The Crowning of the King (Mark 15.1-20)

For most of us, the significance of a coronation is a bit hard to grasp. The easiest image for me to call to mind is that of the crowning of Aragorn in The Return of the King (because I love Lord of the Rings). For those of you who are British, or if you’re interested in the royal family you probably have a better idea, with the recent crowning of King Charles.

But even if a coronation is a fairly abstract idea for us, I’m guessing everyone has some of the same things in mind when they think of it. Coronations are monumental affairs, filled with pomp and ritual, fine cloth and gold. Most of the time, the entire kingdom comes out to honor the new king; when David was anointed king of Israel, all the tribes of Israel came out to pay tribute to him.

So it’s pretty hard to imagine any similarities between the coronation of a king and the events described in in Mark 15, which tells of the trial, torture and crucifixion of Jesus. But that is indeed what we see here—it is not merely torture and injustice; it is a coronation.

Almost everyone knows the story we’ve just read, at least in a vague way; we’ve seen it in a hundred paintings and sculptures and films.

Mark doesn’t go into all those details, for two reasons. The first, pragmatic reason is that he didn’t need to; he’s writing his gospel just twenty or thirty years after the events he describes. The people reading his book knew perfectly well what flogging and crucifixion were like, because they’d had ample opportunity to see it for themselves.

But the more important reason is that Jesus’s physical suffering is not the main thing Mark or any of the gospel writers want us to think about. His suffering was unbearably horrible; but plenty of people have suffered as much or worse, at least physically. Plenty of Christians have even suffered as much for their faith.

There are two main things that Mark wants us to see when he describes what Christ went through. We’ll see the first thing this week, and the second thing next week.

So here is the first thing—I’ve already spoiled it. Mark wants us to see that this event, awful as it was, was not merely a travesty; it was not merely a sin of incalculable proportions, the murder of the Son of God; it was not merely a tragic betrayal of God and his plan.

It was a coronation. What Mark describes in chapter 15 is the means by which Jesus Christ, the King of the universe, claimed his throne.

I’ve made many mentions of Mark’s love of the “sandwich” structure, in which he says one thing, then moves on to another subject, then comes back to the thing he said at first, in order to make a larger point; he does that here.

So let’s look at the first part of the sandwich, in v. 1-5.

The Silence of the King (v. 1-5)

Remember the context—Jesus has just been tried and condemned by the religious leaders (and Peter has just denied him). The religious leaders have found Jesus guilty of blasphemy, and found him deserving of death (v. 64). But Israel was under Roman occupation at the time, and under Roman law, they could not put Jesus to death themselves. So their only recourse is to submit their case to the Roman governor, who was temporarily in Jerusalem to maintain peace during the Passover, and who had his work cut out for him.

V. 1:

And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate.

We’ve seen this before, but I think it’s worth mentioning again. In the movies you see about Jesus, the Jewish religious leaders are often portrayed as horrendously wicked. And what they did was certainly that.

But what they’re doing shouldn’t surprise us. Remember last week, when they were interrogating him? Jesus quotes Daniel 7, identifying himself as the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah whom God had sent to save his people. So the religious leaders cry blasphemy. The thing is, in any other circumstance, they would have been right. Any ordinary man who claimed to be the Son of God would be committing blasphemy; they’re only wrong because Jesus is telling the truth; he is the Son of God; he is the Messiah.

So their reaction isn’t surprising. What may surprise some of us is that these men had all the proof they needed to believe that Jesus really was who he said. They had seen him perform miracles, they had heard his teaching, they knew as well as anyone what he was doing…and they still didn’t believe.

But even this shouldn’t be surprising. It’s hard to realize how scary it is to have your entire way of life threatened.

Think back to how unsettled everyone was when COVID happened—the government closed everything down, including church services for a good while. Many Christians feared that if we gave in and obeyed the government’s demands, then nothing would stop the government from putting even harsher restrictions on churches for a lot less.

I’m not trying to reopen that debate; I just want us to remember that we know what this feels like—how scary it can be to have your way of life threatened.

These religious leaders had power, and Jesus was a threat to that power; he was, in fact, a threat to everything they held dear—the temple, the law, their rituals and identity… They saw Jesus as a threat to all of that. And it is a very frightening thing to face the prospect of losing your way of life, your national identity, and (maybe especially) the power you’ve amassed for yourself.

So of course, the religious leaders fight to preserve all this, even if it means destroying truth.

And they only way they can do it is to turn Jesus over to the Roman governor, Pilate.

Pilate was not Jewish. He likely knew little and cared little about Jewish customs or culture—he was there to keep the peace and make sure things didn’t get out of hand during the Passover celebration, when thousands of Jews from surrounding regions would flock to the temple.

So now he finds himself in a difficult situation. The religious leaders bring him this man, and in the other gospels we see that they give him a sort of twisted version of their true accusation: they tell Pilate that Jesus claims to be the Christ, the Messiah—”that is, a king” (cf. Luke 23.2). Pilate cares nothing about the charge of blasphemy…but someone claiming to be king would be a threat to the established king in Israel, Herod, and possibly even to Caesar himself.

