The Strange Case of a Crown of Thorns

Photo by Andrey Grinkevich on Unsplash

Ever wonder why the world isn’t in better condition? Why we human beings aren’t better than we are? The last Sunday before Advent, also known as Christ the King Sunday, attempts an answer.

The celebration, sometimes called the Reign of Christ, is a relative newcomer to the church calendar. Early in the twentieth century, setting apart a Sunday in the church year became a way for believers to remember the true Sovereign, a way to refresh our convictions about the strong hand of God in Christ. (More about the observance here.)

This talk of God’s reign is no new idea, of course. Jesus appeared on the scene announcing a coming kingdom. He is called king many times in the Bible.

But while the king has come, his triumph is not fully realized, the work not complete. We see his once and future realm only in part. And in the readings for the Sunday from Colossians and Luke we see his kingliness unfolding in some unexpected ways. There’s even some odd and jarring twists.

On the one hand we see an exalted conviction, one so exuberant that words get stretched taut: We see here the cosmic Christ, ruling all, before all. Christ is even called the firstborn of all creation. That is, he existed before time, before we ever did, before humankind appeared.

That lofty statement says something about his status above any of our typical shifting realities. The royalty we normally watch or follow ascend to their thrones by family inheritance—like Charles recently becoming King at the death of Queen Elizabeth. This kind of sovereignty descends from a particular country or people, extends over only a realm with specific boundaries.

But Christ’s reign belongs not to any one time or one people or one nation. He himself is not only “before all things,” Paul says, “in him all things hold together.” If those daring claims stretch the imagination, there is nevertheless reassurance here.

For all these exalted pictures, there is a gritty side. He’s not only the cosmic Christ but also the crucified Jesus. For this reign gets confirmed in a paradoxical way: Through a humble death. Through crucifixion. Which is why Sunday readings paradoxically pair the exalted with the excruciating. Why the passages include an extended story about Jesus on the cross.

There is no worse way to die. It was intended to be debasing and mortifying. Crucifixion was diabolically designed to strip the crucified of their humanity. And in all the Gospel accounts we see Jesus humiliated. What we witness is utter misery, and it’s shocking.

But also deeply moving.

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I’ve been processing all this in another way, through looking back on a trip I took to the “anchor hold” of Julian of Norwich.

I was visiting England, some distance from where she had lived. Taking in the sights, I debated whether to take time to trek to see the shrine, the reconstructed cell where she prayed and lived and wrote. I tell the story of what finally overcame my reluctance here.

I had no idea, just before the collective catastrophe of COVID-19 struck, what a gift she would become to me.

And here is where she and Christ the King Sunday overlap: She is perhaps best known for the line, “All shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well.”

Some might hold it suspect, conjuring up images of a drugstore greeting card. Or you might think of a line from a character on a Hallmark Christmas movie who tells someone struggling to live more profoundly, “Focus on what makes you happy today and tomorrow will take care of itself.”

No, that’s not what Julian was thinking, not when you know what she faced. Norwich then was a center of river-port commerce, and played host to shipborne flea-ridden black rats infested with bubonic plague. As many as half of England’s population died in wave after wave of disease. The bodies piled up. Oh, and wars raged, famine stalked.

Julian was an eyewitness to much suffering. She became for me a kind of patron saint for pandemic, even chaotic times. And there’s this: She pondered visions of a crucified Christ who abounded in kind closeness. For she had a striking vision when she was on what she thought was her deathbed. Her priest and assistant had put in front of her a hand-held crucifix. She saw in a vision blood coming from his forehead where sat the spiky, mocking crown.

A crown not of gold, but thorns.

Because there lay mercy. The crucified Christ brought to her a conviction about the tenderness of God. It was a self-sacrificial love that captivated her imagination, that grounded her “All shall be well.”

Seeing what she saw, seeing what we see, our world’s disease and strife and war and chronic proclivity for deceit, we might lose heart. Christ reigning? Seriously? We might have a sense only of the dread and hurts.

But there are few things in life that we want to believe more than that it will all be well. In a story about Jesus that is hard to read without flinching, we see the grand outlines of a different kind of rule and realm.

We see a picture that refreshes our hope for the world, for our own sometimes unsettled little inner universe. He’ll be here, always, and close by, and saying the worst we face will be okay.