Collision Course To The Cross
Stories
Scenes of Glory
Subplots of God's Long Story
Object:
Emphasis or special occasion: Resurrection Sunday
Chapter 15
Collision Course To The Cross
Mark 15:21-26
Note 1: If reading this story out loud to a group, something like the following needs to be included in the worship before this story:
Leader: Since the earliest days of the faith, it has been appropriate and expected that Christians greet one another on Easter morning: The Lord has risen!
People: He has risen indeed.
Note 2: Pause at each * * * in order to allow listeners to make the switch from scene to scene. Or, have two people read: one narrating for Simon and the other for Jesus. The reader will need to make a distinction between reading narration and the first-person narratives.
* * *
Simon of Cyrene limped through Jerusalem's giant gate. He was muttering. I can't blame anyone else. It was my idea from beginning to end. I moved my family here.
He passed through the thick wall into the capital of his faith. I struggled against my parents, brother, and sisters. I bullied my wife and contradicted her family. I commanded my sons. So we're stuck in Jerusalem and it's my fault.
He smelled the camels before he saw them. As he shuffled through the bazaar on his bad ankle, people around him waved their arms, shouting at one another, some grunted, some added sighs to their haggling. This marketplace was not very different than where he'd conducted business daily in Cyrene. That, although only half a year before, now seemed a lifetime ago.
* * *
Earlier in the day, on the other side of Jerusalem, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus the Galilean, led him away, and handed him over to the prefect Pilate. Pilate interrogated him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered him, "You say so." Then the chief priests accused Jesus of many things. Pilate asked him again, "Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you." Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.
* * *
As he walked, Simon clasped his hands tightly behind him in order to endure the pain of his left ankle. I'm sure it was listening to the psalms. That's what did it: The psalms. I heard them all my life, chanted them as I walked, repeated them as I worked. They praised God's holy Jerusalem. They extolled Zion's tiny hill.
We dwelt healthily and happily in Cyrene -- pleasant ocean breeze, trained and faithful employees in my honey business, a thriving synagogue group to worship with. But I reasoned that if it was that good to be a Judean in a foreign land, it must be better in Jerusalem itself -- living finally in the city we sang about. Now my family's in a tumult, Sappira longing for her home and angry at me. Our sons, Alexander and Rufus, with no friends. Every synagogue group we worship with is busy arguing, and the closer to Passover, the worse the bickering becomes.
Jerusalem's Judeans restrict their thinking to one cause. They either want to kill all the Romans, sell out to the Romans completely, or flee to the wilderness to await messiahs who will solve all their problems. They can't seem to get along. Judeans outside our homeland in Cyrene appreciated seeing one another. Sure we had our disagreements, but we banded together against any opposition.
Simon stumbled upon his shaky left ankle through Jerusalem's narrow streets. In some places Passover pilgrims so enlarged the throng that he had to turn sideways to edge into an alley.
* * *
Not far away, because it was the Passover, the prefect Pilate would release a prisoner, anyone for whom the crowd asked. A man named Barabbas was in prison with other the rebels who committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Pilate answered, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" He realized that the chief priests handed Jesus over because of their jealousy. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them. Pilate spoke to them again, "Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" They shouted back, "Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Why, what evil has he done?" They shouted all the more, "Crucify him!" So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.
* * *
Simon stepped aside for four men to pass. Their robes were shorter than Judeans wore. He caught the Latin words for "large" and "temple." He could tell by their pointing and wide-eyed staring that they were pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for Passover.
What can I do with Alexander and Rufus, such lethargic sons? I can't allow them just to hop on a boat by themselves and sail a month back to their old home. Sappira wouldn't allow it either. Yet they're so irritable and surly, fighting with each other and me. Since this ankle gave out again, it's impossible for me to labor a whole day. But I almost have to beat the boys to get them to work.
If I hadn't sunk our money into this house and field, if I'd just brought the family on a visit to Jerusalem to see what it's like, try it out. Or, I could've asked friends what it's like for foreign-born Judeans to return to the mother city. Instead, I dragged Sappira and the boys from the only place they knew. I still see her tears and hear her weeping as our boat caught the evening's wind in Apollonia's harbor, our families ashore waving, my father stamping his foot, leaving the others, and turning back toward Cyrene.
