Jesus
said, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross
daily, and follow Me.” We all have a
cross we are called to bear—to die to self.
When we suffer, we know that God is with us in our suffering. In Isaiah 41, God promises us that when we
pass through the water or the fire, He is with us “for I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
God commands, “Do not fear.” In
the New Testament, we hear again and again how Jesus has compassion on the
people and is compassionate toward us.
The word compassion literally means “to suffer with.” Because Christ is fully human and suffered so
much Himself, He can identify with us in our sufferings, so that when we
suffer, Jesus suffers with us. But we are also called to carry Christ’s
cross. We participate with Him in His
sufferings.
Today we look at Simon of Cyrene,
the man who literally helped Christ carry His cross. Simon was pulled from the crowd by the Roman
soldiers and compelled to help Jesus carry His cross. Jesus was too weak to carry His own
cross. He was bruised and battered and
had already lost a lot of blood. He had
been up all night. Jesus was physically
incapable of carrying His own cross.
Without Simon’s help, He may have died prior to being crucified, but
that wasn’t God’s plan for Jesus. As
Simon carried the cross with Jesus, he would’ve gotten Jesus’s blood on
him. He would have seen the pain in
Jesus’s face and the wounds in His flesh.
In his small, but crucial way, Simon participated in the sufferings of
Christ. I don’t think he slinked away in
the crowd when they got Golgotha. I
think he would’ve continued to watch the Man on the cross.
When we suffer, we are carrying
Christ’s cross. Peter tells us in I
Peter 4:12-13, “Beloved, do not be
surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though
something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share
Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is
revealed.” Suffering should dive us to
keep looking at Jesus. In the letter to
the Colossians, Paul tells us that our suffering is a continuation of Christ’s
suffering, not necessarily for our own sake, but on behalf of the Church. Colossians
1:24 “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my
flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the
sake of his body, which is the church.”
When we see our suffering as Christ’s suffering, instead of asking, “Why
me?”, we might ask, “Why not me?”. I’ve
seen people who have endured what seems to be more than their fair share of
suffering, and I wonder why my life is so easy in comparison. I had a man in one of the churches I served
who knew the Bible very well. He had
large chunks memorized. He knew how much
the Bible talks about suffering and not being surprised when it occurs, but
rather that we should expect it. He
confessed that he felt he hadn’t had to suffer much in his life. He wasn’t particularly wealthy, but he had
plenty because he lived simply and frugally.
He lived John Wesley’s words, “Make all you can, save all you can, give
all you can.” He was incredibly
generous. He took Jesus’s words literally
about taking the homeless into your home, something he did at least 4 different
times. But as he was nearing the end of
his life, he realized that his life had been relatively easy, and it caused
some discomfort in him. Now I don’t know
that he prayed to suffer, but God definitely took his discomfort away. In his final 5 years, he saw one of his sons
die from cancer. He lost his mobility
and eventually lost both legs to lack of circulation, but he never acted like
he was miserable in suffering. He
embraced it, and he joyfully embraced when it came his time to die and meet
Jesus face to face. I don’t think we
have to pray for suffering to enter our lives, although I have heard of people
doing that. Then there are the ascetics
who caused themselves suffering to identify more with Christ. Rather, we shouldn’t be surprised at
suffering when it comes, and when it does come, if we think about our
sufferings as Christ’s sufferings, we can better endure it, and even know that
there is meaning in our suffering.
We don’t know if Simon knew much about
Jesus at all. He was a pilgrim to
Jerusalem, coming for the Passover feast.
He was from Cyrene, a city in northern Libya, less than 6 miles from the
Mediterranean Sea. He was a Jew. He could’ve come from a family that had been
part of an exiled group long ago, but if we think Simon is the same as Simeon
Niger from the book of Acts, which many scholars do, then he would have been a
convert to Judaism, part of a long-standing Jewish community in that city. His dark skin may have been a factor in the
soldiers pulling him from the crowd as he would have stood out. He was the father of two sons—Alexander and
Rufus.
Why do scholars think Simon of
Cyrene is Simeon Niger? Simon and Simeon
are the same name—one is Greek and the other Hebrew. It’s no different than Joe/Joseph, Jim/James,
Dot/Dorothy, Jen/Jennifer. One reason is
that Lucius of Cyrene is also named in Acts 13.
Both men were from the same city.
They had probably been part of the same synagogue, but now they are in
Antioch. Simeon obviously is
dark-skinned and perhaps Lucius was not.
