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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
I am told that my maternal grandfather repeatedly warned my mother and her three siblings that what they would do in public would get back to him, due to his connections in the community. Yet, my grandfather may or may not technically have been aware of what is called the “small world problem” and the related idea of “six degrees of separation”; to be sure, actor Kevin Bacon, who is often associated with the “six degrees” concept, had not yet been born. Regardless, the idea of people’s interconnectedness is important tonight in our final consideration of the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark’s unique contributions to the whole narrative of our Lord’s Passion for us. While the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Luke also mention that Simon of Cyrene carried Jesus’s cross, St. Mark, who overall gives few personal names, alone mentions that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. By that mention, Alexander and Rufus are usually thought to have been known to both St. Mark and his original hearers or readers (for example, Taylor, ad loc Mark 15:21, p.588), one or the other or both of whom were likely in Rome (confer 1 Peter 5:13 and various church fathers). St. Mark’s unique mention of Simon of Cyrene’s being the father of Alexander and Rufus is relevant to us, who perhaps are also interconnected to them through Christ and His Body, the Church.
Jesus Christ is usually thought to have carried a part, or all, of His cross by Himself, at least initially (confer John 19:17), for such apparently was the law and so the usual practice, publicly humiliating the “criminal” and trying to deter others from committing the “crime”. That “they”, the Roman soldiers (Brown, Death, 911), who in the immediately‑preceding verses had mocked, struck, and spit on Jesus (Mark 15:16-20), suddenly decided to be merciful to Jesus seems unlikely (Brown, Death, 914), but, more-likely, Jesus was so weakened by His mistreatment to that point, after which it was not uncommon for “criminals” to die (Mann, ad loc Mark 15:21, p.645), that the Roman soldiers had no other choice but to find someone else to carry Jesus’s cross (Matthew 27:32), as they did find with Simon of Cyrene, apparently a total stranger who was passing-by coming in from the “country” (or, “fields”). Simon may have been an ethnic Jew or a convert to Judaism, or he may have been a Gentile (and those details relate to whether Simon and his son’s skin was moderately or more-darkly colored); Simon may have been visiting Jerusalem for the Passover (a nearly 800-mile-one‑way trip that might have taken more than one month [Neighborhood Church]), or he may have previously moved to the Jerusalem area from the city of Cyrene, the capital of the Roman province of Cyrenaica, which today roughly corresponds to Libya, on the northeast coast of the continent of Africa, where at the time there was a large Jewish population and later also Christians (confer Acts 2:10; 6:9; 11:19-20; 13:1). Regardless, the Roman soldiers put on Simon and compelled him to lift up and carry after Jesus (Luke 23:26) a part or all of Jesus’s “cross”: today that “cross” is thought likely to have been and is depicted as only the “patibulum”, the horizontal beam of the cross, carried behind the nape of the neck over the shoulders like a yoke with arms wrapped around it, although traditionally it was thought and depicted as both the “patibulum” and the “stipes”, the vertical stake that went into the ground.
Some Bible commentators suggest that, if Simon were a Jew, he might have sinned in traveling too far or possibly working on a holy day. And, whether or not Simon sinned in that way, though the Divinely‑inspired St. Mark’s narration seems intentionally to echo Jesus’s earlier teaching, after His first prophecy of His passion and resurrection, about His followers needing to come after Him, deny themselves, and take up their crosses and follow Him (Mark 8:34; confer Matthew 27:32), Simon hardly took up his own cross, for the Roman soldiers compelled Simon to take up Jesus’s cross (Brown, Death, 929). By nature, Simon of Cyrene is no better or worse than any of the rest of us. We all are sinful by nature, and so we commit countless actual sins, including breaking God’s Commandment regarding His holy day and failing to come after Jesus, to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses, and to follow Him as we should. On account of our sinful nature and all our actual sin, we deserve nothing but death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning. When, called and so enabled by God, we repent, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all of our sins, for Jesus’s sake.
