Barbed Wire
I have
multiple scars on my forehead from many different times in my life. One of them came on the Fourth of July. I was five years old at the time and we were
living in Oklahoma. We were at someone
else’s house who lived out in the country and as the adults were setting off
fireworks all of the kids were eagerly watching. One of our favorite kinds of fireworks every
year was one that exploded high in the air and sent out 3 or 4 little
parachutes. There were plastic
paratroopers attached to them to bring them back down to the ground, but the
excitement for us kids was to try and catch them before they landed. And so when one of these parachute fireworks
was lit that evening, we all got ready to scatter in whatever direction we saw
one of the parachutes coming down. After
it exploded in the air I took off through the high grass away from the house as
the wind carried the parachute I was chasing farther away. Suddenly I found myself on my back staring up
straight into the sky with blood running down my face. As I had been looking up into the sky
following the parachute, I hadn’t been watching where I was going and had been
clotheslined across my forehead with a barb-wired fence. I ran back screaming to my parents and
although it ended up looking a lot worse than it actually was, I still remember
the mass amounts of blood that puncture would sent streaming down my face.
A Crown of
Thorns
If you
have ever had a cut or a gash anywhere on your head, you know how much a head
wound can bleed. It just doesn’t seem to
stop no matter how small the cut may be.
And so you can probably imagine what Jesus’ face looked like soon after
that thorn-woven crown was pressed into skull.
He probably didn’t look as stoic or unaffected as many of the paintings depict
Christ during the last few hours of his life.
His face was probably covered in blood as it spilled down onto his clothes. Not to mention that the soldiers had also beaten
him over the head with a wooden staff when he was wearing that infamous
crown. And the Jewish leaders had repeatedly
punched him in the face earlier that morning.
And the mob that arrested Jesus was probably non-too-gentle with their
prisoner as they led him out of the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus couldn’t have looked very appealing by
the time he made it to the cross on that Friday afternoon. It must have been a sad spectacle for Jesus’
mother, his disciples, and all of his followers who happened to see him that
day. He certainly didn’t look like he had
on the Mount of Transfiguration or like he had when he miraculously calmed the
storm on the Sea of Galilee or like he had when he gently welcomed the little
children into his arms. After the
beatings and the scourgings and the crown of thorns, Jesus undoubtedly looked
like a man on the verge of death.
But the
blood and gore isn’t really the point of this entire scene; notice that
Scripture never dwells on the awful details of that day. Instead, the whole point of Jesus suffering
the way he did and how unpleasant he would have looked at that moment is the
reason why God himself would go
through all of that in the first place.
The prophet Zechariah tells us why.
This man of God explains the reason why Jesus would wear that crown of
thorns and would be willing to be disfigured in such an awful way by those who
hated him. And here it is: “The LORD their God will save them on that
day as the flock of his people. And they
will sparkle in his land like jewels in a crown.” It was all for our salvation. Jesus bled and was beaten and was bruised and
was battered so that we could be saved.
The perfect God became ugly to make us beautiful. The glorious God became despised and rejected
and caked in his own blood so that we would be found radiant in the Father’s
eyes. He wore that crown of thorns so
that we could sparkle like jewels in the heavenly crown that he would put on
again after his resurrection. That’s the
point. That’s what this story is all
about.
Were We Worth
It?
But were
we worth it? Were we worth the thorns
and the blood and the pain? And that’s a
legitimate question because usually when you buy something in this world you
evaluate your purchase after a period of time and decide whether it was worth
it or not. Did it live up to your
expectations? Did it provide you with what
it was supposed to provide? Did it last
longer than you initially thought it would?
Does it measure up to similar things you have bought in the past? Was the product worth the price you had to
pay?
Are we
worth the price Jesus had to pay? From
my perspective: not a chance! There is
no way that I am worth what Jesus paid for me!
He has not gotten a fair return on his investment considering the way I
have lived this life! I have not shone
with the brilliance he had washed me in at my baptism; I have not always
reflected his glory for others to see; I have not sparkled like the precious
gemstone of his crown that he made me to be through his blood. I have made myself into a tarnished stone, a
scuffed and scratched and ugly stone.
Not something that the Lord would want to show off in his crown, not
something the he should be proud of in any way!
In know that I was not worth the thorns and the blood and the pain and
the scars. I know that I’m not worth the
price he had to pay for me. Are you?
Jesus Thought
We Were Worth It
Jesus
thought so. Jesus thought every one of
us was worth it; and he still does. Because
Jesus put up with all of those thorns and the blood and the pain and the scars not
so that he could gain something from it personally. He just did it for you. He didn’t do it to be paid back; he didn’t do
it to be popular; he didn’t do it so that somewhere down the line you might do
him a favor or two! Jesus went through
it all knowing that he would get nothing in return. He knew what kind of person you were going to
be, after all. He knew about the
self-inflicted scuffs and scrapes and scratches that you would be responsible
for from the day you were born until the day of your death. He wasn’t expecting you to do amazing
things. He was fully expecting that he
would have to clean you and wash you and polish you until you were like a
sparkling jewel in his crown - and he went into it knowing that he would have
to continue to do that throughout your life.
And because of this constant love and care and patience and forgiveness
of Christ, you are saved. And that’s why
you were worth it. As far as Jesus is
concerned, you were worth every thorn and every drop of blood and every ounce
of pain and every lasting scar. Because through
them you are saved. And there’s nothing
else that our Lord has ever wanted.
It’s
almost unbelievable that despite our sinfulness, despite our scrapes and cuts
and gashes and scars, we are sitting here this evening as precious jewels in
the crown of our Lord - sparkling as Christians in a dark, dark world,
shimmering in the blood with which we were washed. And our God does think of us that highly; he
does consider us that valuable. He wore
a crown of thorns for us, after all. He
went through an unimaginable amount of pain.
He spilled a lot of blood. He
went down to hell itself. He took on
death face to face. He has the scars to
prove it. And you were worth it. To Jesus you were worth everything.
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