I figure by now it’s safe to talk – that everyone who’s planned to see Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ has done so, certainly by the middle of Holy week.

And because it is Holy week, and the days leading to the celebration of our Lord’s resurrection are drawing near, I have been thinking more than I usually do about the cross.

Not about redemption, propitiation, expiation or sacrifice. Not so much about the eternal and obvious meaning of the cross – but about the actual timber and its awful weight. And the image that is fixed in my mind from the film’s stunning array of imagery is this one: my Lord Jesus carrying the cross. His cross. For a good distance he bore it alone, and then with the help of a passer-by whose name was Simon of Cyrene.

Both men struggled under its weight, but it was Jesus who seemed to embrace it like a lover even as he stumbled and staggered and fell. It was Jesus whose hands both clutched and caressed it and whose face was pressed against it in agony and in desperate ardor.

It was my Jesus who loved the weight of the wood even as he bled beneath it.

If I could, I would only meditate on this, and offer thanks for this, and wonder at this. But because I am His, more is asked. He invites me to imitate this. To somehow love the scene and the means of my own large and small sacrifices, day by day: He said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” He said, “And he who does not take his own cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.”

My confession is this: my imitation of my Savior is too often shabby. If I somehow manage, on a good day, to take up my cross and get my shoulder beneath it, I’m likely to be found complaining about it, or railing against it, or resenting its encumbrance.

I don’t love the weight of the wood so much.

We’re only human, right? And rough beams like cancer and widowhood and loneliness and betrayal are almost impossible to embrace, aren’t they? Aren’t prodigal children and infertility and unemployment decidedly unlovely and unlovable? Isn’t regret repulsive and heartbreak hopeless?

They would be, except for this: the cross of Christ was the doorway to the resurrection. The ugly tool of Roman execution was the means by which God’s Son would show his Father’s glory. He loved the weight of the wood because he knew how the story would end – and he wanted nothing else more than he wanted the privilege of playing his part.

He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it. (Matthew 10:39, NASB)

© Leigh McLeroy 2004