Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Palm Sunday, April 10, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

The Power of With-ness

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 31:9–16
Luke 23:26–43

Have you ever thought much about the man we know only as Simon of Cyrene? I had not, at least not until this week. But all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) speak of him as conscripted into being a part of Jesus’ last painful moments of life. So perhaps we ought to reflect on him a bit as we begin this journey of Holy Week.

First, we would want to know that the place from whence he came, Cyrene, was in Northern Africa, on the shore where modern-day Libya now exists. He probably had dark skin, was Jewish, and had come to Jerusalem at that time to simply partake of a Passover in the Holy City. But when the events unfolded as they did on that early Friday morning, Simon, like so many others, was drawn to them, perhaps like what happens when cars slow down as their drivers gawk at the scene of a car accident. We just can’t help but be curious. Furthermore, what was going on that early Friday morning was its own kind of parade, I suppose. But it was a parade that was quite different than the parade we proclaimed earlier in the service. Yet one thing was similar: this early Friday morning parade also drew a crowd.

Author and pastor Erik Kolbell posits that people would have been lining the streets “to look at [the] three condemned men, each bearing a hundred-pound crosspiece on his shoulders and dragging one foot behind another [as they all made their way] to the site of [their] execution.” And when one of those men in that dreadful and painful parade procession could no longer walk and collapsed, undoubtedly due to the pain and agony he had already endured while being beaten, Simon moved from being a simple observer to being a reluctant participant. (Erik Kolbell, Were You There?, pp. 79–80).

The soldier who walked alongside Jesus on that Friday parade would have had one primary objective: to make sure the condemned men stayed alive until the Roman empire could kill them slowly with the method of asphyxiation through crucifixion. So let’s be clear: a desire to keep Jesus alive and suffering was what motivated the soldier’s order to Simon to bear the crosspiece on Jesus’ behalf. It certainly was not an act of benevolence.

This soldier just needed to make sure Jesus stayed alive for a while longer, and given all they had already put him through, that was not a given. At the same time, we should note that Simon himself did not exactly volunteer. Jesus fell in front of him. And at that moment, Simon was commanded, compelled, to take up Jesus’ own cross and follow.

It is interesting to hear the phrase in that way, isn’t it? After all, the disciples had heard Jesus make that comment often throughout his ministry with them. They probably could not count the number of times they had heard Jesus say that becoming his disciple meant to take up one’s cross and follow him. Yet the cruel irony of that moment was that when Jesus needed them to literally do just that, to take up his cross and follow, none of them were around. Or if they were, they were among the many observers along the way, perhaps hoping to blend into the crowd to save their own life. And the obvious absence of those Jesus considered to be friends is what led to a stranger having to take Jesus’ burden onto himself. There was no one else left to help him. Only Simon of Cyrene.

Now, I also think that the fact that Jesus was a stranger to Simon did not mean that Simon was not deeply moved by what he had to do. He was, after all, only human. And for that portion of Jesus’ journey to the cross, Simon, himself, had to experience the immense burden Jesus was literally bearing. Simon, himself, had to feel some of the pain Jesus felt, some of the cost Jesus paid merely for being who he had been created to be.

Again, Kolbell:

When the crosspiece was put on [Simon’s] shoulders, he did not imagine the weight [of it], he felt it. And with it he [also] felt the sweat and blood that had seeped from Jesus’ body to warm the wood. He felt the splinters and shards digging into his shoulders. He felt tightness in his arms and neck as the rigidity of the wood constrained them. He felt his legs buckle and quaver. And perhaps more than any of this, he felt the stares of those in the crowd as they watched. (Kolbell, p. 81)

Some of them watching merely out of curiosity, but many of them observing from a perspective of disdain. All of those along the way were active observers of a public lynching.

Simon would have heard the women weeping as they trailed behind Jesus, women apparently courageous enough not to hide amongst the others. He would have noticed Jesus turn to speak to them, listened to his words of warning, and perhaps even seen the deep grief and pain Jesus carried in his eyes. And he experienced all of that while bearing the weight of Jesus’ cross and following in his footsteps.

When they ultimately arrived at the place called the Skull, Golgotha, and the soldiers finally took that immense crosspiece off his shoulders so they could nail Jesus to it, Simon had to have felt some physical relief. He could move again. He could breathe again. He could stand up straight again. He was free again.

And yet, even with that new freedom, I doubt that Simon would have just disappeared at that moment, blending back into the crowd. After all, he had experienced too much of Jesus’ journey for himself. And I would surmise that having to accompany a suffering Jesus for that part of the journey had affected him, just like suffering alongside someone for whom we care always affects us.

Simon of Cyrene might have started that morning as merely a reluctant participant, but by the time they got to the cross, he was in too deep to leave. He cared for Jesus now. And that deep care, that empathy, is why we could assume he stayed there, at the cross, and tried to endure it alongside, with, Jesus as best as he could. For as the gospel song declares, he knew that through his encounter with Jesus, he had been changed.