Once they got to Golgotha, Simon in a sense disappeared (Taylor, ad loc Mark 15:21-41, p.587), and we hear no more about him. Maybe Simon stayed for the crucifixion, maybe he did not stay. Maybe Simon’s sons Rufus and Alexander were with him when he was coming in from the country, and maybe they stayed with their mother or someone else, or maybe they came with Simon to Golgotha. (If Simon’s sons made the trip from Cyrene to Jerusalem for the Passover, they may well have been at least 12-years-old, as Jesus was when we know for sure that Jesus went with His parents from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover [Luke 2:41-42]). Regardless, we easily can imagine what Simon and possibly his sons saw and heard even on the journey to Golgatha alone, and we can easily imagine that the signs and sounds of the event did not ever leave them (Neighborhood Church). Simon and possibly his sons’ contact with Jesus is usually thought to have led to their conversion to the Christian faith, perhaps even their presence at Pentecost (Acts 2:10), and the prominence of the sons in the Church (for example, Lenski, ad loc Mark 15:21, p.701; Neighborhood Church). So, even though the names “Alexander” and “Rufus” were apparently quite common, a first‑century vessel for buried bones has an inscription that is thought to refer to Simon’s son Alexander, and the Divinely‑inspired St. Paul in his letter to the saints in Rome is thought to refer to Rufus and his mother (Romans 16:13). They would have been, if not first-hand, then at least second-hand witnesses to the truth of St. Mark’s account.
Exploiting a potential ambiguity in St. Mark’s account, a false teaching claimed that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Jesus’s place, not that, if that were true, Simon of Cyrene’s death would have atoned for the sins of the whole world. Rather, as St. Mark clearly intends to report (confer Mark 15:15, 34), Jesus Himself was crucified, and, as God in human flesh, His death did atone for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins. More than Simon of Cyrene’s helping Jesus by Simon’s carrying Jesus’s cross, Jesus helped Simon of Cyrene and all people by Jesus’s dying on that cross (Heschmeyer). Jesus did not deaden His pain by wine mixed with myrrh, but, out of His great love for us, He fully experienced the crucifixion, more mocking, and even abandonment by the Father, however that is possible in the mystery of the Holy Trinity, so that we would not have to suffer that separation. Dead and buried, He descended into hell, the third day rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, Who dispenses forgiveness of sins for Jesus’s sake through His Word and Sacraments.
If indeed they converted to the Christian faith, Simon of Cyrene and his family would have known the blessings of the Gospel, both read and preached to groups such as this one and applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are the Body and Blood of Christ given and shed for them and for us for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Forgiveness received by faith in these ways transforms us, not only giving us peace and joy but also enabling us to come after Jesus, deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him. Our crosses are the sufferings that we experience as Christians living our Christian faith in this world; such crosses reveal God’s love toward us and are part of His leading us through this world to eternal life, so we bear them patiently and thereby also are a good example of patience for and encouragement others (Pieper, III:69, 71, 73). As with Simon of Cyrene, we do not know precisely when such crosses will come or exactly what such crosses will consist of, but ultimately we are not ashamed of the Lord in whose name we bear such crosses (Voelz, ad loc Mark 15:21, p.1147). As we sang in the Office Hymn, “Pain or loss, / Or shame or cross, / Shall not from my Savior move me / Since He deigns to love me” (Lutheran Service Book 743:4). Someone else like Simon of Cyrene’s carrying the load for Jesus, a King, may have been fitting (Voelz, ad loc Mark 15:21 p.1145), but, as we heard in Sunday’s Gospel Reading, Jesus came to be servant and slave of all and calls us likewise to be servant and slave of all (Mark 10:43-44).
In some sense, we each have to bear our own load (Galatians 6:5), that is, take responsibility for our own actions, but, in some sense, we also help bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2; confer Scaer, CLD VIII:9), for example, pointing those weighed down by temptations and sins to Christ, Who has borne those burdens for them, Who calls them to Himself, and Who, when they come, gives them rest (Matthew 11:28). We can imagine a converted Simon of Cyrene, Alexander, and Rufus telling of their experience with Christ to others: their family, friends, coworkers, classmates (Neighborhood Church), and we can be those who tell of our experience with Christ to others: our family, friends, coworkers, and classmates. We need not fear our interconnectedness’ reporting back bad things about us, but we use our interconnectedness to report good things about God, whereby His Gospel spreads, to the glory of His Holy Name.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +