The Padded Cross

Recently, I came across this interesting quote in a 17th century book by an author named Thomas Shepard, he said, 

"Men can be content to follow Christ, if they may carry something on their backs beside the cross . . ." [1]. 

400 years later, this still rings true, perhaps even more so in our day than in Shepard's (although there's really no way of knowing that). We try to mitigate and minimize Jesus' call to discipleship to the point of almost non-existence. 

This isn't a new idea or a new problem for God's people. The Jewish Rabbis took immense care to add so many barriers to the enactment of Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (which calls for the execution of a "foolish son" who disobeys and dishonors his mother and father) that it was nearly impossible to carry it out according to the Rabbinic interpretation [2]. But God's call to obedience is absolute. Certainly we need good hermeneutics and a right understanding of what it means to obey Christ when he says, "pick up your cross and follow me," but those hermeneutics ought to, instead of trivialize, deepen our understanding of what it means to pick up the cross.

At first glance picking up the cross means death. And it certainly does. The cross was a tool used for execution. Bonhoeffer saw this and said, "whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death" [3]. Christ's call to discipleship is a summons to our death. Dying to sin. Killing off the old man. The cross is at least, a call to die.

However, the cross is also a call to public shame. The Romans didn't use the cross just as an execution method, similar to how we use lethal injection or the electric chair. The cross was a symbol of immense shame. Victims were displayed publicly, probably naked. After the Jewish city of Sepphoris rebelled the Romans crucified several thousand people, lining the road to Jerusalem with them. They were a portent to everyone else, obey the law or this will be you. 

There is no getting out of this call if we are Christians. There is no way to pad the cross so that it won't scrape our back. But there is a way to carry it, and the answer lies not in our own strength, but in Christ's. Christ's call to discipleship is absolute, but his empowering grace is all encompassing. Christ's call to die is unavoidable, but when we die to sin we are raised to life with him. Christ's call to be shamed by our culture and those around us is a must, but he gives us the Spirit to comfort us and empower us.

I encourage you to think about how you have padded the cross. What have you placed on your back to soften the weight, to avoid the splinters? Let's pray to the Lord together for the power to carry the cross alone, no padding. As we do so, let's accept Christ's call to discipleship for all it is, and stop padding the cross.

[1] Thomas Shepard, The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Grand Rapids: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1990), 538.

[2] Caryn Reeder, The Enemy in the Household: Family Violence in Deuteronomy and Beyond (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), 123.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 87.