Simon of Cyrene

 

Simon of Cyrene

 

Matthew 27:32, NIV - As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross.

 

I encourage you to watch/listen to the song first today.  It is a dramatization of the scripture.

Song:  Watch the Lamb – Ray Boltz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNT1AThOgME

 

Like many Christian songs, “Watch the Lamb” takes dramatic license to tell a powerful story.  Simon is named by Matthew, Mark, and Luke as the man ordered to carry Jesus’s cross, the assumption being that Jesus had been too badly brutalized by this time to carry the cross any further.  The presence of Simon’s two sons in the song is derived from Mark’s account who names Simon as the father of Alexander and Rufus.  We don’t know if the two boys were there to see their father carry Jesus’s cross, but it makes for a powerful song.  Some Christian traditions say that both Alexander and Rufus became missionaries and that Rufus is the same early Christian leader greeted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 16:13. 

In any case, this song does a masterful job at putting us inside the story of a man who not only witnessed the crucifixion, but was forced to participate in it.  Almost without fail, the song draws tears from my eyes since I first heard it decades ago.  It gets to me because I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to be Simon that day, to be pulled into a drama that you had no knowledge of before that day.  It was no doubt an experience that would change his life forever.  It would change the course of his family forever.  All this happened because of something Simon was forced to do, not something he chose to do. 

I think of so many people I know personally whose lives were also irrevocably changed by experiences that were forced upon them (soldiers who were drafted, women who were raped, children that were abused, etc.).  I don’t pretend to understand that kind of suffering, but I am reminded that it exists every moment of every day when I read about Simon.  I’m also reminded that God in the flesh, a man we call Jesus, chose to enter into that kind of horrific suffering.  God did that, not because He was forced to do so, but voluntarily.  He could have stopped it, but as Max Lucado famously said, “He Chose the Nails” (2017). 

In this encounter with Simon, we see the suffering of humanity and the suffering of God meet.  Wherever we see people being forced to suffer, we can be assured that Jesus is there in the midst of it.  When we suffer, Jesus is there.  Likewise, Simon reminds us that we are invited to enter into Christ’s suffering.  Though it is not pleasant, allowing ourselves to be drawn into the suffering of Jesus is somehow redemptive in ways that are hard to put into words.  It is part of the reason that the church devoted a whole season in the Church liturgical year (Lent), to doing just that, considering the suffering of Christ for us.  Lent is a time to allow our suffering and God’s suffering to become intermingled, like that of Simon and Jesus.  This not only prepares us for the powerful and joyous celebration of Easter, but it somehow, in the mysterious grace of God, holds the possibility of our suffering being transformed into our freedom from all that would hold us down. 

 

Question:  What does the experiencing the story of Simon of Cyrene do for you?

 

Prayer:  God, thank you for entering into our suffering and for inviting us to enter into Yours.  Though we might not feel thankful for such an invitation, we thank you for it nonetheless.  May the intermingling of Your suffering and our suffering bring redemption and transformation to our souls.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for abused children, battered spouses, and others you know who have been forced to suffer through no choice of their own.