The wounds of Christ are a reflection of our own sins: in Him we see the grotesqueness of what we have done. Good Friday calls us to true sorrow for our sins, to adoration of the Cross which is the instrument of our salvation, and to love for Christ who is our Saviour: On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.
At the King’s coronation last May, His Majesty was conducted to the throne of St Edward the Confessor, under which was wedged the Stone of Destiny, and piece by piece he was vested: in a white robe called the Colobium Sindonis, in a Golden coat first worn by his grandfather George VI called a Supertunica, in a long cloth-of-gold cloak called the Imperial Mantle, in a golden stole, and a richly embroidered glove and belt, girt with a bejewelled sword, and handed a pair of sceptres, and finally crowned with Saint Edward’s Crown, a holy relic now glittering with precious stones. With his majesty fully dressed and crowned, the Congregation was then led in acclaiming God Save the King! It was an unforgettable image of majesty, and exactly what one would imagine if asked to picture a King.
Today, we have a very different sort of scene playing out in front of us:
Jesus then came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said, here is the man. When they saw Him the chief priests and the scribes shouted, Crucify Him! Crucify Him!
In Saint Thomas’ Church this week, we are playing host to a painting by Henry Thomas Bosdet, Christ Crowned with thorns, which is a depiction of this scene as St John describes it: Christ, wearing the crown of thorns, with a reed in his hands, and a red cloak wrapped about His shoulders, flanked by a pair of Roman guards. It’s a beautiful painting, and well worth spending a moment in front of, if you have the chance before Tuesday to make a pilgrimage into town.
The most striking feature for me is the face of Christ: Our Blessed Lord almost glares out of the painting, with an accusing stare. As if the chief priests and the scribes are just out of frame.
The scene as painted though, lacks something that most paintings and statues of the passion lack: it’s too clean. By this point in the story, Jesus has been beaten already - beaten by the guards at the house of Caiaphas, then scourged by the Romans with a whip made of leather straps and metal balls. He would, by this stage have been bloodied and bruised. Few painters or sculptors of statues ever depict the scene as it would have been - black eyes, and flayed skin, and blood.
The Prophet Isaiah’s song of the suffering servant, our first reading, perhaps paints a clearer image for us:
so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.
The Christ presented to the Jews by Pilate is not a clean image, the quiet and dignified scene of Bodset’s painting, but a grotesque parody of a coronation. The purple robe mimicking robes of state, the crown of thorns copying an emperor’s laurels, the reed in place of a sceptre. It isn’t ‘God save the King’ on the lips of the onlookers, but Crucify Him!
Mine is not a kingdom of this world, says Christ, were it a Kingdom of this world he might have appeared to them like King Charles, robed in Gold, with a crown and sceptre inlaid with precious jewels, surrounded by courtiers and admirers. This kind of King they would have expected, this kind of Messiah they would have worshiped, instead they get the suffering servant of Isaiah,
a thing despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man to make people screen their faces; he was despised and we took no account of him.
Whenever we meditate on the wounds of Christ, we are called to a real sorrow - because in each of those wounds we see a reflection of our own sin because ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried. he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins.
In each of his wounds we see the effect of our sin in all its grotesqueness. In His scourging we see our bodily indulgence, in the carrying of the heavy cross we see our idleness, in the stripping of his garments we see our greed and our desire to hoard the things of this world, in the piercing of his heart we see our cruelty and indifference, in his death on the Cross we see our own hatred. In the mockery of a coronation, in the crowning with thorns and the taunts of the soldiers, we see our pride, our hubris, turned back on us.
On this day, commemorating the Passion of the Lord, see the suffering servant, we see the wounds of Christ, and his bitter sufferings, and are called to a deep and true sorrow for our sins which caused the suffering of Christ. We venerate his body on the Cross as a sign of repentance and an act of love that our God should make so great a sacrifice: that the hands which shaped the universe were subjected to the pain of the nails, that the one who was crowned with light in heaven was, for our sake, crowned with thorns.
We adore the Holy Cross, because by that awful instrument of death, our new life has been purchased.
On him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed.
Comments