The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Jesus Crowned King in Exile:  Mt.27:27 – 37 

^27:27 Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole Roman cohort around him. ²⁸ They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. ²⁹ And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand; and they knelt down before him and mocked him, saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’ ³⁰ They spat on him, and took the reed and began to beat him on the head. ³¹ After they had mocked him, they took the scarlet robe off him and put his own garments back on him, and led him away to crucify him. ³² As they were coming out, they found a man of Cyrene named Simon, whom they pressed into service to bear his cross. ³³ And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means Place of a Skull, ³⁴ they gave him wine to drink mixed with gall; and after tasting it, he was unwilling to drink. ³⁵ And when they had crucified him, they divided up his garments among themselves by casting lots. ³⁶ And sitting down, they began to keep watch over him there. ³⁷ And above his head they put up the charge against him which read, ‘This is Jesus the King of the Jews.’

This small section begins with the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus as ‘King of the Jews’ (27:27 – 29).  It ends with mention of the Roman intimidation technique:  a public sign over the crucified Jesus declaring that this is what will happen to anyone else who claimed to be ‘King of the Jews’ and defy the Roman Emperor (27:37).  In between, we see all the elements of an execution squad intending to humiliate Jesus as much as possible.  The ‘whole Roman cohort’ (27:27) is the death squad.  They ‘strip’ Jesus and put a scarlet robe on him (27:28) to mock his claim to royalty.  They bend thorny branches into a crown and force it down upon his head (27:29).  They give him a thin stick as a mock scepter (27:29).  They kneel down before him (27:29), probably not knowing what was more uproariously funny – either that this defeated man claimed to be a ‘King,’ or that the Jewish people would be so pathetic that some of them put their hope in this weakling.  Then they grab the thin stick and whack him on the head with it, surely driving the thorns deeper.  They force another Jew, Simon of Cyrene, to carry Jesus’ cross for a short distance, once again mocking Rome’s power over Israel and mocking Jesus’ apparent powerlessness to prevent them from treating other Jews – his supposed subjects – this way.  They crucify Jesus on that Roman cross, which was a torture device designed to stretch out a person’s death and make it as publicly humiliating as possible.  The only act which had an iota of kindness was the offer of a narcotic drink that would have dulled his senses.  Tellingly, Jesus refused that.  He was going to be fully present.

          Ironically, for Jesus, his crucifixion was his coronation in our world.  It’s when he was revealed as our rightful King.  Jesus had spoken of Daniel’s vision of ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ to the throne of God (Dan.7:13 – 14) and the sign that would authenticate it within one generation:  the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (Dan.9:25 – 27) which wound up occurring in 70 AD (both Daniel references are quoted in Mt.24:3, 15, 27, 30, 39, 44, 48; 25:31).  Jesus is now being ‘crowned’ while experiencing utter rejection from those who should have been his reverent subjects.  Not because Jesus had to endure an invisible rejection from God the Father while all this was going on.  Precisely the opposite.  He was being utterly rejected by human beings because this is what we have done to God ever since the fall. 

We rejected Him in the Garden of Eden and sent ourselves into exile.  Then, throughout the long history of Israel, the Jewish people rejected God over and over; they forsook God’s protection and sent themselves into exile.  Now when God came in the flesh, in the person of His Son, Jesus, into the very place of Israel’s exile among the nations, there was nowhere for us – Jew and Gentile – to run any more.  There was no other place to escape his claim of authority over us and his call to partnership with him.  So we killed Jesus, too.  Both Jews and Gentiles killed him. 

          Imagine having a young child, and enjoying your child grow up.  Then imagine that child trying to get out of cleaning his or her room, which is something that the two of you do together every Saturday morning, because you’re teaching and training your child how to do it well.  He or she takes out a piece of paper instead, and starts drawing.  An escape into a drawing, perhaps?  You peek over at the paper and see that your child is drawing a picture of your family.  Now imagine yourself calmly requesting again that your child clean up that room with you.  You promise to be very enthusiastic about the drawing after that room gets cleaned up.  The child, however, gets mad that you won’t let him or her off the hook.  So you try to enter the world of your child’s drawing – you ask, ‘What if in the ‘me’ in the drawing wants to do our regular thing with the ‘you’ in the drawing?’  Being young, the child scowls and scribbles over the drawing of you.  Your attempt at entering the ‘world’ of your child’s drawing has resulted in rejection there, too.

          God’s Son really did enter our flesh-and-blood world.  And we did scribble him out, in a manner of speaking.  We certainly look like rebellious children here.  We rejected Him before, so He came to us again...to be rejected again by this parody of a coronation. 

But this time, our rejection of Him served His love for us.  He gave his life up for us, to cleanse through death the human nature Jesus had taken to himself.  He was saving us from our sin (Mt.1:21).  Here at this moment in Jerusalem, as he always did, Jesus offered himself to both the Father and us.  He faced both directions.  He offered his humanity to the Father as a gift of perfect love.  For his divinity empowered the only fitting human response to the Father which the Father had always desired from a human being:  wholehearted love and total faithfulness.  And Jesus also offered his humanity back to us as a gift that has been perfected by love.  For the only fitting divine response to sin-infected human beings was to offer back a sin-disinfected human nature fully soaked through with the divine.  Jesus was allowing himself to be scribbled out as he scribbled out the sin in himself.  This was the very means by which he was victorious over the sin within his own humanity, and also shows us who he truly is.

          That is why Jesus was crowned King in exile.  We exiled ourselves to get away from God.  Jesus pursued us there.  He entered our world for us, despite knowing that we will try to scribble him out.  But Jesus turns all the elements around him into an imaginative coronation scene.  All the pieces are there:  a military cohort acknowledging him, a crown on his head, a scepter in his hand, a royal robe on his shoulders, a subject who helps him hold his banner, a seat from which he can sit, enthroned, and see his subjects, and a sign publicly declaring his identity. 

          Jesus can take the parody of our scribbles.  He even shines through it to show us the truth.

This is love.