* * *
The soldiers led Jesus into the courtyard of the governor's headquarters. They called together the whole cohort. They clothed Jesus in a purple cloak, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. They began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
* * *
I've got to find a way out of this mess, Simon thought, and soon. I don't want the children to push me around. I can't admit to Sappira I've made a mistake. And if I'd sail into Apollonia and stagger up to Cyrene, I'd have to find work or start a business. I'd do so with an empty money box and a gimpy leg. When old Jason bought my swarms of honeybees, he laughed. "You'll regret this. Why move to Jerusalem? You'll find Rome's soldiers in every city. How different can one city be from another? Besides, people make pilgrimage to this holy city, too."
Simon was nearing his house. If I bundle up the family and return to Cyrene, I'll have to acknowledge to my father, and more humiliating, to my father-in-law, that I made a ruinous mistake. I'll be the town buffoon. For the rest of my life I'll hear people use my name as a by-word for leaping before I looked, for letting faith get in the way of careful planning. That's what it was. This is all because I had great ideas about God and what God was going to do for us in Jerusalem. God, Simon prayed as he walked, why am I here? Can't you do your work anywhere? Am I supposed to do something for you here that I couldn't do in Cyrene? He turned a corner and saw a Roman execution squad clumped around a criminal crumpled in the street. The man lay under the beam that would be his cross' horizontal bar. Thorns encircled his head. His face was in a mud puddle.
* * *
The report, written more than a generation later, put it this way: "They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry Jesus' cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). They offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. They crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' "
* * *
Simon, despite the sorriest blunder of his life, and despite all his confusion, pain, and disappointment, was where God could use him. When he found himself surrounded by soldiers and then carrying the crossbeam upon which Jesus would die, he forgot his own, minor problems and even some of the ache surging from the sole of his left foot to his knee. His carrying Jesus' cross set a new course for him and his family. His family's life was changed so much by meeting Jesus that more than thirty years later the name of Simon of Cyrene and his sons Alexander and Rufus were included in the gospel record.
We, too, might not have known that Jesus has been approaching us; but God surprises us with Jesus' cross, no matter if we are burdened with concerns for our family or business, for our health, neighbors, or nation. We have only to turn a corner to find that Jesus' life and death intersects our lives right where we live, whether or not we're satisfied with ourselves or where we live.
Jesus meets each of us in this world. He seems surprisingly weak and in need of our help. But when we heft Jesus' cross and feel it cut into our shoulder, we find, as did Simon of Cyrene, that Jesus rearranges our plans, tosses our priorities into a new pattern, renews our minds, and grants new birth to our spirits. We're given better things to concentrate our thoughts and efforts upon than where we should live, what we'd like to own, or what others will think of us.
For the sake of our Lord Jesus we now lug his cross into our world until finally, when nothing seems worse and when we see no hope or way out of ours or the world's problems, whether two days, two years, or two millennia later, Jesus surprises us with a resurrection.
Leader: The Lord has risen.
People: He has risen indeed!
Leader: The Lord has risen.
People: He has risen indeed!
Discussion Questions
1. What immediate responses do you have to the story?
2. Do you identify with a character in the story? If yes, how and why do you identify with the person? If no, why don't you identify with anyone in the story?
3. Would you like to have a conversation with a character in the story? What would you say, ask, or suggest to the person? Why?
4. How does the story bring the biblical text into a clearer focus for you?
5. How would you improve or modify the story? Why?
6. Have you been disillusioned of the hope that a new place to live would change your life for the better?
7. Have you been surprised by an encounter with Jesus? How has even your suffering seemed to lead you to meet Jesus?
8. What does it mean for you to carry your cross as Jesus' follower?
9. What further depths of meaning, symbols, connections with, or applications of the biblical faith do you find in the story?
10. Since Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and is alive among us through his Holy Spirit, what of this story would you like Christ to activate in your life?
