The Fifth Station: Simon--The Burden Bearer

"As they led him away,

they laid hold of one Simon

   the Cyrenean

who was coming in fron the fields,

They put the crossbeam on Simon's

   shoulder

for him to carry along behind Jesus."

    --Luke 23.36

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"To lend each other a hand when we are falling,

perhaps that's the only thing that matters in the end."

                      --Frederick Buechner

They remembered the story all their lives. It was hard to pinpoint when their father had first told it. But Rufus and Alexander had heard it so often they could tell it to you even in their dreams. How did it begin? They would laugh and say, “Always the same. Always the same.”

Simon, their father had said it was springtime. Passover was near. All his life he had longed to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. For years he had saved—but always there was a roadblock. One year it was sickness, another year the crops had failed. Always something. But one day his wish finally came true. He found Jerusalem different than he imagined. People everywhere—streets crowded. And Rome—with their soldiers and flags you could tell that was an occupied country.

He saw a crowd that had gathered and was curious. Someone was about to be crucified. He edged closer to the street. And he saw this man, bloody and beaten, slowly carrying the crossbeam to his execution. Soldiers behind him nudged him with their swords. People in the streets jeered at him. Some spat on him. One soldier waved a banner that read: “Jesus of Nazareth: King of the Jews.” This man was old not old. On his head there was a crown and it looked like thorns. The blood dripped from his brow, streaked his face like tears.

The man stumbled and fell down and the weight of the crossbeam pinned him to the road. He couldn’t get up. And a Roman soldier came over and kicked him—but did not move. This same soldier looked at Simon, motioned him to come, and then dragged him out into the street. “You bear his cross—someone has to take it to the hill.” Simon was scared and furious. But he obeyed orders. Who wouldn’t?

He lifted the heavy beam off the bleeding man and shifted until it was on his own back. And he started the march, which would finally lead him up the hill. He told his boys that the soldiers took the cross placed it on the ground and stretched the man’s arms out on the beam. They nailed his hands first...and then his feet. It was horrible.

Their father told him he stayed all day long. It rained and thundered-and the lightning—he had never seen anything like it. Later, on the boat back home, he felt different. It was hard to pin down. He told Rufus and Alexander about other travels. The mountains he had climbed. The deserts he had seen. The robbers that scared him so. He told them of the money he had made and how life had been good. He had loved a woman—their mother—and she had loved him back. He told them how proud he was of them, his sons and the grandchildren they had given him.

But of all the things he had ever done he said that Passover in Jerusalem changed his life forever. Against his will, they had thrust Jesus’ cross on his shoulders and made him carry it all the way. Both sons knew the story by heart. Their father always ended it by saying: to do something hard and sometimes embarrassing—stretching the best you are--for someone else, this is the best thing I ever did. Shouldering his heavy load, bearing Jesus’cross had made it all different.