Along with Barnabas, and Manaen, who grew up in a completely different
environment with Herod the tetrarch and Saul, whom Barnabas had brought to
Antioch were the prophets and teachers of the church. If we go back to Acts 11 we find more proof
that Simeon is Simon of Cyrene. After
Stephen was martyred, persecution against Christians in Jerusalem began to be more
intense. In verse 19 we read that
believers went to Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch. Verse 20: “But there were some of them, men
of Cyprus, and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks
also, preaching the Lord Jesus.” In
other words, these Jewish background believers who had been in Jerusalem, but
who were originally from Cyprus, and Cyrene went to Antioch and started the
church there. The Jerusalem church sent
Barnabas to check it out. He did, and he
rejoiced at the thriving community in Christ he found there, so he went to
Tarsus, and got Saul, who had now become a believer and who had already spent 3
years in the desert being taught by Jesus, and took him to Antioch. They spent a year meeting and teaching with
the community at Antioch, and in verse 26, we read that “the disciples were
first called Christians at Antioch.” At
the end of the year, the Antioch Church took up an offering for the church in
Jerusalem because there was a famine in Judea.
They returned to Antioch with John
Mark. Mark is the one who tells us in
his gospel that Simon is the father of Rufus and Alexander. He would have met Simeon Niger in Antioch, so
again, more evidence that this is the same person. Paul also knows this family well, so when he
sends greetings to Rufus and his mother, who by the time Paul writes Romans,
they are in Rome, it is likely that this is now Rufus, Simon’s son, who is
grown. Paul writes Romans around 57 AD,
11 years after starting his first missionary journey. Somehow Rufus and his mom had already gone to
Rome, carrying on in the missionary tradition of Simon. Perhaps, he himself had gone, but had died by
the time Romans is written. We don’t
know what happened to Alexander. The
only Alexander mentioned is one in Ephesus, a coppersmith, who did Paul wrong,
and also was a false teacher. Hopefully,
this is not the other son of Simon!
After Paul and Barnabas return to
Antioch with John Mark, the church leaders including Simon of Cyrene, discern
through the Holy Spirit that Paul and Barnabas should be set apart for
missionary work.
We can see that Simon’s life was
radically changed from his carrying Christ’s cross. By the time we get to Acts 13, it is 13-16
years after the crucifixion of Jesus.
Simon chose not to return to Cyrene after that Passover feast. He may have been one of the 500 in the crowd
to whom Jesus appeared after He was raised from the dead. Obviously, Simon had embraced the
resurrection. He was probably a witness
at Pentecost and may have been filled with the Holy Spirit himself. He obviously had at some point. He was compelled to take the gospel to a
different place when persecution came.
Instead of going back home, he went north to Antioch taking the gospel
with him. Simon’s suffering with Christ gave him a missionary zeal to
share the gospel. It caused him to dive
deep into God’s word. It was something
that gave him a starting platform to tell others about Jesus.
When we carry the cross of Christ,
we are changed as well. It is in knowing
that our suffering is Christ’s suffering that we can better understand the
power of the resurrection. This is what
Paul says in Philippians 3:10-11. “I want to
know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation
in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and
so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” Paul had suffered so much, and yet he was
still pressing into knowing Christ in both his death and resurrection. Sometimes it is the suffering itself that
changes us and makes us more effective witnesses for Christ. In II Corinthians 1:3-5, Paul writes, “Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God
of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able
to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we
ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's
sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” Maybe you have had this experience where
coming through a major trial or tribulation, you say, “I wouldn’t want to go
through that ever again, but if I had to do my life over, I wouldn’t change
that because without that experience, I wouldn’t be who I today. Because I went through X, I can help people
who are struggling with the same thing or similar thing. I can share how God brought me through that,
and how God is faithful and never gives up on us.” Our sufferings can give us the same zeal to
tell others about Christ. We can even be
witnesses in the midst of suffering by the way we offer our sufferings in
solidarity with Christ, by not becoming bitter or vengeful or blaming God even
in the midst of pain and grief.
Finally,
when join our cross to Christ’s we can look forward to the same joy that Christ
had which is our eternal life with Him in the new heavens and new earth. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way in
Hebrews 13:12-14, “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city
gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13 Let us, then, go to him outside the
camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. 14 For
here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that
is to come.” We don’t get to choose what
cross we bear. We may be compelled to
carry the cross, like Simon was, but whatever our cross, we can know that
Christ is with us in our suffering, and we are with Him in His. Jesus didn’t bear the cross alone, and
neither do we. We can offer our suffering
up to God. In carrying our cross, which
is really Christ’s cross, we become more like Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment