A Tale of Two Carpenters

A Good Friday reflection on what it took to build the cross.

The most common problem to solve in carpentry and woodworking is how to join two pieces of wood at a right angle. More techniques, tools and products have been devoted to this task than to any other. Joining boards edge to edge, or even end to end is relatively simple in comparison. 

The reason for this is because wood has a grain direction. To connect any two boards at a right angle means you will be going against the grain. This is not the case with steel, where two pieces can be forged or welded in any direction without consequence. If the joints are strong, they will hold. But with wood, it’s not just the connection that matters - it’s all about the stress that a joint will endure.

Wood is a natural product - it comes from trees. Lumber that is considered suitable for use in building comes from the trunk of the tree, up to the first main branches. Beyond that it’s really only useful for small projects, or firewood. 

Trees are an image of God’s most faithful creations. Since the first ones planted in Eden, they have anchored their roots in the earth, and stretched their branches towards God above. Freely they gave their fruit, and willingly offered their leaves to Adam and Eve, though they were not suitable for the task; and since the fall, they have willingly acted as a silent vessel of sacrifice, to carry the pleasing aromas heavenward. 

God reveals Himself to Moses in the form of a tree, but their presence is ubiquitous in so many of the places in the Bible, sometimes as places of rest and shade, where we think of them as trees - and other times as the sacrificial bodies of human protection - in Noah’s ark, on Isaac’s back as he climbs the mountain, in lintels and the doorposts of the Hebrew slaves - covered in the blood of the lamb.

Even the Ark of the covenant, which holds the budded branch of Aaron’s staff, is itself made of boards of acacia - covered in the purest of gold. These are details that aren’t often mentioned in a Sunday sermon, but they perk my interest as someone who spends their days working with wood. 

And of course, they would not have been unnoticed by the greatest teacher - who also was a carpenter. Jesus, who told us to consider the lilies of the field, would not have failed to consider the use of lumber in the scriptures. Perhaps He spoke of such things with His earthly father Joseph, who also was a carpenter. If Jesus thought at twelve years old that His father should have known to find Him in the Temple, it may have been because they spent their time discussing God’s word as they worked with their hands. Joseph was a descendant of the great Psalmist David, and of Solomon, the wisest man in the world. 

But there is another carpenter in the Gospels, likely despised for being a roman, or for betraying his own people by working for them. This carpenter worked on that age old problem of how to best fix two pieces of wood at a ninety-degree angle. Take two planks, each of them with that strong, straight grain, that stretched from the earth up towards the heavens. One of them remains in that same orientation, but the other is going to be forced to remain in the direction farthest from its natural state of being. That tree could stretch itself out from east to west, but it’s never going to point towards heaven again. 

That joint needs to be strong, because if it fails to hold its load, the carpenter will be in trouble. But the strength is not needed for a noble task, like keeping out the floodwaters, or holding up a roof. The strength is needed to hold up the body of a dying man. It’s an instrument of murder, a thing of evil. But it was absolutely necessary for God’s plan; and therefore, a man had to craft that wooden cross. Most crosses are made with a half-lap joint, and that’s just about the best way to fix the two pieces in place. It’s likely that the same joint was used for the real thing as we use for the decorative ones today. 

We can’t know what the man who crafted that cross thought about his work, whether he relished the thought of its ultimate purpose, or if he disconnected his mind and emotions because it was just a necessary task to feed his family. Someone, somewhere up the chain of command intended it for evil. But like in all things, God intended it for good. 

Did the carpenter that hung on that cross appreciate the strength of that joint? Did the carpenter that built it realize that he was making it for one of his own? Did he, or will he, someday hear “well done, good and faithful servant” for fitting that joint so well? 

There may be a deep symbolic significance in exploring this line of thought. But even if that’s not so, the cross was real. Someone made it. Someone forged the nails. Someone cut the tomb, someone wove the garment that was torn, and likely someone else wove the one that wrapped Christ’s body. Someone stored the sour vinegar, in a jar that someone made, and served it on a sponge that was gathered from the sea. 

The chances are that the man who put that cross together took his job very seriously, and took great care to make sure that those two planks fit together well, and would hold up the weight of a man. But he likely had no clue how “crucial” his effort would be, and how much weight would truly bear down against the strength of his handiwork. 

And in the same way, we have no idea how necessary and vital our everyday work is to enacting God’s plan. But perhaps we can begin to consider what it means to do everything as if we are working for the Lord - even if it’s something as commonplace as nailing two boards together.