Published in The Advertiser on 22 April 2011
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/wakim-ironies-in-jesuss-crucifixion/story-fn6br25t-1226043079362
THERE was a terrible connection between Jesus’s trade and his torture, writes Joseph Wakim.
THE most tragic death in human history hides an ironic twist.
Two millennia ago, Jesus of Nazareth was charged for treason, mocked as King of the Jews, then crucified.
But the chilling connection between his trade and his torture is as twisted as his crown of thorns.
“Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Joseph and Mary?” narrates the gospel of Mark.
The major tools of a Jewish carpenter would have been wood, hammer and nails – the exact tools of his crucifixion!
As if the false accusations were not enough. As if the betrayal by his closest friends was not enough. As if the death sentence was not enough.
But to add vinegar to the bitter experience, this carpenter was to see his beloved tools of construction transformed into the weapons of his destruction.
As a guitar player who loves to compose beautiful music, and polish every part of my instruments, this would be as cruel as hanging me by my strings and forcing me to swallow plectrums.
At the time of this crucifixion, Jesus could have been condemned to many other forms of capital punishment.
He could have been thrown into a snake den, stoned like Mary Magdalene, trampled by horses, beheaded by a sword, burned at the stake or fed to a lion’s den. The intention of this public torture was ostensibly to terrorise onlookers and deter crime.
The Romans inflicted this on non-citizens and slaves as the most dishonourable death imaginable, and historians depict the naked
shame as even more humiliating than Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
However, criminals who were Roman citizens were spared this slow agony and sentenced to swift decapitation instead.
Crucifixions were executed for 10 centuries, commencing with the Persians about 600 BC then finally outlawed by Roman emperor Constantine in 337 AD, before he himself converted to Christianity.
With the condemned criminal forced to carry the cross, another loaded layer had to be shouldered by this carpenter.
Imagine his relationship with that wooden cross. He would have appreciated its texture and identified the original tree.
Historians suggest that it was an olive tree, which compounds the pain as olive branches were waved to welcome him into Jerusalem on “Palm Sunday”.
It was the Mount of Olives where he sought solace and prayed before being apprehended. Now this scent of a sanctuary would become the pillar of his persecution.
Upon this wood, the carpenter would bleed, weep, embrace, until its total weight would fall upon him, and he would be crushed by his craft.
Even the nails that were used to pin his bloody body were literally twisted. As if the humiliation was not enough, the iron nails were removed and re-used for subsequent crucifixions, to cut costs that should not be wasted on criminals.
Imagine a carpenter who admired perfect nails watching as crooked and infected tools pierced his limbs.
When my late wife had endured so much suffering in her last weeks during Lent, she would reflect on the pain and injustice inflicted upon Jesus to lighten her load.
Indeed, the woes of our world wash away into insignificance.