What must it have been like to be Simon of Cyrene? Pulled forcefully from the crowd following Jesus up to Golgotha, forced to carry His cross, and condemned to his own death as a result. Our sensibilities scream “this is unjust”. Simon did not deserve to die. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yes, somehow we can become sanitised to the death of Jesus. Somehow, because we know the story, and those of us who believe in its consequences and power know what comes next, it’s as if we think “it’s ok for Jesus to die, it was needed”, but Simon’s death was not. It was unfair. Completely. One more cruel element in the process of crucifixion, one of the cruellest modes of execution devised in human history. I wonder what Simon was thinking as he walked up that hill. It doesn’t bear thinking about really does it.
And what about Jesus, what was He thinking? Derided all the way up the hill, and even on the cross, a focus for anger and disappointment to the last. How is it that we have become so used to the death of Jesus that we talk about it like it was the most normal thing in the world. After all, “greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. Would we lay down our life for our friends, not even our family or our children, but our friends? Jesus did, that we might no longer be called servants of God’s, but friends. It’s exceptionally hard for us to grasp the magnitude of this, but when He was laying down His life, Jesus was showing us the pattern that our lives can follow, the best path. Are we all about ourselves, or are we living first for God, 2nd for others and 3rd for ourselves? Let’s try it today.