Here is Your King
A Good Friday Reflection
Bodies press against me.
Heat rises with the growing tension in the crowd.
Voices escalate—beyond the quiet murmur of anxiety—to angry shouts of crucify.
How did I get here?
I’m not at the front.
Not in the back.
But I’m here.
In the crowd.
Close enough to see his face.
I feel the heat clinging to my arms, as people press in—warm and impatient.
There’s dust in my mouth,
Ash on the hem of my robe.
Someone behind me coughs and shouts.
Someone in front spits and mutters under his breath.
And then—there’s him. Jesus.
They bring him out like game caught in a hunt—bloody, bruised, barely standing.
A purple robe hangs from his shoulders, heavy with mockery, stained with spite.
A crown of thorns rests on his head, like a joke no one’s brave enough to laugh at.
Pilate’s voice cuts through the noise.
“Here is your King.”
I flinch.
Not because of the words, but because something in me whispers:
What if it’s true?
What if it’s true?
It feels like everything holy is unraveling right in front of me.
“Here is your King.”
What kind of King is this?
This world taught me to expect someone different.
Someone strong.
Someone who could silence a crowd, not stand silent and broken in front of one.
Aren’t kings supposed to protect?
Aren’t kings supposed to win?
But this king just stands there, looking empty…
Exposed.
Vulnerable.
And he doesn’t resist.
Maybe that’s the part that unsettles me the most.
He doesn’t fight.
He doesn’t argue or flinch.
He just… stands there, absorbing the insults and abuse.
He says his kingdom is not of this world.
He’s not fueled by fear or force.
His “kingdom” isn’t built on dominance, power, and control.
Maybe that’s why it feels so fragile—so easily broken.
Or maybe it’s not fragile at all.
Maybe it’s just honest.
I remember the words of the prophet who said,
“He had no form or majesty that we should look at him,nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”—Isaiah 53:2
What kind of king is this?
A King who does not rule to be worshiped,b ut who suffers to be with us.
What kind of kingdom is this?
He said,
“My kingdom is not of this world.”
But this world is the only one I know.
And in this world, kingdoms are loud and demanding.
They conquer and reward the strong.
They forget the weak.
In this world, power means survival.
Control means safety.
Victory means worth.
So what kind of kingdom has a ruler like this one?
Why doesn't his kingdom protect itself or strike back?
Why doesn’t it hoard influence, status, or praise?
Is it a kingdom not built with weapons and sustained by fear?
Is it not measured by success?
What kind of kingdom puts the last first and calls the broken blessed?
This kingdom doesn’t look or sound like much from the outside.
It doesn’t impress.
It doesn’t sell.
It looks like love, wasted.
Like mercy, lost.
Like hope, dying.
But maybe that’s the point.
What if this kingdom begins, not with power, but with surrender?
What if its throne is a cross?
What if its only law is love?
Where is God when it all falls apart?
It’s a fair question.
Where is God when everything I’ve known unravels?
When prayers go unanswered, grief outstays its welcome, and the silence from heaven feels louder than the cries from earth?
Here, on this Friday called “Good”, we’re told God is in the middle of the mess. Not above it or outside it.
Not fixing it.
Just… here.
God is not pulling the strings, orchestrating the pain, or manipulating the crowd.
God is there in front of the crowd.
In the body that bleeds.
In the silence that absorbs every shout.
This is not the God the world taught me to look for—the God of control, certainty, or rescue plans.
This is a God who stays.
A God who weeps.
A God who chooses presence over power.
Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question.
Not “Where is God?”
Maybe the better question is, “Can I bear to see where God is?”
Because if God is really here—in the suffering, betrayal, and death—then love is, too.
The Quiet Hope
It doesn’t feel like hope.
Not today.
Not yet.
There’s no resurrection yet.
No sunrise.
No empty tomb.
There’s only the weight of injustice, lingering like a stench, even as the crowds depart.
I ache as I watch love suffer and hear the silence that follows betrayal. And yet—he stays.
Jesus stays.
He doesn’t disappear, escape, or abandon.
He doesn’t save himself.
Jesus stays.
That’s the part I can’t shake.
When everything falls apart, and the crowd turns,
When the voices grow cruel and loud—and shout CRUCIFY!
Jesus stays.
Not to prove a point.
Not to perform a miracle.
Just to be with us in everything we’re afraid to face alone.
He stays to absorb the violence of this world and takes its weight upon himself. This is not the hope that fixes things.
Not yet.
It’s the hope that holds us when nothing else makes sense.
The hope that refuses to run.
The hope that shows up bloody, bruised, and bearing love anyway.
It’s the hope that dies but refuses to let death have the last word.
“Here is your King.”
Even now.
Especially now.
In the unraveling.
In death.
In grief.
In the not-yet.
Jesus is still here.
And he is still love.