The pilgrim's burden falls
The greatest scene in Pilgrim's Progress
Christian has been carrying his burden since the beginning of the book. It is a great burden — Bunyan is precise about this — bound to his back, so heavy that he cannot stand straight under it. He has tried to be rid of it. He has sought help at the house of the Interpreter. He has climbed the Hill of Difficulty. Nothing removes it.
Then he comes to a place where there stands a cross, and a little below in the bottom a sepulchre.
As he comes up to the cross, his burden looses from his shoulders and falls from his back, and begins to tumble, and so continues to do, till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart: He hath given me rest by his sorrow and life by his death.
Three Shining Ones appear and address him: Peace be to thee. Thy sins are forgiven. They strip him of his rags and clothe him in new garments. They put a mark on his forehead. They give him a roll — sealed — with instructions to read it as he walks and deliver it at the Celestial Gate.
Christian gives three leaps for joy and goes on singing.
The scene is simple. It is the simplest scene in the book. Bunyan uses no elaborate allegory — the cross is the cross, the burden is the burden, the falling is the falling.
Three hundred and fifty years later, readers still report reading it and weeping. Still report that something in them recognizes exactly what Christian's shoulders felt like before and after.
“He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death. Then he gave three leaps for joy, and went on singing.”
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678 AD
“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you, and learn from me, for I am humble and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
He gave three leaps for joy.
Bunyan does not describe what Christian thinks about the cross or what he understands doctrinally about atonement. He describes what Christian's body does when the burden falls: leaps.
The unburdened body leaps. That is the whole theology in one physical image.
Christian has been carrying this burden from the first page. The reader has watched him struggle under it — bent, exhausted, unable to stand straight. And then it falls. And he leaps.
If you have ever had the burden fall — if you have ever known the specific lightness of something that was crushing you being removed — you know exactly what Bunyan is describing.
If you have not, this is the invitation: come to the cross and see what falls.
The lightness is still available. The leaping is still possible.
Come back to the cross. Stand there. Wait for the falling.
It falls.