Chapter 15
Collision Course To The Cross
Mark 15:21-26
Note 1: If reading this story out loud to a group, something like the following needs to be included in the worship before this story:
Leader: Since the earliest days of the faith, it has been appropriate and expected that Christians greet one another on Easter morning: The Lord has risen!
People: He has risen indeed.
Note 2: Pause at each * * * in order to allow listeners to make the switch from scene to scene. Or, have two people read: one narrating for Simon and the other for Jesus. The reader will need to make a distinction between reading narration and the first-person narratives.
* * *
Simon of Cyrene limped through Jerusalem's giant gate. He was muttering. I can't blame anyone else. It was my idea from beginning to end. I moved my family here.
He passed through the thick wall into the capital of his faith. I struggled against my parents, brother, and sisters. I bullied my wife and contradicted her family. I commanded my sons. So we're stuck in Jerusalem and it's my fault.
He smelled the camels before he saw them. As he shuffled through the bazaar on his bad ankle, people around him waved their arms, shouting at one another, some grunted, some added sighs to their haggling. This marketplace was not very different than where he'd conducted business daily in Cyrene. That, although only half a year before, now seemed a lifetime ago.
* * *
Earlier in the day, on the other side of Jerusalem, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus the Galilean, led him away, and handed him over to the prefect Pilate. Pilate interrogated him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus answered him, "You say so." Then the chief priests accused Jesus of many things. Pilate asked him again, "Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you." Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.
* * *
As he walked, Simon clasped his hands tightly behind him in order to endure the pain of his left ankle. I'm sure it was listening to the psalms. That's what did it: The psalms. I heard them all my life, chanted them as I walked, repeated them as I worked. They praised God's holy Jerusalem. They extolled Zion's tiny hill.
We dwelt healthily and happily in Cyrene -- pleasant ocean breeze, trained and faithful employees in my honey business, a thriving synagogue group to worship with. But I reasoned that if it was that good to be a Judean in a foreign land, it must be better in Jerusalem itself -- living finally in the city we sang about. Now my family's in a tumult, Sappira longing for her home and angry at me. Our sons, Alexander and Rufus, with no friends. Every synagogue group we worship with is busy arguing, and the closer to Passover, the worse the bickering becomes.
Jerusalem's Judeans restrict their thinking to one cause. They either want to kill all the Romans, sell out to the Romans completely, or flee to the wilderness to await messiahs who will solve all their problems. They can't seem to get along. Judeans outside our homeland in Cyrene appreciated seeing one another. Sure we had our disagreements, but we banded together against any opposition.
Simon stumbled upon his shaky left ankle through Jerusalem's narrow streets. In some places Passover pilgrims so enlarged the throng that he had to turn sideways to edge into an alley.
* * *
Not far away, because it was the Passover, the prefect Pilate would release a prisoner, anyone for whom the crowd asked. A man named Barabbas was in prison with other the rebels who committed murder during the insurrection. So the crowd came and began to ask Pilate to do for them according to his custom. Pilate answered, "Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?" He realized that the chief priests handed Jesus over because of their jealousy. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release Barabbas for them. Pilate spoke to them again, "Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?" They shouted back, "Crucify him!" Pilate asked them, "Why, what evil has he done?" They shouted all the more, "Crucify him!" So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.
* * *
Simon stepped aside for four men to pass. Their robes were shorter than Judeans wore. He caught the Latin words for "large" and "temple." He could tell by their pointing and wide-eyed staring that they were pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for Passover.
What can I do with Alexander and Rufus, such lethargic sons? I can't allow them just to hop on a boat by themselves and sail a month back to their old home. Sappira wouldn't allow it either. Yet they're so irritable and surly, fighting with each other and me. Since this ankle gave out again, it's impossible for me to labor a whole day. But I almost have to beat the boys to get them to work.
If I hadn't sunk our money into this house and field, if I'd just brought the family on a visit to Jerusalem to see what it's like, try it out. Or, I could've asked friends what it's like for foreign-born Judeans to return to the mother city. Instead, I dragged Sappira and the boys from the only place they knew. I still see her tears and hear her weeping as our boat caught the evening's wind in Apollonia's harbor, our families ashore waving, my father stamping his foot, leaving the others, and turning back toward Cyrene.
