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I remember the day that John Kennedy died. I remember the day when Martin Luther King, Jr. died. I remember the day when Robert Kennedy died. I remember the day when the Challenger astronauts died. I remember the day my father died. I remember the day when these people died, not because I was physically there, but because of the reports I had received from others who were there. Vivid reports, powerful reports, so real that I remember them as if I experienced them firsthand. One of those reports is in Luke's biography of Jesus, chapter 23. Luke was not an eyewitness to the death of Jesus Christ either. Some of the biographies of Jesus were written by eyewitnesses like John, but Luke was a physician and a historian. Although these events had been predicted for generations before, the day that Christ died was a day of surprises. Jesus' death was a day of surprises. It certainly was a surprise for Simon. He was from North Africa, from Cyrene, or as we would call it today, Tripoli. And he had come on the journey of a lifetime, probably something for which he had saved a lifetime. To be in Jerusalem for the Passover was a dream come true. So it was the surprise of a lifetime when he stumbled across a crucifixion parade on those unfamiliar streets. Normally it would have just been a brief delay as he watched the Roman soldiers conduct what was, for them, a routine task, for there were many crucifixions. The custom was that the accused man was tried, convicted, and condemned at the court. Then four Roman soldiers would escort him to the place of the execution. They would be preceded by someone with a placard on a stick listing the crimes the criminal had been convicted of committing. They always took the longest possible route from the courtroom to the place of execution, hoping to cross the paths of as many people as possible. Crucifixion was considered to be a significant deterrent to further and future crime. It should have been only a brief delay for Simon, but a surprising thing happened. Jesus crumbled under the weight of the cross, right in front of Simon. In a garden called Gethsemane, Jesus agonized over the prospect of his own death and what it meant spiritually. Later he had been beaten almost to death. Now weakened, he stumbled and crumbled. The cross he was required to carry fell to the ground. Jerusalem was an occupied city; Roman law gave the soldiers the right of conscription. That is, they could draft anyone into their service instantly. The procedure was to take the flat part of the spear blade and put it on the shoulder of any person anywhere, and that person was immediately brought into the service of Rome. So, with Jesus and the cross on the ground, the Roman soldier took his spear and put the blade on the shoulder of the closest man, Simon from Tripoli. Now conscripted, he was forced to pick up the cross and to carry it. He must have been humiliated and embarrassed. Luke says nothing more about Simon. But he does appear directly and indirectly twice more in the New Testament: once in Mark 15:21 and then in Romans 16:13. It is Mark whoin another biographical account of Jesusexplains the same story but says that it was Simon the father of Alexander and Rufus. It's an unusual thing for a father to be identified by his children, unless of course the children are quite famous. It may be assumed that, by the time Mark's gospel was circulated, two of the most famous Christians in all of the empire were Alexander and Rufus. Later, in Romans 16:13, you again find Rufus, this son of Simon, who is described as the son of a woman whom St. Paul counted to be his surrogate mother. As you begin to put the pieces together, it's obvious that when Simon returned home to Tripoli, he told the story of the Christ and the crucifixion to his wife, who became not only a godly woman but a substitute mother to the famous apostle Paul. Simon told about the Christ and the crucifixion to his sons Alexander and Rufus, who became two of the greatest Christians in the church. So what started out as a surprise and an embarrassment turned out to be a great good for Simon and for his family. As Jesus, now released from the weight of the cross, continued the journey to the place called in Latin "Calvary, or in English "the Skull, he passed a group of women who were crying and mourning. They were screaming out, but not because they knew Jesus, because in all probability they had never met him. They were not those women later mentioned who came from Galilee. These were professional mourners. That doesn't mean they were unsympathetic. They were women who dared to come out when men were crucified, when the families wouldn't come and cry over their deaths. They always carried with them a liquid narcotic, a drug offered to the crucified man so the edge could be taken off the horrific pain that accompanied crucifixion. These were women who had come there often before, and it was their job. Never before, in all their tears, in all their wailing, in all of their journeys to all of their crosses had they ever had a man do what Jesus did. He turned and expressed sympathy for them. He anticipated difficult days for their future and for the future of their children. He told them he was sorry, that they ought to wail for themselves. I don't think they knew Jesus. But if they had, they would have quickly realized that this was just like him. His concern wasn't about his own problems or his own pain but to focus so quickly and so clearly upon the problems and pain that others face. But the biggest surprise that day came to the executionersthese tough, veteran soldiers who so many times before had crucified other men by nailing them to wooden Roman crosses, and then watched them writhe in pain as they died. As the men would scream and suffer, they would sit at the feet of the crosses and play games. They were desensitized to the curses, to the pleas, to the threats. They were men who just were not caught by surprise. Yet never before had any one of them heard what Jesus said. For soon after his hands were nailed to the cross and this nail was driven through his feet and the cross was lifted upright and dropped into its socket in the ground, Jesus prayed audibly for them saying, "Father, forgive them, because they don't know what they're doing. It was enough to shock the toughest of soldiers. It was enough to make a man think before he went to sleep that night about those words that in his mind a thousand times. It was enough for even a soldier to remember. So it's no wonder that when the centurion made his final inspection after Jesus' death, he paused long enough at the cross to say, "Now this one, this one was a righteous man. The forgiveness of Jesus was a surprise then, but it is still a surprise today. I'm surprised by his forgiveness. He knows our worst sins so well, he who lives and who died for forgiveness. I'm surprised that no matter what we've done or what we do, Jesus' heart still seeks to forgive. The surprises on the day Jesus died were not just for those clustered around the cross of that skull place. The surprises that day were for everyone. For at noon, a most extraordinary thing happened. It became dark as if it were night. The sun disappeared behind the thickest clouds people had ever seen. There were some who thought it might have been an eclipse (although astronomically it could not have been because the moon is full at the Passover time). But it makes sense that as Jesus, the creator of the universe, died, the world would become dark.
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