Christ the King – The Crown of Thorns

We begin where we end and end where we begin.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.  

Little Gidding, The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

We worship a King who wears a crown of thorns. 

The liturgical year is circular – and our spiritual experience of time must then in some way be circular too. We see this as we come to the end of our liturgical year – the feast of Christ the King- knowing that we are about to embark on the season of expectation and nativity, and yet, approach it with the crucifixion narrative. Today, in order to understand who Christ is and what God is like we have to re-encounter the crucifixion. We are invited, in particular, to see where we are in relation to Jesus. It’s easy to stand adoring around the crib of a child of hope and expectation, less easy to keep on standing when he hangs on a tree, in blood and sweat and close to death. Yet, we have to hold these 2 images together- the Jesus of Christmas and the Jesus we encounter today. Either way, in birth or in death, Jesus asks us – where are you standing in relation to me?

The circular nature of the liturgical year is full of opportunity, it’s never too late; we, you, I, have been here before. The repetitive nature of story-telling, which shapes are coming-together, is an invitation to not only listen, but participate. The story of Jesus Christ is a story of which we are all involved and which teaches us that we don’t in reality march from darkness into light, but rather spend time coming in and out of both. Any dissonance or frustrations and indeed fear comes from the expectation that we will and are marching from darkness into light. For Jesus, death was hounding him from the moment he was born (we think of Herod) whilst life shone out of him as he hung lifeless on a tree – a man hopes in the face of his own death and eternity draws closer than he could ever have imagined.

We can look at some of the different characters in the way that Luke tells it. There are the people standing by, watching. Are they afraid, intrigued, scared, sad or hopeful? There are the leaders scoffing; there are the soldiers mocking: ‘here is the King of the Jews’, they taunt. And there are the 2 men who die with him, divided by their response to this mysterious figure: ‘Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom’, says one of the men who dies with him, whilst the other condemns him and his claim to power: ‘are you not the messiah, save yourself and us’.

The questions the bystanders faced as they watched Jesus being crucified are our questions. Or, indeed the questions that Joseph and Mary faced as they saw their son of expectation and hope being born are ours too. They appear differently in our lives- the people are different, the events, the dramas, but the same themes are there and the same realities. Where do we place ourselves in relation to those who stand up for justice, for peace, for hope, for charity? Do we scoff and mock? Do we keep well back, standing on the sidelines watching? Where do we stand when the powerful divide and rule? What we do when others are ill-treated? Where do we stand when that which we hoped for starts to dissolve and slip away? Jesus wants to know where we are in relation to him. Are we close with him as he is born? Can we adore and love when there is hope and joy? Can we remain close at the end?

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time. 

That is the journey of faith. The recognition of the journey already lived, with the transfiguring light of faith reminding us where we have been. Heaven and paradise will be no surprise. The other journey is to suffer forever from the loss of meaning, from disorientation, from a sense of not having what we were expecting and yet not knowing where we went wrong; of keeping arriving but never recognising. Not for want of trying, or for being in the wrong place, but from a failure to see. For the other man who was crucified by Jesus, his parallel future and redeemable past were less than a few meters away –  but he could not reach them. It does not matter where we have been or where we will go; it is not (and never has been about the right conditions):- the perfect upbringing or the best expectations. We are not marching into the perfect future, nor hankering after a golden past.  We are waiting on epiphany and transfiguration – and it opens out in the most unexpected of ways, it is opening out now, in the wounds we cover and hide. It is just on the other side of our imagination, on the other side of our dreams. Salvation is not far away, but it may be unreachable – it is fading away now too, in the distance, behind us and before us: can you grasp it? If not, is it because of where you are standing in relation to the king? He stands before us wearing a crown of thorns, he leads us into death, whilst promising life; he waits for us to die before we can even begin.