Those Who Fear Thorns
Will Never Be Crowned
Thank you for reading Tentmaker, where I find snippets of culture that are nourishing or informative and share them with others of a like mind. I publish one or two times a month.
I think of it as a snack for the Christian soul.
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ART
I look at art. All kinds of art. So, as I was scrolling Google’s Art and Culture site looking for images related to “crown of thorns,” I saw a lot of ugly work, a bunch of old work, some new-ish work, but I was not expecting to be struck by an image. It really hit me hard.
The image is a photograph of a bronze sculpture in relief - a flat kind of sculpture meant to be hung, I believe. I am not usually moved by imagery much at all, but this one is different. See it below.
It shows the second station of the cross - Jesus falling the second time.
Look at his posture.
His arms straight, trying to hold up his body, his head falling between his shoulders.
Utterly exhausted. The Man of Sorrows Acquainted with Grief.
The weight of the world. I want him to sit up, to push back and sit on his feet and get his breath, to have rest somehow if only for a moment.
I hear his raspy breath. I see his chest heaving.
My eyes go blurry as my heart rushes out to take his place, to tell him to stop, that it’s ok, I’ve learned the lesson, he doesn’t have to do this. I want to throw my arm over his shoulders and lift him from the dirt, to hug him, tell him it’s ok, he can stop now. It’s ok. It’s ok.
Utterly and completely defeated. Done.
Please get up. It’s ok.
Then I notice he is at people’s feet. Again.
In the movie of my mind, I flash back:
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end…3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He was at his disciple’s feet before he died, he was at people’s feet on his way to die, and the government punched iron through his feet when he died.
This is the way of the Lord. This is The Way.
The bronze sculpture shows a man crushed, exhausted, and done for. Beaten down. Defeated. At people’s feet. Again.
Remember the opening scene of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? It was perfect. Rewatch it. See where his foot lands. (Watch the first 90 seconds here…)
He was not defeated, He was fighting. He just wasn’t fighting the way we fight. He wasn’t fighting the things we fight. We could not see it, but he was running through our “no man’s land” with all its coiled razor wire and bombs, booby traps, and gunfire only to arrive at the cross and die. It was a victory like had never been known. The mocking, the beating, the spitting, the shoving, the scorn, the darkness, the dust, the blood, the dying -
The teaching, the laughing, the praying, the serving, the freeing, the rising, the ascending, the return, the joy, the peace, the fullness, the light - the Savior -
It is finished. All things new.
He has no need of a crown, so the one he wore he wore for us. The feet he washed, he washed for us. The sinner he defended, he defended for us. The forgiveness he gave, he gave for us. He is our teacher, our example, the only one who truly loves us, and his example would be played out in the lives of those who would believe the accounts and trust him. They are glorious examples for us as well.
There will be thorns, but there is the Savior. All eyes on him. Per aspera ad astra.
“Even so, come quickly.”
TEE
Those Who Fear Thorns...
To follow Christ is to follow the way of the cross. There is something in suffering that hammers out of us all falsehoods and destroys all facades. Suffering can shape us for the glory of God, which is a heart turned to Him.
No one enjoys problems. No one looks forward to bad news.
But the person focused on the Resurrection learns to be humbled (and therefore saved) by that which is closest to them - coworkers, their children, their spouse, and everyone in their immediate circle. We don’t have to search the globe to find our mission field until we ourselves have become the harvest. The Enemy wants our focus broken and for us to look anywhere other than the small circle of our lives.
The enemy would have us be entertained, comfortable, and sluggish. Persecutions, trials, illnesses, hardships - all chip away that which is holding the Christian back from progressing along the way of the cross. Internal strife can clear foggy vision. Heartache can help us remember our true home. Loss can tighten up our ideas about what we really possess. Focused Christians are not floating along life's waterways. We are stumbling and stepping - one slow step at a time - toward a cross - daily and over the course of our lives.
In the morning, we pick up our faults and successes and place them on the cross, praying, “Lord, have mercy.” At bedtime, we lay down our difficulties with others and nail them to the cross praying, “Father, forgive them.”
Christ is the eschaton.
Wherever He is, the end has come.
SCRIPTURE
Revelation 21 - One of my most loved parts of the bible.