So Pilate questions Jesus himself. V. 2:

2 And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” 3 And the chief priests accused him of many things. 4 And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.” 5 But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.

Again, Mark doesn’t give us a lot of details, but we can at least see that Jesus doesn’t answer the way Pilate expected him to—he doesn’t try to defend himself, he doesn’t try to deny the accusations, he just gives a vague answer and then falls silent: not exactly the behavior of someone trying to usurp the throne.

And that’s the first thing that Mark wants us to see. Jesus is the “King of the Jews”; he is, in fact, the King of all things, all peoples, all nations. And yet, when his throne is threatened, he doesn’t rise up with an army to defend it. He humbly takes the abuse, takes the accusations, and stays silent. Pilate didn’t know it, but through his silence, Jesus is fulfilling the prophecy of the Messiah that we find in Isaiah 53.7:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
      yet he opened not his mouth;
                  like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
      and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
      so he opened not his mouth.

His silence isn’t weakness; it is choice. It is sovereignty.

The Condemnation of the King (v. 6-15)

Now Pilate is face with a dilemma. On the one hand, he can find no reason to condemn Jesus, because Jesus is acting like anything but a king trying to undermine the established power. On the other hand, Pilate’s in Jerusalem to keep the peace—and it’s not entirely clear how to do that. He knows what the religious leaders are telling him (and he can see that they’re accusing Jesus out of envy, as we see in v. 10), but he doesn’t know how the people will respond. Maybe condemning Jesus will actually make things worse.

So Pilate decides to test the situation. He had established the practice of releasing one prisoner at every Passover, as a way of currying favor with the people. (Usually it would be someone whom the people felt was wrongly imprisoned.) So would the people prefer he release Jesus, or another prisoner? V. 6:

6 Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. 7 And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. 8 And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them.

We don’t know much about this Barabbas, besides what he was imprisoned for. He had committed robbery, murder and insurrection, and may have been a member of a band of guerilla warriors who had risen up against the wealthy upper class in Israel, as well as the Romans—if this is the case, he would have been popular with the common people.

At any rate, what we need to remember is that Barabbas was a man who was recognizably guilty of his crimes; no one thought he had been wrongly imprisoned, no one thought he was innocent.

So Pilate addresses the crowd (v. 9):

9 And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” 10 For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead.

Just a quick word on context—people often ask why the crowds who had welcomed Jesus turned against him so quickly. Of course, the easy answer is that they turn against Jesus because God sent him to die—that was the plan. But I also think the religious leaders did a very good job at setting all this up, because only they knew what they were planning to do.

When all of this happens, Pilate is addressing “the crowd”; this would have been in the inner court of the royal palace in Jerusalem, which wasn’t huge—big enough for a couple hundred people, maximum. So the crowd he is addressing is by no means everyone in Jerusalem, and we have no indication from the Bible that this crowd was the same crowd that welcomed Jesus with hosannas at the triumphal entry. This is just a very small portion of the population, which the religious leaders managed to “stir up” against him.

V. 12:

12 And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” 13 And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” 14 And Pilate said to them, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.” 15 So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

This is the center of the sandwich—this is the thing Mark wants to highlight by the contrast he’s making at the beginning and the end of this passage, because what we see here is the gospel in miniature.

Whether or not the crowd demanding Jesus’s death was the same crowd who sang his praises a few days earlier, they all knew who he was; they all knew enough to believe he was who he claimed to be. But they refused to believe he was the Savior, not because they didn’t have reasons enough to believe, but because they didn’t want to believe.

And naturally, we are all like them.

If you drive a car, you probably use Google Maps or Waze or something like that. We’re totally fine letting these apps help us. But if we’re driving with someone else and that person says, “Let’s switch places, I’ll drive,” that’s a different story. We don’t mind being helped, but we don’t necessarily want to give up control.

Naturally, we don’t want a King; we’ll take a Savior who meets our needs, who serves our plans. But we don’t want a King who claims our lives. If we actually pay attention to what Jesus says, left on our own, we don’t want him—he simply asks too much of us.

Left on our own, we’re all like Pilate too. He knew what was right, but he was afraid of what would happen if he didn’t satisfy the crowd. He caved under the pressure. It was far easier, far less risky, to do the job he had been sent there to do, rather than what was right.

And finally, we are all Barabbas. Of course, the Bible says nothing about what happened to him after this. We have no reason to think he believed in Christ. But the image we see here is the very essence of the gospel. Barabbas is guilty and in captivity because of his guilt—and Jesus takes his place. That is the gospel: the guilty go free because the innocent dies in their place. The apostle Paul would develop this much more deeply in his letters—in theology it’s referred to as “penal substitutionary atonement”. Jesus takes our guilt on himself, is punished in our place, so that we might go free.

What Mark wants us to see here is that the One taking our place—the innocent condemned in place of the guilty—is no ordinary do-gooder; he is not simply an innocent man. The One who takes the place of God’s sinful people is the people’s sinless King.

