By WALTER ALBRITTON
RELIGION —
Good fortune was mine last Sunday at Saint James Church on Vaughn Road. A young man by the name of Wyatt Manuel was my teammate in an assignment given to us in the Palm Sunday Cantata. Wyatt stepped up to the pulpit and read several verses from Matthew’s Gospel describing the cruel and humiliating treatment of Jesus by Roman soldiers just before they led Jesus away to crucify him. Wyatt concluded his reading with this verse: “And as they went out, they came upon a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; this man they compelled to carry his cross.”
My task was to offer helpful reflections about Simon, a rather challenging assignment since the Bible tells us only three things about Simon. He was from Cyrene; he had two sons named Alexander and Rufus and he was forced to carry the cross for Jesus. After pondering the matter, I could think of nothing to say. So, remembering that Jesus promised the Holy Spirit would “teach us all things,” I began praying, asking the Inner Voice to reveal to me what “might” have happened to Simon after he carried the cross for Jesus. And I will now tell you what I was told.
There is no way Simon was a random choice, a passerby who just happened to be the nearest person to Jesus when he stumbled and fell under the weight of the cross. No, it was the will of God for Simon to be the one forced to carry Jesus’ cross. There is no way Simon was in the wrong place at the wrong time; no, he was in the right place at the right time by the will of God. Why Simon? Very likely because Simon was African; Cyrene was a town in Libya, Africa, hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem. Simon may have been the only African to witness the crucifixion of Jesus. Perhaps choosing Simon was God’s way of saying, “My Son is dying on that cross for everybody, all people everywhere.”
There is also no way Simon was not radically changed while he was helping Jesus carry that cross. He would have been beside Jesus, touching Jesus, looking at Jesus, only inches away from the scourged body and the bloody face of Jesus. Very likely Jesus, though struggling to breathe, said “thank you” to Simon. And when he gazed into the eyes of Jesus, it dawned on him that this wounded man, this stranger, loved him. In that moment, Simon was being changed by the captivating love of God. He would never be the same.
Matthew does not mention Simon again, but we know Simon carried the cross to Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. So Simon was right there, watching Jesus being nailed to the cross and hoisted up in the air between two thieves on similar crosses. He saw the blood of Jesus spilling on the ground. He heard Jesus praying that unbelievable prayer for the cruel soldiers who were torturing him. Very likely Simon saw John, and Jesus’ mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, standing nearby crying. I can see him walking over to John and asking, “Who is this man? He is no ordinary man because something happened to me while I was close to him.” And I can hear John say, “His name is Jesus. Come home with us and I’ll tell you how he has changed my life.”
It is very likely that during the next few weeks Simon learned so much about Jesus that he followed the crowd that gathered on a Sunday known now as Pentecost. There, Simon was mesmerized by the preaching of Peter and knelt with 3,000 others who repented of their sins and were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. And having received the Holy Spirit, Simon went home and said to his wife, “Honey, I don’t know what happened to me when I was carrying that cross, but God raised him from the dead and he has saved me from my sins and filled me with his Spirit. Now I want you to help me raise our boys, Alexander and Rufus, to be disciples of Jesus.” And together, they did that, and lived to see their sons become leaders of the church as the good news of Jesus spread across the world.
Very likely, Simon never tired of telling others how the man whose heavy cross he carried to Golgotha changed his life. And over 2,000 years later, that Man is still changing the lives of people who get close to him and embrace his transforming love.