Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27, verses 27 to 31.
Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the
governor's headquarters, and they gathered the whole
battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a
scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of
thorns, they put it on his head and put a Reed in his right
hand. And kneeling before him they
mocked him, saying, Hail King of the Jews.
And they spit on him and took the Reed and struck him on the
head. And when they had mocked him,
they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him
and led him away to crucify him. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God, you may be seated.
If we want to understand the death and resurrection of Jesus
through the ruthless eyes of the soldiers, we must understand
this event, this event in the role that it's meant to play in
Matthew's Gospel. It's a coronation.
It's a coronation of a king, a ceremony with fixtures that
matter. The theme of the Kingdom has
been building throughout all of Matthew's Gospel.
He begins his narrative with the genealogy of Jesus.
He's showing to his Jewish readers how Jesus is the king,
the king that Israel has been waiting for.
Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is telling us parables of the
Kingdom, that is, stories that show us what this Kingdom that
Jesus came to inaugurate was supposed to be like.
Now in these last chapters we see that the Kingdom of Jesus is
in part inaugurated in this cruel and unusual coronation
ceremony. The Jews that Matthew was
writing to to convince them of the kingship of Jesus.
These are also the Jews that use the Roman authorities to
sentence Jesus to death. So what is this coronation of
our King Jesus like? What does this royal service
look like? It included an audience, an
audience who would not just be viewing, but they would be the
main efficience of this coronation service.
A band of Roman soldiers. This Greek word that's used
here, it's translated as battalion, but it's actually a
specific word that means a unit of a larger group.
So we know that it's probably around 600 men, 600 men against
1600 men coming from an army with a reputation for being
bloodthirsty, cruel, ruthless, trained not only to win but to
annihilate, destroy, strip away any sense of culture so that
Rome's preeminence would be made known. 600 men, a large group.
And the other characters that we've looked at this week, we
get a name. We get to see their motivations,
see more of who they are. But these Roman soldiers who
would crown King Jesus are known only as a group.
No one is singled out. Both to reflect the brutality of
600 on one, the severity and prolonged humiliation of each
step of the process, the ruthlessness of the situation.
But the crowd is also meant to ask us to reflect on our own
hearts. Had we been in the number, would
we have done anything differently to stand up against
the crowd, the elements of the coronation?
They stripped and put a mocking robe on him.
They were saying the only power you can have is the power that
we say you can have. They gave him a crown of thorns,
a crown that they had to be twisted together.
Can you imagine twisting together the thorns?
Your own hands would have been bloodied in the process,
experiencing just a little bit of the pain that you are about
to inflict. As they said it on His head,
they thought very little of any power Jesus did have and sought
to hurt Him with it. Blood would have been dripping
down as the thorns pierced His flesh.
They mocked Him. They sought to deride instead of
worship. They wanted him to feel
humiliated. They gave him the title King of
the Jews. This was the title Pilate
inferred upon Jesus earlier in his examination of Jesus, a
title that Jesus responded he never gave a definitive yes in
front of Pilate, but rather allowed him to call him.
So they spit on him. They spit on him and struck him.
They wanted to attack, take away any ounce of life or respect
that remains. Jesus.
The King was not anointed with oil, as the kings of Judah in
the past had been, but rather with spits and blood running
down his face. They left him on his way for
dead with nothing. They wanted him not just to die,
but to die as in embarrassment, the cloaking of the road that
was really just for their own amusement.
For this little ceremony, there were a crowd seeking to assert
power, to give and take what they wanted, when they wanted
it. But what may have been a Roman
tradition to return the execution need to his original
clothing, perhaps, would be to ensure that the punishment was
wrought on the correct person. It had divine purposes.
Jesus would be recognizable on his March up to Calvary.
He would be recognized in his clothing when he hung on the
tree. No one would be able to say that
it wasn't Jesus the Nazarene that hung on that cross.
What can we say was the motivation behind these ruthless
soldiers embarrassment of Jesus? What was their desire?
