The approach of the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection is a time of reflection and rededication for everyone who believes in him. If we are careful, as we reexamine the words of the story of his life, suffering (passion), death, and resurrection as told to us in the four Gospels, we will learn something new (and helpful to our faith) with each new reading.
Jesus not only suffered physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Great shame and humiliation was a part of his passion. He suffered from the physical pain, but also from the human indignity that he endured for us.
As I was reading the words from the scriptures again I also examined many artist renditions and portrayals of Christ’s arrest, trial, execution and resurrection. Many gifted people have drawn or painted representations of the scenes that are described in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. A new indignity came to my mind that I had never considered before. I’m almost certain that this humiliating thought passed through our Savior’s mind as his execution began. It concerns the nails.
Jesus was raised by a human father (Joseph) whom the Bible calls a carpenter. Jesus was also understood to be a carpenter and was often identified by others as being a representative of this vocation and occupation. Understanding Jesus in view of this fact is illustrative. Everything about being human was embraced by Jesus in the incarnation. He allowed it all to effect him, to affect and influence him, to touch, mold and shape him.
We must be careful, however, not to cast our modern understanding of the word carpenter back into ancient times. Carpenter was the description of a vocation that was somewhat different from those whom we describe by that same word today.
The Greek word techtone means “an artisan who fits things together.” (Literally: a fitter, a technician).
Jesus would have worked with stone (of great variety and kind), brick and tile (artificially crafted and manufactured stone), leather, cloth (fabric), and wood. Not exclusively wood as we might imagine . . . and never metal.
As a carpenter, Jesus was an artisan, a crafter of materials, a mason and layer of stone and tile. He crafted and created things that would fit naturally one piece to another.
Consider this: the first and only nails that Jesus ever touched in his life was probably the ones that were violently driven into his hands during his execution.
We quite commonly use screws, staples and nails as fasteners today. We do not think anything about it. We join pieces of material by driving connecting nails into both and all. But in Jesus’ day this would have been an obscenity. The use of nails was a violation of the way that God made and created in his own role as Universal Carpenter. Driving a nail into wood causes harm, it damages the wood, and mars the natural beauty of the surface. Connecting materials with hammer and nails is violent, quick, easy, and lazy. None of these things reflect what a true carpenter wanted to express with his work. No self-respecting carpenter would ever create something by driving iron spikes into its material.
Jesus was an expert at making joints, angles, slots, grooves and furrows that facilitated fitting pieces of material together without glue, mortar, or nails. He could make the most beautiful table, chair, box or chest without using one single nail or metal fastener. He shaped everything so that it ingeniously fit together. Smoothly, easily, naturally.
Imagine Jesus, the carpenter, with his hands stretched out on the beams of the cross.
As he turns his head to watch the Roman soldier who was about to crucify him . . . he probably thought for a fleeting moment, “What a shame to mar the wood with such a crude and disfiguring tool.” Just one more indignity of the cross that I had never before considered. There was much more than we know . . . much more than we have yet imagined.
“Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith (he fit it all together naturally); because of the joy that was set before him (salvation for humanity) he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, if you don’t you might become weary and faint in your own minds.”
Hebrews 12:2-3 JDB
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