Many Crowns
Many Crowns
There has never been a crowning quite like it.
The attendants were a young mother and
Her husband in a rough stable full of
Curious animals offering their silent witness.
After nine months of becoming,
The King of Kings crowns,
Not in Herod’s palace, but at the
Threshold of his mother’s womb.
Joseph catches Jesus as he slips quietly into our world.
Tearing strips of cloth from his robe,
He wipes off the vernix, gently swaddles him, and
Lays him at Mary’s breast.
The angelic choir cannot contain itself.
They burst into a glorious refrain that
Breaks into human history and the sleep of
Sheep herders on a hardscrabble hillside.
***
There has never been a crowning quite like it.
The attendants are mockers and military-types,
And a mother whose travail echoed in the night years before.
She now sees a crown that pierces her heart.
Joseph catches Jesus’ lifeless body,
Bathes him in spices,
Wraps him gently in swaddling clothes,
And lays him in his tomb.
Two crownings, two swaddlings, and
One more birth,
As the tomb becomes a womb,
When Jesus delivers us from the final enemy.
***
There has never been a crowning like this.
The angelic choir exclaims, “Who is the King of Glory?”
And the Universe extols, “Crown Him
The Profound Innocent, the Merciful Savior, the Risen Lord.”
Don has spent the majority of his career in education teaching from academy to post graduate. For the past 18 years he has been in academic administration first as Chief Academic Officer and then as Assistant to the President for Mission at AdventHealth University. Don has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a Master of Divinity degree from Andrews University, and a Ph.D. in Counseling from Purdue University. This past fall he and his wife Merrie Lyn retired to Kettering, Ohio to be near family.
Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash
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