Not just to punish him, but to mock him to his face, to make
him feel as alone, as low, as derided as he could be?
Believe in parts their motivation was to be just the
brutal Roman army they had been trained to be.
Kill, destroy, humiliate for the cause of Rome.
I believe part was to deride the Jews and their fear and envy of
Jesus. We read earlier that Pilate knew
that the chiefs, priests, they were envious of Jesus, of his
fame and his following and their fear of his, that he was
blaspheming and claiming his deity.
So perhaps this was Rome's attempt to just sort of chide
the whole process, the whole prospect of any religious king
outside the Pagan emperor of Rome.
The Romans were mockingly cheating Jesus as a king to show
how he had been humiliated, betrayed, handed over for the
execution by the people he had came to save.
It was ruthless. Now to be ruthless, that word,
it means to show no mercy or compassion for another.
It comes from an old Germanic word, Ruth, which is the noun
form of compassion, mercy. To be ruthless is to look on the
plight of another and to ignore it and even to implore it.
It means to have such a trajectory, such a path towards
a specific goal, that those who may be in your way, those who
may follow in your wake of destruction on the journey to
your goal, they receive no thoughts, no compassion, no
mercy. And looking at the resurrection
through these ruthless eyes, it may seem easy to condemn, to say
that we could never sneer, to ride, mock, spit on our Savior
like these did. But this would be to forget the
teaching of the King and his warnings to his disciples.
Judge not that you be not judged, for what the judgement
you pronounce you will be judged, and what the measure you
use it, it will be measured to you.
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye but do not
notice the log that is in your own eye?
As a culture, we are obsessed with celebrating human, human
achievements. This week we have celebrated
space exploration, scientific achievements.
We'll celebrate a new national basketball champion, and then
after that, we'll wait for the next thing.
We'll wait for the next crowning achievements of man.
As individuals, we are seeking to put crowns on ourselves in
all kinds of ways. Crowns of professional excess
and admiration, crowns of financial prowess and wealth
beyond measure, crowns of reputation, crowns of control,
crowns of comfort and safety. We do not need to rely on the
Lord anymore in our own journeys towards the crowns that we long
to wear, long to be seen wearing.
Who is it that we have overlooked with the compassion
and mercy of the Kingdom? Where have we even forsaken
Christ, denying His kingship in our own life, through our words
and through our deeds, by seeking an earthly Kingdom and
exaltation of ourselves? If the soldiers are ruthless,
and I believe in our hearts, we can say that we are also
ruthless, lacking compassion and mercy, denying Christ's kingship
and the honesty of this reflection, we see the only one
who is both ruthful and ruthless.
Ruthful. Yes, it is a word that is
meaning full of compassion, mercy and love.
Jesus. He saw all of these characters
throughout this week. The listlessness of the
disciples, the arrogance of Caiaphas, the injustice of
Barabbas freedom, and yet the harsh and even the harsh mocking
of this own his own violence towards him, his own coronation.
Jesus sees them all with love, compassion, mercy, who even
while hanging on the cross would have the compassion to pray to
his Heavenly Father. You guys know the words Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.
But Jesus comes by his ruthfulness, the fullness of His
compassion, by accepting the ruthless punishment of the world
upon his brow, upon his hands, upon his feet, upon his side,
scourged upon the shame of the cross.
The Father's wrath ruthlessly poured out in the sun as He
pursued His chosen people by weighing down His own life, not
striving for an earthly crown, but rather an eternal. 1 Hebrews
12/28. Therefore let us be grateful for
receiving a Kingdom that cannot be shaken, And thus let us offer
to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, when we see
our King full of compassion and mercy.
My heart saying through this quote of Charles Spurgeon, when
he said, let us be more inventive in devising honor than
these soldiers were in planning his dishonor, Let us render to
Christ the real homage that these men pretended to offer
him. Let us crown him Lord of all,
and in truest loyalty bow the knee and hail him King.