A Broken Heart

Pastor’s Epistle—October 2024

The second in our series of biblical woodcuts by Gustave Doré takes as its subject Mark 15:21—

They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.

Mark’s is the shortest and likely the oldest of the four canonical Christian Gospels, one that starts in media res and leaps breathlessly from each event in Jesus’ life to the next. The author’s conjunction of choice is “and immediately!” Were one so inclined, one could memorize Mark’s Gospel without overmuch effort and preach it on streetcorners. Such was probably Mark’s aim.

Whereas John’s Gospel makes the point that Christ carried His own Cross, Mark clearly states that the Romans compelled an innocent passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the Cross for Him. This verse has the hallmarks of eyewitness testimony, pointing out Simon’s sons Alexander and Rufus as characters who presumably would’ve been familiar to Mark’s community.

One may easily harmonize Mark with John. The Via Dolorosa isn’t overlong, but Jesus was in no shape to carry a heavy Cross. He had been beaten and flogged, the latter no mere whipping but a terrible flesh-tearing scourge that would often kill victims through blood loss and shock. He may well have been fatally wounded before the brief walk from the Fortress Antonia to Calvary.

While Scripture remains silent about Christ falling along the way, tradition holds that He fell between three and seven times. Likely He carried not the entire Cross but the crossbeam, which would then be affixed to the upright. That alone would have been heavy enough. It’s entirely plausible that He’d have started out forced to carry His Cross, only to collapse under its weight, at which point the Romans pulled poor Simon into the narrative of the Passion. Who’d have thought his morning would involve the man in deicide?

Again, in the woodcut, Christ is the central figure, fallen to the ground yet noble in bearing, illuminated by an internal celestial light, while the Romans linger sneeringly in the shadows, their spears menacing the Crucifixion to come. Simon seems especially muscular and heroic, looking to Christ, whose own face shows gratitude and blessing.

Typically crucifixion kills a person through suffocation, with the victim’s exhausted broken body asphyxiating under its own weight. But in the Gospel accounts, Christ dies suddenly, speaking coherently to the last, before perishing with a final pronouncement and a cry. Such is not the result of a slow smothering.

A heavy impact—such as suffered in a car crash, or perhaps falling under a heavy crossbeam multiple times—can rupture the pericardium around the heart so that it fills up with fluid, crushing the organ within for a dramatic demise. This would explain the manner of Jesus’ expiry, as well as the detail that His pierced heart discharged “blood and water” (John 19:34).

In other words, while the Scriptures remain silent on how and when Christ might have fallen, forensic evidence makes plausible the scenario that falling under the Cross is in fact the act that killed Him.