25th Day of Lent
Beloved. Any honest reading or hearing of the Passion account, especially tonight’s, will lead a person to the conviction that Jesus was innocent of any of the charges –and, of course, knowing all of Scripture and who Jesus is, we know that Jesus is the holy and sinless God Himself who cannot sin—but how many times is Jesus’ innocence proclaimed in tonight’s reading? Pilate told the Jews after examining Jesus: I have found in this man no basis for the charges you are bringing against Him. Herod did not either…See, He has done nothing worthy of death. Pilate’s wife told him: Have nothing to do with that righteous man. Pilate asked the crowd screaming for Jesus’ blood: Why? What has He done wrong? When they continued shouting to crucify Jesus, Pilate responded: Why what evil has He done? I found no grounds for sentencing Him to death. After Jesus was beaten and mocked and Pilate had Him brought before the crowds, he said: Look, I am bringing Him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against Him. When the Jews agitated the crowds to demand Jesus be crucified, Pilate again told them: Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no basis for a charge against Him. And then there was Pilate’s great act of declaring Jesus’ innocence: He took water, washed his hands in front of the crowd, and said, “I am innocent of this righteous man’s blood. It is your responsibility.” So here is Jesus—an innocent man, a man recognized as righteous by two heathen Romans—sentenced and condemned to death. Seven times Jesus’ innocence, even His righteousness was proclaimed, and yet He is still condemned and sentenced to death. And that’s where we have that very sad and ominous sounding first verse of our text: and they led Him out to crucify Him.
The order was given: Ibis ad crucem! Away to the cross! And as the Roman soldiers were leading Jesus out of the city in order to crucify Him, Jesus was carrying His cross. This was the last bitter part of the Lord’s path that would lead, in the end, to our salvation. What a scene we have here—Jesus is carrying His own instrument of torture and death to His place of torment and execution. Jesus winds His way through the city and goes out of the city gates. Who can even begin to imagine what the holy, sinless Son of God is enduring, physically and in His soul? The salvation of the world is so close but yet, the greatest agonies are just ahead. And as the very God Himself, Jesus knows that. He knows not only the physical sufferings that await Him—most people would have some sort of inkling of that, but probably not to the fullest extent of its agony—but He knows that on the cross the agonies of hell await as He will be forsaken by the Father. But what is Jesus doing? He is patiently and willingly bearing the cross. Patiently and willingly He is enduring this great shame and suffering. As we see Jesus carrying the cross to that place of torture and execution, we are seeing something that He is willingly doing for us and our salvation. Remember, with a single word in the Garden at His arrest, He felled the soldiers. He is still the same almighty God. These events, what He is enduring, are not things done to Him outside of His control. Instead, as the almighty God, He is allowing, patiently enduring them; He is willingly enduring them—for us and for our salvation.
As we see Jesus that first Good Friday being led by the soldiers to the place of crucifixion and carrying His cross, we see also see the fullest expression of what St. John the Baptizer said of Jesus [Jn 1.29]: Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! There as we see Jesus burdened/ weighed down with the cross on His back; as we see Him struggling under its weight, certainly falling and stumbling any number of times; as we see that huge hunk of wood—be it the whole cross or simply the cross beam—that large unwieldly weight, burden—its size making it cumbersome—as we see that, let us there see our sins that Jesus took upon Himself; let us there see the unbearable sins number and weight of the world’s sin—your sin, my sin, the sin of all people ever to live. It is certainly not an easy thing for Jesus to do. With the weight and burden of the cross that Jesus was carrying, let us see Jesus as the world’s sinner, the one that St. Paul [2 Cor 5.21] writes that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. Here being led out of the city, Jesus is loaded down with the sins of the world—that He has willingly taken on Himself—that we might have the forgiveness of sin and His perfect righteousness.
Do you ever wonder what God thinks of you? Do you ever wonder what Jesus is like and His thoughts toward you are? Look at our text: and they led Him out to crucify Him. Here you see the heart of Jesus toward the world, toward us sinners. Don’t ever think that your sin is too great to be forgiven—look who carried it to the cross to suffer and die for it. Look at Jesus bearing His cross—bearing the sins of the world—stumbling under its weight. Look at Jesus patiently and willingly doing this. Here the holy heart of Jesus is revealed in its full glory to us. How it burns with love for us sinners—even as/ precisely in the greatest suffering and agony! Here we see that merciful heart enduring all this agony for us. Here the holy God Himself is so full of mercy toward us sinners that He endures this so that we may be spared it. Here we see Lent’s call: Return to the Lord your God. And why can we sinners go to Him, the holy God? Return to Him? –Because He is merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. This mercy and steadfast love we see as we see Jesus carrying His cross to the place of execution. So let the image of our suffering Savior going to Golgotha move us to repent and run to His mercy and love. Let this image also move us to fight against sin all the more and strive to live a life of holiness. How could we willingly sin knowing what our sins cost Jesus? Why would we willingly sin against the One who loves us so much that He willingly endured all of this for us?
