The Reluctant Cross-Bearer

By Debie Thomas

For the next three weeks, The 8th Day will feature Good Friday reflections I've given at my church over the past few years.  This week, a meditation on Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus carry his cross.

           Jesus has fallen down, and the drama of Good Friday is at a standstill.  The Roman soldiers whose job it is to get him executed fear they're falling behind schedule.  Worse, they fear the "King of the Jews" might die on the road, ruining the spectacle they've planned up ahead.  They've tried mocking and hitting him.  But it's clear that Jesus is too weak to take another step on his own.

           Enter Simon.  According to the Gospels, he was a pilgrim from Africa, newly arrived in Jerusalem. We have no reason to believe he knew anything about Jesus.  He was just a foreigner in a strange city, an unlucky guy who ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

           Whatever his background, we know for sure that Simon was forced to help Jesus.  He wanted no part in the cross' pain and scandal, no share in the defilement of another man's blood.  But he had been conscripted under Roman law to endure a "mile" of work, and he had no choice but to obey orders.

           In our culture, we admire people who choose to bear particular crosses.  The surgeon who gives up an affluent career to start a clinic in rural India.  The Ivy Leaguer who gives her best years away to Habitat for Humanity.  The renowned journalist who risks his career and his safety to expose corruption or injustice.  These are people we can get behind.  People whose lives we're quick to champion.

           But Simon isn't one of them.  In him, we confront another kind of cross-bearer, one whose story raises hard questions about suffering.  What does it mean to carry a cross we don't choose?  A cross that isn't even ours to bear?

           In Simon's case, Christian tradition has found ways to dodge this question.  A lot of Lenten literature assumes that Simon experienced a conversion along the way to Golgotha.  That somehow, in those brief but intense moments of proximity to Jesus, his eyes and his heart were opened.

           I won't deny this possibility.  Maybe Simon's eyes were opened.  Maybe by the time he made it to the top of that hill, he was a believer, a changed man.  It could have happened.

           But?  But I hope it didn't.  For my sake and for yours, I hope Simon's experience was messier.  Slower.  More complicated.

           As I reflect on Simon's life, I wonder many things: once that cross was on his shoulder, what did he choose next?  Did he walk up that hill in bitterness?  Was he consumed by the sheer injustice of the thing?  Did the loudness of his "Why me?" and his "How could God let this happen?" fill all the space inside his head? Or did he find room for compassion, too? 

           I would love to say that every time I enter into another person's suffering, I enter out of love.  But I would be lying.  The truth is, it isn't always love that compels me to act.  Sometimes it's fear, or helplessness.  Sometimes it's a cocky desire to prove my importance to the world.     

           If you can relate, then Simon has something to offer you.  He entered Jesus' story to save his own hide, not knowing how this one act — borne of nothing particularly honorable —  would ricochet over the years of his life, or secure him a place in history.  

           But the story continues.  What happened to Simon when he reached Golgotha? Did he feel good about sharing in Jesus' suffering?  Did he trust that his efforts had helped alleviate a small bit of Christ's pain?  Or did he walk away in disgust, wondering, "What was that for?"

           The Gospel writers are mercifully silent on these questions, leaving us room to imagine ourselves into the story.

           For me, the dilemma is this: it's one thing to carry another person's suffering in order to save them.  But to help and not save?  That's appalling.  It offends my pride and my sense of justice, and something in me recoils.

           And yet this is what we do, what we must do, to avoid losing our humanity.  We make casseroles for our neighbor whose cancer will definitely kill him.  We send checks to our favorite charities, knowing that for every child our money feeds, there will be tens of thousands it won't.  We linger at the bedsides of loved ones afflicted with dementia, knowing full well that no matter how long we stay, they won't remember who we are.

           We do all of these things and sometimes — maybe often — we're haunted by the question I've ascribed to Simon: what was that for?  What difference did it make? 

           It was not given to Simon to rescue the man whose burden he briefly shared.  What he received was a cross, and a cross isn't something you solve; it's something you carry.  It wasn't even Simon's privilege to know how the story would end.  He had to walk away on that terrible Friday afternoon, totally ignorant of what Sunday might bring.

           As I linger over this story, I find comfort in two things: first, Jesus didn't mind Simon's reluctance.  He needed help, and he took what he could get.  Simon obeyed orders and entered the mess.  That was enough.

           And second: God knows — more agonizingly than we ever will — what it's like to suffer and not save.  It's what he does a billion times a day as he walks beside us, offering us companionship without negating our freedom.  In the end, Simon matters to me because he stands in useful contrast to Jesus, who willingly walks with us in our suffering.  Not for one day, or one mile, but for the duration. 

           An easy piety would argue that we have a choice to make: either we'll allow the strain of our crosses to crack us apart, or we'll allow suffering to change us for the better.  I'm not a big fan of easy piety, so I'll argue this instead: life being the muddled, messy thing it is, we will choose both.  Or, we won't even choose both; both will just plain happen to us.  We'll crack apart, and we'll be changed.  We'll bear our burdens resentfully, and we'll bear them in love.  The pain that enters into our lives will deform us, and it will transform us, too. Over and over and over again.  This is the road Simon walked.  It's the road we walk, accompanied by Jesus.

           May this road, however unchosen and however imperfect, become for us a means of grace.  Today and everyday, until Sunday comes.