The section of the Gospel that is offered in the lectionary this coming Sunday (Mark 16:21–28) contains a striking paradox. As the author of this passage portrays Jesus, looking forward to the public shaming that he will experience on the cross, he places on his lips a call to his followers, to take up the cross themselves. The cross is at the centre of the story that the evangelists tell—and at the heart of Christian faith. And yet that cross subjects Jesus to the shame of being subjected to this degrading punishment.
The cross is introduced by Jesus himself, when he teaches his followers “that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (16:21). So important is this teaching, that Jesus repeats it twice more, following the threefold appearance of this prediction in one of Matthew’s key sources, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus, Messiah”, which we know as Mark’s Gospel (Mark 9:31; 10:33–34).
So Jesus restates this briefly: “the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised” (Matt 17:23); and then, with more details: “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised” (Matt 20:18–19).
I don’t think that these three predictions were spoken, historically, by Jesus, as he made his way towards Jerusalem. Rather, the author of a placed them in this strategic place in the centre of his narrative (Mark 8:27–38). The author of “the book of origins of Jesus, Messiah”, which we know as Matthew’s Gospel, sees the value of this repetition, and follows his source.
These statements mark the turn in the story from Galilee, where the earlier activity of Jesus took place (Matt 4:12—18:35), towards Jerusalem, where the final days of Jesus will play out (19:1—28:15). The dynamic of the narrative indicates that, as Jesus leaves behind the days of preaching and teaching, healing and casting out demons, his focus turns to the confrontation that he knows lies in store for him.
The public nature of crucifixion was humiliating and shaming. The typical process of crucifixion involved moment after moment of humiliation, undermining any sense of honour that the victim had, increasing the sense of public shame that they were experiencing.
In the Roman world, crucifixion was variously identified as a punishment for slaves (Cicero, In Verrem 2.5.168), bandits (Josephus, War 5.449-451), prisoners of war (Josephus, War 5.451), and political rebels (Josephus, Ant. 17.295). These were people whose situations or actions had generated shame.
In the case of Jesus, he is accused of treason through the inference that he is King of the Jews—a claim that was anathema to the Romans (John 19:12)—and he is crucified in the company of political rebels (Mark 15:27; Matt 27:38; the term used, lēstēs, is the one most often found in the writings of Josephus to denote a political rebel).
A public trial, followed by a public execution on the cross, was a ritual in which the accused person was shamed, through a public ritual of status degradation. Cicero, in speaking as the counsel of Rabinio, a man accused of treason, asserted that “the ignominy of a public trial is a miserable thing” and described a public execution as “the assembly being polluted by the contagion of an executioner … [exhibiting] traces of nefarious wickedness” (Pro Rabinio 11, 16).
I have explored the humiliation and shaming inherent in the act of crucifixion in more detail in a blog at
And yet, immediately after he spoke this prophetic word, Jesus issued his disciples with a call to take up their crosses themselves: “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24). He invites them—indeed, he commands them—to enter into the public shame that he will experience in his own crucifixion.
In the narratives that recount the crucifixion of Jesus, it is not so much the physical torment of Jesus which is highlighted (although, admittedly, a slow death by suffocation whilst hanging on a cross for hours, even days, was a terrible fate). Rather, it is the various ways in which Jesus was shamed: he was spat upon, physically struck on the face and the head, verbally ridiculed and insulted, and treated contemptuously.
This is the way of Jesus; and the way of his followers. Instead of saving their life, the followers of Jesus are instructed to lose their life (16:25). Instead of aiming to “gain the whole world”, and thereby “forfeit their life”, a follower is, by implication, to let go of all hopes of “gaining the world” (16:25–26). To gain the world was presumably referring to occupying a position of power, prestige, and popularity—precisely the kind of issues that later writers, Matthew and Luke, reflected in their more detailed accounts of the testing of Jesus in the wilderness. (See https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/johntsquires.com/2019/03/05/a-testing-time-forty-days-in-the-wilderness-1/)
Then, Jesus specifies the sense of shame that is involved in “taking up your cross” and “losing your life”, but he turns the tables as he declares that “the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done” (16:27).
This reversal of fortune, repaying everyone for their deeds, reflects the shame, in God’s eyes, of rejecting Jesus. (The way this saying is expressed in Mark’s earlier version is clearer in this regard; see Mark 8:38.) Here is the paradox: to gain honour, Jesus had to be subjected to the shame of the cross.
Likewise, to gain honour as a disciple following Jesus, a person must take up the shameful instrument of punishment (the cross), lay aside all desire to gain prestigious and powerful positions of honour, give up any claim on life itself, and (as Jesus later asserts), live as a servant, being willing to be dishonoured for the sake of the shame of the Gospel.
And that’s the paradox of discipleship that this passage illuminates.
An Informed Faith 