Let us remember that Jesus is not only true God, but He is also true man. And what He suffered were true sufferings. Think of the great sufferings and agonies Jesus endured. Among other things He had been up all night; He was in great mental anguish as we saw in Gethsemane; He had been beaten; He had been whipped; He had been crowned with thorns; He had several times different clothes placed on Him—which when each time they were taken off they would rip open the wounds again. And now He was carrying on His whipped back the heavy coarse wood of the cross! Is it any wonder that He stumbled and fell; that He wasn’t making as fast a progress to the place of execution that the soldiers had been hoping for. But here, let us not just see the immensity of Jesus’ physical sufferings but let us also see with this outward suffering that it is the outward manifestation of the great suffering in His soul. As horrid as the physical suffering was, how much greater must have that spiritual suffering been that we saw already in Gethsemane. And now, loaded down with the sins of the world, beginning, as the world’s sinner, to feel the wrath of God over the sins of the world; and now each step bringing Him closer to that suffering the wrath of God on the cross that He knows is awaiting, how that spiritual anguish and suffering must be increasing all the more with each step.
And here in the midst of this, we see the Father giving the Son comfort and encouragement along the way. Now they compelled a certain man Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross. To be sure, it may have looked to the casual outsider like the soldiers were just trying to speed things along as Jesus was dragging with the cross and a new set of strong, fresh arms would get it done faster. But in the midst of this great suffering, we see the love of the Father for His Son encouraging Him along the way. That complete forsakenness, the suffering the pains of hell would happen later on the cross, but now there is a bit of relief.
It’s not as if Jesus got off easy, though. The greater portion of that road of suffering was on the way out of the city. That’s what Jesus carried. Now this last stretch to Golgotha was on Simon’s back. And notice what St. Mark writes in our text: Now they compelled a certain man Simon a Cyrenian. This was not something that Simon did willingly. He was forced to; the soldiers made him/ compelled him. It was probably a thing of great shame for Simon to have to carry a cross, an instrument of execution for what seemed to be such a horrendous criminal to deserve such a fate. Simon may have been in Jerusalem for the Passover, as we find out there were still people from Cyrene at the Pentecost festival. Whatever the reason, he was coming into the city as this procession left the city and was forced into service: Now they compelled a certain man Simon a Cyrenian. Again, this whole turn of events must have been wretched for Simon and any Jew for that matter as the OT Law clearly says: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree [Gal.3.13] and now he is caught up in it.
But there is a vital lesson for us here as well. Simon could not be a casual observer of these Good Friday morning events. He was drawn into them. The same thing applies to us. We cannot go through this Lenten season without being affected by it. We cannot pass by the cross of Christ unaffected. Something has to happen. How can we ponder Jesus’ holy passion and yet not feel and recognize the greatness and severity of sin as we see that it took the death of the very God Himself to atone for it/ to reconcile us sinners to the holy God? How can we not see depth of God’s love, grace and mercy toward us as we see the lengths that He went to save us? Seeing the love and suffering of Christ for us, how can we willingly stay in sin, not care whether we sin or not? What great sorrow and repentance we then have for our sin knowing that they brought Jesus to the cross! Seeing Jesus on the cross this Lent and pondering it, how can we ever doubt God’s love and mercy toward us? That He intends only good from us? That nothing can separate us from His love for us in Christ? How can we ever doubt that Jesus came to seek and save the lost? Dear Christian, as we see Jesus’ arms outstretched on the cross, let us see Him inviting us to Himself, saying “Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy laden—by your sin and guilt—and I will give you rest.” Pondering our Lord’s holy cross and passion this Lent we will be different. Like Simon, we cannot pass by the cross this Lent unaffected. The soldiers compelled him. We, pondering Jesus’s cross, are drawn by His love and changed by the work of His Holy Spirit.
At first Simon may have been compelled by the soldiers. But he, too, must have been drawn further to Jesus. St. Mark mentions Simon as father of Alexander and Rufus, which means that these men must have been known in the early Church. Simon of Cyrene was changed after that encounter with Jesus—so that he must have become a Christian and taught his family the faith. Let this Lent be a time of serious examination and repentance of our sin and a time in which we encounter Jesus, our suffering Savior, as we ponder His holy passion. As we do so, we will leave this Lent different and prepared for a joyful Easter celebration. INJ Amen.