But Simon wasn’t the only one changed by Jesus’ painful journey on that day. One of the criminals hanging next to Jesus saw something different in him too. Now, it is important for us to know that the Romans did not waste their time crucifying just anyone. According to Fleming Rutledge, “Crucifixion was usually reserved for the lawless, fulltime professionals who were a serious threat to the famous Roman rule of order. Crucifixion was the supreme penalty for a particular type of criminal, guilty of the impermissible offense of sedition. [This indicates] these two men [hanging on each side of Jesus were not petty thieves. Rather, they] were a serious threat to the system” (Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours: Sermons for Good Friday, p. 18).

For the whole point of crucifixion was to display people “in the [cruelest] circumstances possible, [in order] to demonstrate publicly the power of the empire not just to kill, but to dehumanize—and by doing so, to deter anyone who dared to think of defying Caesar.” And yet as the three of them hung there, humiliated and in severe pain, one of those convicted criminals seemed to have at least glimpsed a bit of the truth of who Jesus was.

Perhaps he glimpsed the truth when he heard Jesus pray for the forgiveness of all those who had betrayed him, denied him, beaten him, lied about him, hurt him, nailed him to an instrument of torture, and hung him. Perhaps that criminal had never known that kind of love, never experienced that kind of grace ever before. It had to have seemed holy to him, for after defending Jesus against further taunts, he asks him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

And in yet one more gift of love and grace, Jesus immediately responds, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Now I think when we hear that response, we often tend to focus on the words “in paradise.” We take that phrase as a description of what eternal life must be like—the ultimate destination, a new kind of Garden of Eden, the great space of a family reunion, the table where everyone has a seat.

But I wonder if we miss what Jesus promises when we do that. Perhaps we are focusing on the wrong words. It could very well be that Jesus was not talking about a location. The most important phrase in that sentence could just be: “with me.” What if that phrase is the key? What if paradise is wherever Jesus is and being in paradise is being with him? (Rutledge, p. 23).

For me, it is that “with-ness”: the with-ness exhibited by Simon; the with-ness desired by the criminal; the with-ness embodied in Jesus that will linger this Holy Week. For that with-ness is what all of this is about, isn’t it? It is about a God who so desired to be with us that God dared to enter into our time and history as a baby, completely vulnerable, completely dependent, completely creature.

It is about a God who so desired to be with us that God decided there would be no human experience that would be without the presence of the Holy—not even the experience of pain, not even the experience of degradation, not even the experience of humiliation, not even the experience of suffering, not even the experience of dying. In Jesus, through Jesus, God has demonstrated that God is with us in all of it, through all of it.

Now I would be remiss if I did not admit that in the background of my thoughts as I composed this sermon was the ongoing horror of the atrocities being committed against the people of Ukraine, for all week I have been wondering if they are able to sense the with-ness of God even amidst their deep suffering and pain. Or, I have wondered, have they found themselves more in the valley of feeling God-forsaken, another moment we know Jesus also experienced, meaning God has been with us even there.

And because of my wonderings, I pulled up the Facebook posts of the Ukrainian pastor I introduced to you a few weeks ago, the Reverend Fyodor Raychinets. And there, three days ago, he posted this:

Yesterday, my team and I decided to take the necessary provision to such remote places that due to invasion were completely cut off from the supply of the necessary. . . . But I am most glad that we were able to help evacuate a woman from Gostomel, who in a semi-destroyed building survived all the horrors of the Gostomel massacre [in the Kyiv region it all started in Gostomel, he explained]. What struck me deep down is her brief testimony that throughout all this time (more than a month), the horrors and devastation around, she never experienced a sense of fear because she believed that “God is with her in all of it. . . .” War is when in the midst of darkness of ruin and horror you meet bright people who teach you what faith and trust in God is.

For that Ukrainian woman, because of what she knew of the Jesus who did not turn away from suffering, from pain, not even from death; because of what she knew of the Jesus who kept walking to the cross even when a stranger had to help him along the way; because of what she knew of the Jesus who prayed for God to forgive his tormentors; because of what she knew of the Jesus who promised a convicted criminal that he would be with him even that very day; because of all of that, even in the midst of her own valley of the shadow of death, she knew in a deep, profound, real way that she was not alone. That God was with her.

And I cannot help but assume that was exactly how Simon of Cyrene felt that day as he stood at the foot of the cross. I cannot help but assume that is exactly how that criminal felt that day when Jesus promised his presence and companionship no matter what. And I cannot help but assume that with-ness of God is our promise, our truth, our reality, too.

So as we continue our own journeys into this Holy Week, may we know and trust that promise, that truth, that reality, too. For it is only the with-ness of God that has the power to save us, to make us whole, to reclaim and remake us, today and every day. Amen.