Crucifixion was outlawed in the early fourth century shortly after Constantine established Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire.  Subsequently, the understanding of how it worked, why people died from being suspended from their arms on a cross, was lost. But human beings seem to have a sad but unlimited creativity at devising torture and the “art” of crucifixion was rediscovered in the West in the 20th century by the Nazis in Germany.

An anatomy lesson: The arms and shoulders are only connected to the rest of the skeleton at the base of the neck by the collar bones. The rest of the shoulder girdle floats on a pad of muscle and is covered and held in place by muscle. Those muscles are involved in breathing. When a human being is suspended by the arms for any period of time, it paralyzes the muscles of expiration, making it possible to breath , but impossible to breathe out. So if the pressure of hanging is not relieved the person will slowly suffocate much as people with asthma or emphysema can, from not being able to empty their lungs.

Affixing the feet to the base of the cross only prolonged the torment. The person crucified can push up on the nails in the feet, rotating them painfully in the puncture wounds, lift some of the pressure off of the shoulders and ease the breathing somewhat, until pain, exhaustion, hunger, thirst and stress force the body to sag down again against the nails in the hands. It often took days for people to die on a cross.

The Priests and Pharisees did not want the crucified bodies of Jesus and his companions to mar the celebration of the Passover, so they asked Pilate to have their legs broken. This act hastened the end because the person could no longer push up on the legs and the suffocation proceeded more quickly. But when the Romans came upon Jesus, they found him already dead. On of the soldiers stabbed his right side with a spear and John the Evangelist testified: “and at once blood and water came out. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.)” In a book called A Doctor at Calvary Louis Barbet examines the details of the crucifixion from the gospels and attempt to pull together a medical  analysis of how Jesus died. He believes that Jesus died of a kind of heart failure, caused by a pericardial effusion where the sack that contains the heart fills up with fluid that prevents the heart from filling and pumping blood. This explains the outflow of blood and water medically. It would also explain why Jesus died so swiftly compared to his companions.

The people of Jesus’ time and the people hearing the Gospel of Mark for the first time would not need any lessons about the horror of crucifixion. They had all seen forests of crosses dotting the hillsides, would continue to see them for the next three hundred years.

So when Jesus says in today’s Gospel: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” those listening to him might have done well to shriek, cover their ears and run away. This could not have been a trivial saying to the people of the first centuries of Christianity. It is a painfully radical saying, and it should and probably does make us gasp a little in fear

When John says in his Gospel in his voice as a witness at the foot of the Cross, that Jesus bowed his head and gave over his spirit, he is really saying that Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost are one event, all simultaneously achieved in the moment of Jesus death on Calvary; that the universe tilted on its pivot at that moment and everything was instantaneously changed.

The cross then becomes this membrane, one atom thick between death, resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel Jesus is telling us to live at this membrane--to be continually and repeatedly experiencing, yes, the pain but also the Glory of his death, resurrection and gift of the Spirit played out in the most mundane instants of our lives in his service.

 So what is the meaning of this saying for us and how can we live this out in our daily lives?

On Ash Wednesday, Melissa quoted the Archbishop Rowan Williams. At his formal seating as 104th Archbishop of Canterbury he spoke about Jesus and the life of the Church.

“The one great purpose of the Church’s existence is to share that bread of life; to hold open in its words and actions a place where we can be with Jesus, and to be channels for his free, unanxious, utterly demanding, grown-up love.”

As Melissa said that day: “For all of its flaws, for all of its inconvenience, for all of its warts—and there are many, for all the embarrassment it can cause us, our center is also held together through life in community. It is really true, as our Sunday bulletin says, that you can relax and let this community carry you toward the center—and that at times you will be carrying someone else. At the center is giving over our lives to each other in this community for the church community is where Christ Jesus is mediated to us.”

So how do we carry our cross? We live with Jesus and we live with each other: utterly simple, utterly challenging, when all of the cares and struggles of our lives: the economy, wars and rumors of wars, the suffering of the poor and homeless, the challenge of climate change, the cry for justice here and abroad, drain us of hope and challenge our focus. We have, over and over, to return to the simplicity of our faith, to the essence of our Baptismal Covenant: to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.

This is what it means for us to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus. This is what it means to live and this transparent membrane between Death, Resurrection and Pentecost.

St. Julian of Norwich, like many of her contemporaries in the fourteenth century, longed to have a knowledge of the passion of Christ--to be with him in his sufferings. In one of her Visions, Christ grants her this gift: for one brief second she has a glimpse of the darkness and terror which is then swallowed up in the joy and exaltation Christ feels at having offered himself for humankind: If there were more that I could have done for you,” he says, “I would have done it gladly.”

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