Then I saw ya new heaven and a new earth, for zthe first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw athe holy city, bnew Jerusalem, ccoming down out of heaven from God, dprepared eas a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, fthe dwelling place1 of God is with man. He will gdwell with them, and they will be his people,2 and God himself will be with them as their God.3 4 hHe will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and ideath shall be no more, jneither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
5 And khe who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I lam making all things new.”
Revelation 22
Then the angel1 showed me xthe river of ythe water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of zthe street of the city; aalso, on either side of the river, bthe tree of life2 with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were cfor the healing of the nations. 3 dNo longer will there be anything accursed, but ethe throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and fhis servants will worship him. 4 gThey will see his face, and hhis name will be on their foreheads. 5 And inight will be no more. They will need no light of lamp jor sun, for kthe Lord God will be their light, and lthey will reign forever and ever.
6 And he said to me, m“These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of nthe spirits of the prophets, ohas sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”
7 “And behold, pI am coming soon.1
TOLKKEIN
“I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days -- quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice…
All we do know, and that to a large extend by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success --in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in…
And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do.
And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this.
Probable under God that we shall meet again, ‘in hale and in unity’, before very long...”2
- Letter 64 to Christopher Tolkien, 30 April 1944
Read this again:
All we do know … is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success --
in vain:
preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in…
Evil labours in vain. So good.
C.S. LEWIS
The Screwtape Letters
(Remember, this is an experienced demon training a less experienced one…)
“My Dear Wormwood…
Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…. He cannot “tempt” to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.3
This has stayed with me from the moment I read it. I will never forget it. Read it again:
Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.
Look again at the picture above! Remember Christ on the cross! He quotes Psalm 22 - it is likely that the whole Psalm was meant to be recalled at the mention the part quoted. Read the entire heartbreaking Psalm HERE.
PATRISTICS
Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to was for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.
- Nikolai Velimirovich of Serbia, Thoughts on Good and Evil
SONG
I often think of the following song. I see the church where I grew up and remember the invitation to those in the congregation to come up and make a choir. My aunts and other people I grew up around would file up and wait on my uncle to call out a page number and my aunt, his wife, to begin leading us on piano.
There are times when you need to be reminded that the end of all suffering is coming, to be reminded of the promise of Jesus’ return, and to let go of the weight that presses on your heart. When I think of my simple upbringing in that little rural church, the smooth, wooden pews, and a choir of loved ones, my heart is lifted.
The immediate influence for this song was Jim’s mother-in-law, who was paralyzed by a stroke when she was only 50 years old. Jim was a new Christian, and he couldn’t understand why this had happened to such a wonderful woman. One day, as he was sitting on his porch thinking about his mother-in-law, the words to this song just came to him.4
Jim had never written a song before, so he wasn’t sure how good it was. But, the next time he, his wife, and his wife’s sister went to visit his mother-in-law, they sang it all the way to her home. And when they got there, they sang it again. And, as they sang, for the first time in 3 years, Jim’s mother-in-law smiled and showed signs of excitement.
To Jim, that was a sign that the song was going to be blessed by God. And, since then, the song has been an anthem of encouragement for many people. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)
Click here for a version I found on YouTube that I like.
What a Day That Will Be
What a day that will be
When my Jesus I shall see
And I look upon his face
The one who saved me by his grace
When he takes me by the hand
And leads me through the Promised Land
What a day, glorious day that will be
There'll be no sorrows there
No more burdens to bear
No more sickness and no more pain
No more parting over there
But forever I will be
With the one who died for me
What a day, glorious day that will be
What a day that will be
When my Jesus I shall see
When I look upon his face
The one who saved me by his grace
When he takes me by the hand
And leads me through the Promised Land
What a day, glorious day that will be
Oh, what a day that will be
When my Jesus I shall see
When I look upon his face
The one who saved me by his grace
When he takes me by the hand
And leads me through the Promised Land
What a day, glorious day that will be
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How I need you.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I tend to use ESV.org
- Letter 64 to Christopher Tolkien, 30 April 1944 from https://www.teawithtolkien.com/blog/letter64
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), pp. 39-40.
https://thescottspot.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/what-a-day-that-will-be-written-in-1955/