Taking Up The Cross Means Risking Crucifixion

Thoughts On Jesus' Challenge To His Followers

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

Matthew 16:24-26

My general habit in developing these Sunday sermons is to simply contemplate passages from the Bible and then let my mind wander over the particular verse, allowing the passage to simply “speak” to me on its own.

Yet there are some passages that invite closer analysis and interrogation. Placing them in a particular historical or perhaps political context can reveal subtexts that might otherwise be overlooked. One such passage is Jesus’ call to His followers to “take up [their] cross” when they choose to follow Him and His teachings. (Matthew 16:24).

As a metaphor, it is easy to apprehend Jesus’ call to “take up your cross” as a challenge to follow His teachings even at the expense of one’s own comfort, liveliehood, and even life. Nor is there any great doubt that Jesus does challenge us to stand fast for what is right no matter how strong the forces arrayed against us.

There is a further subtext that also warrants consideration, one which arises from Jesus’ selecting crucifixion for this particular metaphor and this particular teaching.

Crucifixion was not a means of execution specified in Mosaic Law. The Torah lists four methods of execution: Stoning, burning, beheading, and strangulation.

Crucifixion was a means of execution used with great facility by the Romans to impose their political will on conquered populations around the Mediterranean.

Why would Jesus—Himself a Jewish rabbi preaching to a Jewish audience—speak of a decidedly non-Jewish mode of execution?

Consider this: Outside of the crucifixion of Jesus, one of the most notable examples of the practice was the crucifixion of some 6,000 slaves recaptured at the end of the Third Servile War. Nearly the whole length of Rome’s major highway to the Italian coast, the Via Appia, was lined with crucified slaves, their bodies left to rot in full view of everyone, a grim warning not to challenge the might of Rome.

That warning was the entire point of crucifixion. That warning was why Rome used crucifixion with some frequency. Rome wanted it known and understood that Rome was the unchallenged master of the Mediterranean world, and no one should dare oppose her power.

Those who were crucified were those who, in some fashion, defied the established Roman social and political order.

If we take Jesus’ words literally, they stand as a call for His followers to accept and even embrace crucifixion. Taken literally, they are an invitation to dare the consequence of crucifixion. Taken literally, the call to take up the cross could not be anything else.

If we take Jesus’ words literally, they are a call for His followers to risk crucifixion by defying Roman authority specifically and directly. If we take Jesus’ words literally, He is challenging His followers to defy the established Roman social order.

Keep in mind that any defiance of Roman authority was to invite crucifixion. It was to stamp out even a hint of such defiance that was behind the Roman fetish for crucifixion. It necessarily follows that, for Jesus—as well as His followers—embracing literal crucifixion meant embracing the “crimes” which generally occasioned crucifixion for the Romans—defiance of authority and even open rebellion.

Did Jesus intend for His followers to take up arms and openly rebel against Rome? That seems unlikely, given that no large scale uprising began while Jesus walked the Earth, and the First Jewish Revolt would not begin until roughly thirty-odd years after the events depicted in the Gospels. While taken literally Jesus’ words could amount to a call for open rebellion against Rome, the actual history which unfolded in the First Century suggests that Jesus had a more subtle message in mind.

What might that message have been? The easy answer is that the path of faith revealed by Jesus is a challenging one, and one that in itself entails a measure of struggle and even sacrifice.

The more challenging answer is that Jesus meant for His followers to stand against authoritarian oppression wherever they encountered it—whether that be the established Roman governing order or the corrupted priestly governance of the Pharisees. That more challenging answer is also that Jesus understood full well the risks defying authority entails—but meant for His followers to do so anyway.

In the original Greek text the word which has been translated as “life” in this passage from Matthew is psychēn (ψυχὴν); it is also translated in some versions as “soul”, and can encompass everything from simple consciousness and awareness to one’s spiritual essence to even the totality of one’s physical existence.

By such language one can plausibly argue at a minimum that Jesus was not calling His followers to seek out an easy life, but rather a hard one. By such language, one can plausibly argue at a minimum that Jesus is calling for his followers to embrace a life and mode of living that seeks out struggle, and perhaps even conflict. Such language would fit well with Jesus’ making a call to His followers to stand against the authoritarian power structures of His day—specifically the Roman Empire and the priestly caste which governed the Jewish Temple.

Jesus might not have called for open rebellion, but neither did He endorse servile submission. However His followers apprehended His teaching, one idea comes through consistently: they were to stand firm against the oppressors and against oppression, wherever it might be found, whatever the cost.

