Simple Is Better – Jesus and a Crown of Thorns

John 19:27: And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe.

I found it in a garden. Trimmed away from a bush, ready to be disposed of. Who knew it would become my favorite souvenir from the Holy Lands.

A clipped bit of a thorny bush, heaped in a pile with other thorny clippings, ready to be hauled off. It’s a seemingly insignificant little bit of thorns and yet to me, it’s an important part of Holy Week.

It was the last day of a wonderful trip to the Holy Lands. For nearly two weeks, I traveled with my friend Mary Ann and about 20 others throughout Israel and Jordan. In Israel, we had visited many well-known sites. We’d been amazed and overwhelmed with history, facts, bible stories. Seeing in real life the many different things Jesus talked about. The tiny mustard seed. An actual denarius. The cave where people stooped down to enter the possible birthplace of Jesus. The Samarian dessert. Every day, we drank in all the sites, sounds, food and stories. The stories of Jesus became our own as we witnessed an actual cement manger, similar to the one Jesus might have been laid in at his birth.

Our brains were overstuffed and our feet tired from walking. We were in Jerusalem and had one free afternoon to do whatever we wanted before we boarded a plane back to the states. Mary Ann and I knew exactly where we wanted to go: the places were Jesus spent some of the last hours of his life. The Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olives, the places where he prayed, was arrested and betrayed.

Rather than taking public transportation, we walked a couple of miles to these sites. We had visited them earlier in the week but felt we didn’t get enough time to really take them in.

We went to the Garden of Gethsemane chapel, a place where Jesus might have spent time praying. He and the disciples walked there after they celebrated the Passover meal in the Upper Room. It was Jesus’ request to go to the garden. He’d asked his three closest friends to stay awake near him while he went a bit further and prayed. As Mary Ann and I sat quietly in the church and kneeled by the stone where Jesus might have prayed, we were sullen. It’s impossible to imagine the range of emotions and feelings Jesus encountered. He asked God to remove this cup if it was God’s will. It wasn’t.

Just outside of the chapel is a grove of olive trees. Maybe some of the oldest olive trees in the world. The actual trees in this grove date back to the time Jesus was alive. Symmetrically planted, the roots stick up above the ground. Their bark is rough. The leaves look polished. As we sat by the trees, I desperately wanted God to speak. To ME. I had followed God’s calling in my life to enter pastoral ministry. About a decade into this calling, I was struggling. Should I continue serving the church I was serving? Did God have other plans for me? My heart felt unsettled. I had hoped clarity would surface while walking Jesus’ footsteps in Israel. 

So far, it hadn’t.

We had strict instructions on when to get back to our hotel so our tour guide could account for all of us before dinner and it got dark. We meandered through the Mount of Olives on our way back, following a provided path that we had walked a few days earlier. The Mount of Olives is literally a steep hillside with trees, bushes, and flowers. It was January. Warmer than our Wisconsin winter and spring was beginning to show it’s presence. Little shoots of green were appearing in the grass. The trees were budding out. And gardeners had trimmed the unruly bushes and hedges. The clippings lay scattered along the pathway.

Again, we paused and took time by ourselves in the olive grove. There were some of those clipped bushes near where I was sitting. I picked one up, looked at it and opened my bible to John 19. The place where we are told that thorns were woven into a crown and placed upon Jesus’ head.

Thorns like the ones I held in my hand. Thorns that are four or five or six inches long. Thorns that are pricky and sharp and unforgiving. As I poked one of those thorns into my hand, I realized the crown of thorns Jesus wore on his head is nothing like I had imagined.

I thought these thorns would have been from, say, a rose bush. Sharp, yes, but little. Pokey, yes, but not something that could actually burl down into one’s head like the thorns I now held.

When we read the stories of Jesus in the gospels, often, we create this version of what we think happen. We take our experiences of similar situations from our western culture and anticipate this is what it was like for Jesus.

Truth? Our sanitized version falls remarkable short of what might have really happened. This is the beauty and the challenge of visiting a place like the Holy Lands. One realizes all those things around him that Jesus used to teach and talk about are actually real and possibly quite different from the sanitized versions we have created in our minds.

Like the thorns.

Having a crown woven out of these thorns is very different from what I expected. Why, they actually could have caused blood to spill down Jesus’ face as the guards crushed them on top of his head.

I held the thorns and thought about what they represent. They are such a tiny part of the crucifixion story. If I had gotten this small part wrong, what else did I not fully appreciate and understand?

When it was time to leave the Mount of Olives, I carefully put this little section of thorny discard in my bag. Later, when I packed my suitcase for our return trip, I wrapped it carefully in clothing to protect the thorns from breaking. It arrived home just fine. Those thorns are tough.

This little bit of brush has moved with me multiple times; each time, carefully wrapped for it’s next location. Many years, I have used it during Lent and Holy Week to help us see how different the crown was from what we imagine.

As I left the Mount of Olives that afternoon, I was a little disappointed. So desperately, I wanted God to speak. To me. Instead, I left with a discarded thorny bit of a bush. And yet, these thorns spoke to me.

There’s aways more to any story than we realize. Our stories continue to be written every day. There are parts of our stories that are hard, challenging, and difficult. Some parts look totally different from what we anticipated. And yet, God is every with us. Always present. Just like Jesus wasn’t alone in those last awful hours of his life, we are never alone as well. When we plead for something we don’t get, God remains right by us.

We just have to look because sometimes, God shows up as discarded thorns.

Loving God – It’s impossible to every fully understand why You did what You did with Jesus. Today, I simply say, “Thank you. Thank you for loving me enough to do something that totally doesn’t make sense so I can always be with You.” Amen.

Blessings –

Dianne

This is one of my favorite Holy Week songs. Enjoy.

Looking for a bit of daily inspiration? Check out my daily affirmation posts on Facebook and Instagram (Dianne Deaton Vielhuber and Simple Words of Faith.)

Upcoming Unraveling Together: Sharing the Threads of Grief Presentations:

Wed., April 8 – First Presbyterian Church of Baraboo, 9 AM