* * *
The soldiers led Jesus into the courtyard of the governor's headquarters. They called together the whole cohort. They clothed Jesus in a purple cloak, and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. They began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
* * *
I've got to find a way out of this mess, Simon thought, and soon. I don't want the children to push me around. I can't admit to Sappira I've made a mistake. And if I'd sail into Apollonia and stagger up to Cyrene, I'd have to find work or start a business. I'd do so with an empty money box and a gimpy leg. When old Jason bought my swarms of honeybees, he laughed. "You'll regret this. Why move to Jerusalem? You'll find Rome's soldiers in every city. How different can one city be from another? Besides, people make pilgrimage to this holy city, too."
Simon was nearing his house. If I bundle up the family and return to Cyrene, I'll have to acknowledge to my father, and more humiliating, to my father-in-law, that I made a ruinous mistake. I'll be the town buffoon. For the rest of my life I'll hear people use my name as a by-word for leaping before I looked, for letting faith get in the way of careful planning. That's what it was. This is all because I had great ideas about God and what God was going to do for us in Jerusalem. God, Simon prayed as he walked, why am I here? Can't you do your work anywhere? Am I supposed to do something for you here that I couldn't do in Cyrene? He turned a corner and saw a Roman execution squad clumped around a criminal crumpled in the street. The man lay under the beam that would be his cross' horizontal bar. Thorns encircled his head. His face was in a mud puddle.
* * *
The report, written more than a generation later, put it this way: "They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry Jesus' cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull). They offered him wine mixed with myrrh; but he did not take it. They crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' "
* * *
Simon, despite the sorriest blunder of his life, and despite all his confusion, pain, and disappointment, was where God could use him. When he found himself surrounded by soldiers and then carrying the crossbeam upon which Jesus would die, he forgot his own, minor problems and even some of the ache surging from the sole of his left foot to his knee. His carrying Jesus' cross set a new course for him and his family. His family's life was changed so much by meeting Jesus that more than thirty years later the name of Simon of Cyrene and his sons Alexander and Rufus were included in the gospel record.
We, too, might not have known that Jesus has been approaching us; but God surprises us with Jesus' cross, no matter if we are burdened with concerns for our family or business, for our health, neighbors, or nation. We have only to turn a corner to find that Jesus' life and death intersects our lives right where we live, whether or not we're satisfied with ourselves or where we live.
Jesus meets each of us in this world. He seems surprisingly weak and in need of our help. But when we heft Jesus' cross and feel it cut into our shoulder, we find, as did Simon of Cyrene, that Jesus rearranges our plans, tosses our priorities into a new pattern, renews our minds, and grants new birth to our spirits. We're given better things to concentrate our thoughts and efforts upon than where we should live, what we'd like to own, or what others will think of us.
For the sake of our Lord Jesus we now lug his cross into our world until finally, when nothing seems worse and when we see no hope or way out of ours or the world's problems, whether two days, two years, or two millennia later, Jesus surprises us with a resurrection.
Leader: The Lord has risen.
People: He has risen indeed!
Leader: The Lord has risen.
People: He has risen indeed!
Discussion Questions
1. What immediate responses do you have to the story?
2. Do you identify with a character in the story? If yes, how and why do you identify with the person? If no, why don't you identify with anyone in the story?
3. Would you like to have a conversation with a character in the story? What would you say, ask, or suggest to the person? Why?
4. How does the story bring the biblical text into a clearer focus for you?
5. How would you improve or modify the story? Why?
6. Have you been disillusioned of the hope that a new place to live would change your life for the better?
7. Have you been surprised by an encounter with Jesus? How has even your suffering seemed to lead you to meet Jesus?
8. What does it mean for you to carry your cross as Jesus' follower?
9. What further depths of meaning, symbols, connections with, or applications of the biblical faith do you find in the story?
10. Since Jesus Christ has risen from the dead and is alive among us through his Holy Spirit, what of this story would you like Christ to activate in your life?