While it is true that governments today generally do not crucify political dissidents and rebellious subjects, it is also true that governments today wield power in oppressive and unjust ways just as the Romans did. It is also true that we can see a fresh litany of government abuses of power and people every day just by tuning into corporate news media.

It is also true that we can see the Big Tech abuses of censorship and cancel culture spreading like toxic waste across social media.

It is also true that we can see Big Business exerting power over the ability of individuals to find gainful employment, and we can see institutions of higher learning exerting power over which professors will receive tenure and on what conditions.

We do not have to look hard to see authoritarianism and oppression in this world. Truthfully, we would have to look harder not to see it.

It is also true that everywhere we see the warnings, some subtle and some not, that we should not oppose the authoritarians, lest we suffer some horrible consequence. We see defenders of Free Speech subjected to arrest. We see dissident voices harrassed and intimidated.

If Jesus during His ministry here on Earth called for His followers to oppose authoritarian oppression and injustice, does not that challenge to oppose authoritarian oppression and injustice remain even today? Do the Gospels not still stand as a teaching that opposing authoritarian oppression and injustice remain the moral duty of all who call themselves “Christian”?

Whatever call Jesus presented to His followers during His ministry, surely that call is presented to us today by the Gospels. As Jesus called for His followers to stand against oppression, surely we are called today to do likewise.

Nor can we escape the fact that Jesus, by referencing the cross well in advance of His arrest and execution, acknowledged the subversive nature of His ministry. Jesus understood that He stood as a sublime challenge to the might of Rome just by virtue of what He taught.

Jesus without any prompting made plain how things were going to end for His time here on Earth. He knew He would be crucified. He knew why He would be crucified—He was a challenge to the established Roman order that Roman power simply could not tolerate.

If Jesus Himself understood that He was a threat to the established social and political order, it follows that Jesus called His followers to be a threat to the established social and political order. It also follows that Jesus calls us today to be a threat to today’s established social and political order.

What that call precisely entails is a question each of us must answer in the security of his or her own conscience.

It would be trite and trivial to describe Jesus as a libertarian, just as it would be trite and trivial to describe Jesus as a revolutionary. Jesus was and is the only begotten Son of God, and His crucifixion ultimately encompassed something far greater than defense of civil liberty or political revolution. Regardless of why the Romans crucified Jesus, on the cross He attained the salvation of all mankind.

Yet it would not be trite or trivial to acknowledge that Jesus opposed the power structures of His day. He routinely excoriated the Pharisees (Matthew 23:13, Matthew 23:25, Matthew 23:27, Luke 11:42), and the rest of the priestly leadership of the Jewish people, for their cycnicsm and their exploitation of Jewish law to advance themselves over the rest of the population.

It would not be trite or trivial to consider carefully Jesus’ teaching “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21) While neatly avoiding a rhetorical trap laid for him by the Pharisees, by distinguishing specifically and exclusively between the claimed authority of the Roman Emperor and the undeniable authority of God, Jesus left no doubt where ultimate authority lay (and it was not with the Roman Emperor).

It would not be trite or trivial to observe that Jesus taught His followers to be wary of power structures even among themselves (Matthew 23:8-10):

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for you have one master, the Christ.

It would not be trite or trivial to observe that Jesus was coy about His own authority when dealing with the Pharisees (Matthew 21:27, Mark 11:33, Luke 20:8).

It would not be trite or trivial to observe that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that men must choose whom they will have for their master—God or Mammon (Matthew 6:24).

Jesus understood the nature of power and the corrosive danger of trying to divide one’s loyalties. Jesus grasped—and warned His followers against—the inevitable conflict that any pair of dueling priorities will invariably have. Jesus knew—and taught His followers—that whenever two priorities compete for our loyalty, eventually we will have to choose one or the other.

Jesus did not want His followers openly accommodating and embracing the power structures of His day. It is hardly likely Jesus would want us to accommodate the power structures of our time. Jesus understood the danger power represents when placed in the hands of men.

Jesus was not a political libertarian. Jesus was not a political revolutionary. Yet Jesus taught—and the Gospels teach us today—a message and a truth that political libertarians, political reformers, and political revolutionaries alike can embrace without fear: that power in the hands of men never works and never ends well, that we should stand against men who seek power for themselves, and that we can find ways to peaceably live together in harmony without one man seeking to rule over another.