I love stories. Tell me your
story, and I’ll tell you mine. Stories connect our hearts and intricately weave
our lives together. Maybe you’ve heard the Easter story told hundreds and
hundreds of times. Maybe you haven’t. Maybe you know a few details and
understand that this story has nothing at all to do with pastel eggs or a giant
bunny. Maybe you think it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
Every time I read this story,
God shows me something brand new. It’s the beauty of the living Word at work. I return to this story again and again because
it holds life. It holds meaning. It holds everything I believe together.
Without this story, my story is incomplete.
Today, as I read familiar
words and take note of chronological events, two names stand out to me: Simon
of Cyrene and Joseph of Arimathea. With some digging, I find a couple of
details about each man, but what captures my attention is how each played a
crucial role in this story about Jesus.
The cross is a popular symbol
in our culture. Back in Jesus’ day it was anything but popular. It was a symbol
of rejection, of shame, of brutality. The cross invoked fear. It represented
death. After Jesus was beaten beyond recognition, He had to carry His thirty to
forty pound cross to a place called Golgotha, which means “the place of the
skull.” He would be hung there, disgracefully for all to see.
Meet Simon:
Mark’s account of that day
tells us that somewhere along the way to Golgotha, a man named Simon was seized
by the Roman soldiers. (See Mark 15:21) He was forced to carry the cross the
rest of the way after Jesus’ strength gave out somewhere along that road. Simon
was from a region in North Africa with a large Jewish population. Many believe
he was traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover.
All we know about this man is
where he came from and how he carried that cross behind Jesus. He is never
mentioned again in scripture, though some think his son, Rufus, is the same man
Paul mentions in Romans 10:13. We don’t even know if he knew who he was
following as he carried that heavy, burdensome cross. I wonder if he thought Jesus had nothing to
do with him.
The rest of the story is
found in the verses that follow. (See Mark 15:22-41) Jesus was nailed to the
cross, ridiculed and mocked, then underneath a blackened sky, He gave up His
spirit and died. Those with Him must have felt such incredible despair. Surely
this wasn’t what they were expecting. Yet this one event would change eternity.
Jesus died so we would never have to. Jesus paid the penalty on our behalf, and
it cost Him everything.
Meet Joseph:
Our other guy appears in
verse 43. Joseph was a wealthy man (according to Matthew) and an upstanding
member of the Jewish council. Mark tells us that he was a follower of Jesus and
did not consent to the decision to crucify Jesus, yet there isn’t a trace of
his name during the trial. John reveals that he followed Jesus secretly, because
he feared the Jewish leaders.
We can piece together that he
had some influence with Pilate, because he approached him boldly to request
that the body of Jesus be taken down from the cross. According to Jewish custom,
the bodies of the deceased were taken down before evening, especially before
the Sabbath, which began at sundown on Friday. After confirming that Jesus was dead,
Pilate conceded, and Joseph, along with the help of Nicodemus, took down the
body of Jesus, wrapped him in linen, and laid him in his own tomb. Afterwards,
he rolled a stone in front of the tomb and went on his way. That is the last we
hear of Joseph.
Why would God include these two men in this story?
The man who carried Jesus’
cross and the man who buried His body couldn’t have been more different. One was
a foreigner, the other an upstanding member of the community. One was an
outsider; one had inside privileges. One man knew Jesus, and the other probably
didn’t. One was wealthy and prominent, known in the Jewish community. The other
was an unknown, unrecognized, common man. Yet both were used by God to fulfill prophecies
recorded centuries before. Both were
crucial to the telling of God’s story.
This story doesn’t end with a
crucified body in a rich man’s tomb. Love drove Jesus to that cross Simon carried,
and Love raised Him three days later to walk out of Joseph’s tomb alive and
victorious. Hundreds of witnesses saw Him, spoke to Him, and some even touched
the scars on His hands. The people were confused and frightened and overjoyed
and overwhelmed, though it happened exactly the way Jesus said it would. This
wasn’t a mistake in God’s story.
This story would begin to rewrite every
story ever written.
Simon’s story and Joseph’s
story were about a cross and an empty tomb. It’s no different for us. Every story comes down to the cross and the empty tomb. The cross will
always represent death, and the rich man’s tomb will always be remembered as
empty. But without the cross, there is no empty tomb. Without death, there is no new
life. Without Jesus, every story is incomplete.
You might be accepted or left out, rich or poor, known or unknown,
common or privileged. You might be influential and successful, or you might
just find yourself at the right place at the right time. You might be a
follower of Jesus or you might not know Him at all. These two men were hand
picked by God and included in His story for two reasons: because God loved the
world and He had a story to tell. Simon’s story told the very same story that Joseph’s
story told. Their stories were about God.
My story is a story about God. So is yours.
We live in a culture obsessed
with ourselves- a “selfie society,” some call it. Simon’s story wasn’t
about him, and Joseph’s story wasn’t about him either. Right there on the pages
of scripture, I’m convicted and convinced that I don’t quite fully understand.
Earlier in Mark, before His
arrest, Jesus told his disciples, “Whoever wants
to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For
whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for
me and for the gospel will save it.” (See
Mark 8:34-35)
The most sinful part of us
that cannot live in harmony with God, no matter how hard we try or how good we
try to be, must die with Jesus. We deny ourselves when we acknowledge that our lives
belong to Him, that our stories belong to God. We take up our crosses when we
realize that our stories can only be told in the context of surrendering
everything to Jesus.
If we really understood this,
we’d acknowledge that we are in this together and that God is writing His story
across each one of our hearts. We’d recognize that Jesus is the center of every
story, that He is the thing our hearts crave. Deep within our marrow, we would realize
that we are known by our Creator, whether we know Jesus or not. We could start
to believe that our story is a good one. After all, it’s a story about God. We could
put aside making a name for ourselves and instead work together to make His
name known. And somewhere out along the road we travel, our stories might become
less about us and more about giving away the love of God.
Jesus loves you,
Kelly
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