The Crowning of the King (v. 16-20)

And that’s what we see in the outer sections of the sandwich, which highlight Jesus’s identity as King. Pilate began by asking Jesus the question: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Then the King is exchanged for a prisoner. And finally, the King receives his crown.

16 And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. 17 And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. 18 And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 19 And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.

There is terrible irony in every detail we see here—it is a terrible subversion of the identity of Christ.

The Romans have already scourged Jesus—a brutal Roman torture that was enough to kill many prisoners who endured it. The flesh of his back and legs and chest would have been mostly removed at this point under the lashing of the bone-and-metal-incrusted whips. And now, on that torn flesh, they place a purple cloak. Purple is the color of royalty, and now the purple cloak would quickly have soaked through with Jesus’s blood.

Of course, the crown he receives is not a crown of gold, but a crown of thorns—in addition to being incredibly painful, it’s a cruel mockery of the glory of a true crown.

And finally, the soldiers mock him, bowing before him and saluting him as the King of the Jews, even as they are striking his head with reeds and spitting on him.

They are mocking the identity he is being accused of—that of “King of the Jews”. But in their mockery, they are unintentionally identifying Christ correctly. He is the King.

For the King who has all majesty, who possesses all glory, who deserves all worship, they give false majesty; false glory; false worship.

Sin always ridicules the rule of God before bowing to it.

The Glory of the King

It’s easy to see what happens here as an unspeakable tragedy—and it certainly is that. But it is so much more. Every humiliation Jesus endures is part of his coronation. The agony of Christ is the means by which he takes the throne as the one true King.

And every other person we see in this story is a reflection of us, at different moments and in different situations in our lives.

We see ourselves in the soldiers, because while we can’t condone their mockery, we at least understand it—nothing about Jesus in this moment seems glorious. And since Christ sometimes seems laughable, we want to laugh; we want to hide behind silence when those around us poke clever holes in our faith; and we find ourselves doubting.

We see ourselves in the crowds and in the religious leaders, because their rebellion is our own—we naturally want to be the rulers of our own lives, and anyone who would threaten our independence is an enemy. So when Jesus comes in, claiming to be the Son of God and the Lord of all the world, and giving us commandments, we want to reject that, because we’re afraid of everything we stand to lose if we follow him.

We see ourselves in Pilate, because on our own, we too want to do what is easy, not what is right. We want to things to go as smoothly as possible, with the least amount of trouble possible. Doing what we know God calls us to do may hold the promise of greater joy later, but that’s later, and for now, doing what he calls us to do is difficult and risky, and we don’t want to take the risk.

And we see ourselves in Barabbas, because we are all guilty before God, and we have the opportunity to go free because the innocent King took our place. But being set free requires us to admit that we are guilty, and many of us just can’t quite bring ourselves to do that—to fall on our knees before the righteous Judge of the universe and to plead with him, “Have mercy on me, for I have sinned.”

That is who we are.

Which makes who Jesus is all the more shocking by contrast. Our King is the one who takes his throne through suffering, who suffered and died in our place so that we might live.

So given that contrast—between who we are and who Jesus is—the question Mark forces us to ask is simple and devastating: What kind of King is Jesus?

His kingship is unlike any other: he conquers not by killing, but by being killed, not by dominating over his subjects, but by taking what we deserve. His crown is a crown of thorns; his throne is a cross; his victory is not over nations or peoples, but over sin and death. Jesus does not fit the world’s image of power, but rather shows us what true royalty, true power, true authority, looks like: self-giving love, justice through sacrifice, and redemption through shame.

And the simple truth is that this is the only kind of authority worth following; it’s what separates a leader from a dictator. It’s not difficult to serve a King like this, because we know the lengths to which he’ll go to protect us. Whatever he requires of us is only a shadow of what he endured for us. It’s not hard to serve someone who puts you first.

The glory of our King is seen in God’s plan to give him the throne. Remember a few weeks ago, when I said that God could have found another way to save us, but didn’t, because this is the best way? It’s the best way because there is no other plan that could have shown us this clearly what kind of King Jesus is.

So faced with this King, we all have a choice. We can reject him like the crowds, mock him like the soldiers (which is really the same thing—a rejection of the true King is a mockery of the true King). Or we can submit to him as Lord.

The question is, before this sort of King, why would we ever want to do anything else?

If you already serve Christ today, I pray that we would consider again the King we serve—the King who gave himself for us, who put us first. He didn’t need to put himself first, because we do that, and gladly. Consider your King, consider his thorns, remember that his condemnation should have been ours, and bow before him once again to worship him as King.

And if you don’t know Christ, I would beg you to do the same thing: consider what we see here. Jesus’s trial, condemnation and crucifixion is one of the most well-attested events in human history, even outside the Bible. These things happened, and anyone can believe they did. But only God himself can make you consider the fact that Jesus did all this for us. For you. He is inviting you, as he invites all of us, to consider your King, and to realize that there is no good reason not to serve a King like him.