Following Jesus (blog)

I've always thought that Simon of Cyrene led the sad procession to Golgotha, bearing the weight of the cross for our Savior Jesus. But Luke tells us that he followed behind Jesus.Simon was "on his way in from the country" (23:26) when some Roman soldiers grabbed him and forced him to carry the heavy beam. How disorienting, to find himself suddenly in the middle of a "large number of people" all following Jesus, "including women who mourned and wailed for him" (23:27). Jesus himself, beaten and bleeding, staggered resolutely up ahead.'Who is this man, and what has he done?' Simon must have wondered as he also staggered along, under the weight of the wood. People don't mourn openly for criminals, and they don't follow them (at least not publicly).Crowds of people had followed Jesus while He taught and healed, at times even pressing in on Him, but in the end they deserted Him. Jesus' own disciples, who knew "with certainty" (John 17:8) that He was the Messiah, fled when He was arrested.But now, on the way to His execution, people again followed Jesus.I imagine they did so at a distance this time. There was nothing they would or could do to stop what was happening. Did they feel at all responsible? I wonder.I wonder too if, while he walked and the people around him talked, Simon began to get some sense of the injustice of it all. Simon of Cyrene may have been the only one to literally feel the weight of his own sin as he helped to kill Jesus, an innocent man.He carried the beam for our Lord's crucifixion, but Jesus carried the real weight, of the sin of all the world. Only the Son of God could bear that Cross.In His three years of ministry, fasting from His own wants and needs, that bleeding man up ahead of Simon had died a little bit every day as He went about lifting the burdens of others and laying them on Himself, a crushing weight made all the more painful by those who misunderstood and misjudged Him, mocked and threatened Him, and now finally tortured and killed Him."He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering," the prophet Isaiah wrote about Jesus (53:3). "Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows...We all, like sheep, have gone astray...and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (53:4,6).Once He was nailed to the Cross, the people who had followed Jesus "stood watching" Him, while the rulers "sneered at him" and the soldiers "mocked him" (Luke 23:35-6). I wonder how long Simon stood by with them.We all stand by with them, appalled to see the towering specter of our sin crushing Jesus there. What makes it bearable is knowing that it was God's plan all along. Jesus had to go to the Cross, alone, for their sins and for ours. It was the only way to save us.Isaiah goes on to say that though "it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand" (53:10).Jesus died for our sins, but He also rose to life again, so that we can repent and be forgiven, and so that we can truly follow Him and be with Him forever in eternity.We remember that and we rejoice at Easter!But for now, in Lent, and especially on Good Friday, we stand quietly, helplessly with Simon and the others beneath the Cross, gazing up and feeling the weight of the wood, hammer and nails in our hands.