“HAIL, KING OF THE JEWS!”

Sermon Text: St. Matthew 27:20-26. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole garrison around Him. And they stripped Him and put a scarlet robe on Him. When they had twisted a crown of thorns, they put it on His head and a reed in His right hand. And they bowed the knee before Him and mocked Him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Then they spat on Him, and took the reed and struck Him on the head. And when they had mocked Him, they took the robe off Him, put His own clothes on Him, and led Him away to be crucified.

Lord, this is Your Word and these are Your words. Guide us by the truth; Your Word is truth. Lord Jesus, we don’t mockingly call You King. But sometimes our life mocks the fact that we say You are our King. And yet You say that You have a crown for us, and that You will crown us with heavenly glory. This is by Your grace and forgiveness! Let this give us true devotion to You, so that we don’t only say You are our King but that our faith in You, and love for You, lead us to glorify You in all that we do. Amen.

In the name of Jesus, our blesséd King of Grace, who redeemed you so that you can live with Him in His kingdom: Grace, mercy, and peace will be yours not only from Him, but through His suffering for you. Amen.

This is a part of Jesus’ Passion when we really want to look away. Pontius Pilate had just “delivered Him to be crucified.” But they didn’t go out to the road yet. At this point in the other gospels, we hear that the soldiers – at Pilate’s command – “scourged Him,” a brutal whipping, for the purpose of making the prisoner very weak physically so he would die quickly on the cross. Jesus predicted this, when He told His disciples: “They will deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge and to crucify” (Mt 20:18-19).

But they still didn’t go out to the road just yet. The Roman soldiers, who were away from home and had to make all kinds of allowances for the Jews’ religion, used this opportunity to vent their frustrations. They had heard Pilate calling Jesus “the King of the Jews” and saying, “You don’t want me to crucify your King, do you?” So now they will mockingly treat Jesus as a king.

After they had just given Christ so many fresh wounds in scourging Him, they found a scarlet robe and threw it on Him. One of them found a thorny bush and “twisted a crown of thorns.” They not only “put it on His head” but pressed it into His scalp so He kept feeling it. They put “a reed in His right hand” as a mock scepter, to finish the picture of a silly-looking “king.”

Then, while, they spit in His face repeatedly and even snatched the reed and hit Him on the head with it, they started saying, “Hail!” the way they addressed their emperor, Caesar, but it wasn’t the tone they would use as obedient soldiers with Caesar, instead they were lording it over Jesus, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” in a sarcastic, mocking voice. Many of them said this, overlapping each other with these words, shouting it at Jesus, laughing as they did so, but a bitter, cruel laughing it was. “Hail, King of the Jews!”

This is the next of the one-sentence “sermons” preached by Jesus’ enemies during His Passion. They didn’t say this sincerely. They spoke in ignorance. Yet they spoke the truth. “Hail” means, “we bow before You.” The next part, “King of the Jews,” means that He is the King whom God promised to Israel, who would also be the king of all people. His kingdom would be “to the ends of the earth” as Psalm 72 says, and would never end, as the angel Gabriel said to Mary, and He would come in a “lowly” way, “sitting on a donkey.”

This is a sermon Jesus’ enemies preach to you. “Hail, King of the Jews!” But those Jews didn’t want Him; they told Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘He said, I am the King of the Jews.’ ” Was He still the King of the Jews, if those Jews didn’t want Him? And these Roman soldiers aren’t interested in believing in Him at all. They look down on Him. They have zero respect for Him. They would just as soon step on Him. Can He be their King? If He dies – as both these groups know He will – can He be anyone’s King?

And what about you? When your sinful ways make it look like you don’t make Him your King – when you lord it over someone, when someone else’s suffering doesn’t touch or affect you, when you won’t forgive, or when you place your needs first all the time – is He really your King?

When you make other things king in your life, do you show that you want Him to be your King? Sadly you must answer no, you show the opposite. You show that you don’t want Him as your King anymore than they did.

To worship Him as your King is not to view Jesus in some idealistic way. His status as your King is bound up with this crown of thorns. The Roman soldiers actually have given us the perfect way to hail Him as your King.

The crown of thorns, first, is a way to see your sins. Thorns are the way God pictures sin. They were the curse that God pronounced on Adam. “The ground shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you.” Thorns – the prickly intruders among flowers– are the sign that what was made beautiful has been twisted into something ugly.

As Jesus wears “the crown of thorns,” and they hail Him as King, you see your sins clearly, in the ugliness that they produce. For sin truly is ugly. Evil thoughts, hatred, bitterness, lust of the flesh, greed, self-promotion, jealousy, coveting, discontentment, impatience. You don’t want to admit this is what you are and what you do. You often turn away from this sight, choose not to see the ugliness of your sins, pretend it doesn’t exist. But in the “crown of thorns” you must look at your sins and see that you are crowned with them.

But then the crown of thorns, second and most importantly, are the way to see God’s forgiving of your sins. It’s a preaching of the Gospel to you: you see Jesus crowned with thorns, crowned with your sins, instead of you. Jesus crowned with thorns, and not you. Jesus took your sins, your thorns, to be His crown, so it would no longer be your crown. “The cross for me enduring, The crown for me securing, My healing in Thy wounds is found.” (ELH #304 v. 6)

So you are not crowned with thorns, even of your own sins, in God’s eyes. Even when you make other things your king; even when your sins seem to show you refusing Him as your King, even when you seem not to care that He is your King, to see Jesus crowned with thorns is to see that He takes all those sins from you and makes them His own.

He is not your King because you do such a good job of making Him your King. He is your King because He gives you His kingdom despite your sins, He’s the King of grace, He keeps coming to you lowly, and His Church is a kingdom of grace in which He rules you by nothing but forgiveness.

Now He gives you a new crown. You are crowned with beauty, true beauty: the beauty God creates. He crowns you with His compassion, with forgiveness for all your sin. Your crown is the crown of righteousness, Jesus’ righteousness, given to you for Jesus’ sake. It’s what you wear. This is “the crown of righteousness laid up for me, which the Lord will give to me on that Day, and not to me only, but also to all who love His appearing” (2Tim 4:8).

“Hail, King of the Jews!” O Jesus, King most wonderful, Thou Conqueror renowned, Thou Sweetness most ineffable, in You all joys are found. Amen!