Bleeding Brow

They wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head, and they placed a reed stick in his right hand as a scepter. Then they knelt before him in mockery and taunted, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him, and grabbed the stick and struck him on the head with it. (Matthew 27:29-30)

The cross extracted blood. “The life of the body is the blood”, and so it flowed. From many places in the body. The feet, the hands, the side, the back, the head. Wounds opened everywhere. That hurt—this so-called crown of thorns thrust down on his head, banged into place by hateful Roman soldiers (“Oh, sure he’s innocent! They all are!!”) This was a major invasion of the privacy of space that was his physical body. No way to guard it from the intruders.

Couple the pain of that crown apparatus sitting on his head with the banging down of it into the skull, resulting in blood flowing into his eyes and mouth and nose and realizing he couldn’t wipe any of it away, and we realize this is upping the level of ‘uncomfortable’ to a max. He couldn’t reach up and “Ow!!”, pull up and readjust the thorns so they didn’t dig in as deeply. His hands were nailed, so to speak. He had to go through with whatever they did to him. The Scriptures remarkably record nowhere that, as a tortured human, with spikes and thorns abusing his body, he asked for any leniency at any stage. Even if he had, as readers we get the distinct impression that pleading, begging, asking logically for mercy and for some adjustments in the torture would have done zero good.

The bleeding brow draws attention to the crown. This was a fake crown made by the mockers, but a highly symbolic one. “Hey, small group of deluded followers, there’s your king, recently and properly crowned, hanging on the cross in sight for all to see his public execution! Let’s make that ex-king! Ha, ha, ha!” And there he was, looking beaten, defeated, bloodied, looking like anything but a victorious king.

The bleeding brow was not a symbol of defeat, but a sign of the necessary route taken to achieve triumph. His goal was not to prove himself right, or have a major, public platform from the cross for preaching the Good News. He had already done his preaching and teaching and discipling. His goal now was to go through completely with the offering of himself as sacrifice that His Father required. His bleeding brow was another sign that he was indeed fulfilling what the Father had given him to do. And he is the Victor! The associated blood coursing through those thorns tells of the price paid to see his sacrifice become reality.

Words from two songs come to mind, the first from O Sacred Head Now Wounded: “See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flowed mingled down.”

The second, quoting again from the musical Celebrate Life: “Just to think of the cross moves me now; the nails in his hands, the thorns in his brow. It should have been me. It should have been me. Instead I am free!”

“Father, never let us forget the price in blood which Jesus paid for all of us so that we can experience life!”

Copyright 2019, Freddy Boswell. From the book, Torn Curtain.