even his friend Peter had said he did not know him. And now the soldiers decided to play a game.

"A king!" they said. "Look, it's a king!"

So they made him a king the way bullies do. They twisted sharp thorns into a circle and pressed it down on his head like a crown. They threw an old purple robe over his shoulders. Then they marched up to him, one at a time, and bowed low to the ground.

"Hello, King!" they laughed. And they hit him across the face.

They called him a king to make fun of him. They thought it was the funniest joke they had ever played, that this beaten, bleeding man could be a king. A king with no soldiers, no army, no crown but thorns. A king who just stood there and let them.

But the soldiers did not know who they were bowing to.

He really was the King. The King over every king who has ever worn a crown, the One who made the very thorns they were laughing with. He could have torn the sky open. He could have ended it all with a single word.

And he didn't.

He stood still and let them mock him, because of you. Because of every laughed-at, left-out, too-small-to-be-saved person who ever lived. He was not staying because he was weak. He was staying because he was strong enough to love, and love does not run away.

Then Pilate, the ruler, brought Jesus out where everyone could see him, bleeding, crowned with thorns. And Pilate said something far bigger than he understood.

"Behold the man."

Look at him. Here he is.

And the crowd screamed for him to be carried off.

But lean in close and look at him the way the angels were looking. Right there, in the most shamed moment, in the lowest place, with a crown meant as a joke pressing into his head, Jesus was doing the bravest, kingliest thing in all of history.

He was reigning.

Not from a golden chair, but from inside the hurt. He was wearing our shame, so that we would never have to wear it alone.

That is what his kingdom is like. It turns everything upside down. The lowest place is the throne. The crown of thorns is the realest crown. And the One they laughed at was, all along, the One holding the whole world together with his love.

They put thorns on the true King's head and called it a joke.

It was the moment he began to win.