When Man Compels

And God Guides

Scripture Readings: Mark 15:16-22; Romans 16:13; Philippians 1:12

              All three Synoptic gospels tell us that at some point after Jesus began the long walk to Golgotha, Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry Christ’s cross the final steps to Calvary’s hill. Luke lets us in on the fact that this went beyond verbal compulsion to help Jesus. He wasn’t merely told or requested to carry the cross. As Luke explains, “they laid hold upon” Simon, and “on him they laid the cross” (Luke 23:26). Simon was seized, an innocent passerby, uninvolved in the events of the day, and forced to carry the cross of Jesus. Wrong place, wrong time.

              All three Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) also identify this man as “Simon of Cyrene.” But Mark alone adds that he was the father of Alexander and Rufus (Mark 15:21). This additional descriptor didn’t serve the same purpose as when he wrote, “Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses and Salome” (Mark 15:40). There were so many Mary’s involved in the gospel accounts, it was necessary to explain which was being referred to. With Simon, this wasn’t needed. The fact that Matthew and Luke stick to the shorter “Simon of Cyrene” makes that obvious.

              Why, then, did Mark mention Alexander and Rufus? The most likely explanation is that the people to whom Mark originally wrote knew Alexander and Rufus and could personally ask them for verification of the account. That theory is bolstered by what Paul wrote in Romans 16:13. There he said, “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.” All indications are that the family of Simon became Christians after that fateful day of Christ’s crucifixion.

              There is a lot we don’t know about this story. We don’t know why Simon came into Jerusalem from the country that day. For Passover? On business? To visit family? We aren’t told. We don’t know if Alexander and Rufus were with Simon, even though some popular songs imagine them to have been there. We don’t know what turn of events led him to walk into the path of the crowd marching along the Via Dolorosa. We don’t know why a Roman soldier’s eyes fell on him, picked him out of the crowd, and forced him to bear the weight of Christ’s cross up to Golgotha.

              What we do know is Simon wasn’t responding to a request for volunteers. Nor was he heeding an inner spiritual prompting, a divine calling to be helpful to the suffering Jesus. He was by chance and circumstance caught up in something horrifying - a bloody, gruesome, and cruel act of crucifixion – and forced to participate by carrying Christ’s cross. It was not what he planned to be doing and certainly not what he wanted to be doing. This was all forced upon him. He was compelled by the state.

              And yet somehow, though we lack the minute details, the outcome of the injustice and unfairness of the powers of the state was the saving of his family.

              As we helplessly watch our liberties being lost and see cancel culture metastasize and feel the heavy boot of the state’s coercive power bearing down on us; it is helpful to reflect on stories like Simon’s. God is in control. His kingdom is triumphing. And God will even use the unjust and coercive powers of the state to advance the gospel.

              If we look with the eyes of faith, we might see that the hand of the state that seizes and compels is seized and compelled itself by the greater, wiser, and gracious hand of God. And then we might also say something like what Paul said when from prison he wrote, “I want you to know brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel” (Philippians 1:12).