Musings on the Friday they call good...

I will be taking the Good Friday service at our church this year and decided to make it focused on key objects in the text from John 19.  I collected together some things: nails, a cloth, a bowl and some vinegar, but I needed a crown of thorns...which is not a normal everyday item that you might have hanging around... 

So...armed with secateurs and gardening gloves I set off down the road to a patch of waste ground covered with brambles, etc.  The first problem was collecting anything that might do.  I found some tangled creeper that looked useful, but couldn't collect brambles as they were too prickly - bizarrely enough -almost impossible to get hold of to even cut, let alone bend and get into the bag I'd brought with me.  I then found a shrub with fairly substantial thorns on, but fitting that into the bag was also beyond me so I walked home carrying the branches I'd cut off rather gingerly, as even with gloves on, the thorns were pretty vicious.

Once home I sat on the doorstep and began to try and figure out how to create the crown.  And as I twisted the branches together and snagged my fingers through the gloves on the sharp thorns it got me thinking - who was it who actually made the crown of thorns for Jesus on that fateful day?  The Bible says it was the soldiers - but who was it who was left with torn and bleeding hands - skin sliced open by the cruel woody spines - and what was he thinking as he entwined the branches...and scored his own hands...winding thorns together that would've scraped and torn the head upon which it was about to be forced - what thoughts went through his head?

Maybe it wasn't a soldier...maybe it was a slave...maybe it was someone who believed that Jesus was the longed for Messiah...but whoever it was - creating this barbaric item was not a pleasant occupation.

This Friday, as the crown of thorns that I've got ready, is brought up to the table that will stand in the centre of our gathering - and laid at the foot of the cross that will be standing there - this year it will have a different significance for me - for it was my hands that made that crown - my hands that created that nasty, vicious item of torture...