Luke 23:26
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
April 13, 2025 – Palm/Passion Sunday
These reflections were interspersed between portions of Margaret Bonds’ and Langston Hughes’ cantata, Simon Bore the Cross. The different portions of the cantata are indicated below by their italicization.
African-American composer Margaret Bonds and African-American poet Langston Hughes collaborated in producing a number of artistic works, with Bonds providing the music and Hughes the text. One of them was the cantata, Simon Bore the Cross. It is based on a single scripture verse that appears in three of the four Gospels.
The Bible tells us that after Pilate had condemned Jesus to crucifixion and the soldiers had brutalized Him with fist and whip, they followed standard protocol and forced the condemned (in this case, Jesus) to carry part of the instrument of His own death to the place of His execution.
The condemned carried the crossbeam, which typically weighed up to 100 pounds. Apparently, Jesus was so injured and exhausted by His prior abuse that his body was giving out under that heavy load. Not in a mercy, but in an effort to make sure He’d stay alive to feel the full drawn-out, excruciating pain of crucifixion, the soldiers, Luke 23:26 says, “seized a man, Simon of Cyrene…and laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.”
Cyrene was a North African city in the land we now call Libya. That means that Simon was almost certainly a person of color, and likely a Black African. In other words, a marginalized foreigner bore Jesus’ burden and suffered with Him on His day of greatest need.
This cantata was neither published nor performed during the lifetime of either of its authors. For over 40 years, its score remained lost in an unopened box from Bonds’ apartment, until a decade ago when its treasure was discovered. Eight years ago, the cantata received its initial performance by the Georgetown University choir.
Our choir today will sing much of it, and I will share what I believe God would have us see in the example of Simon. Hear now his lament over Jesus’ torment.
The Trial
Did Simon, prior to Good Friday, feel drawn to Jesus? We don’t know if he’d even heard of Jesus before, but the evidence indicates that Simon at some point became a follower of Jesus and ended up well-known in the newborn Christian community. For, in his Gospel, Mark identified Simon as “the father of Alexander and Rufus”, which suggests Simon and his family were familiar to the believers for whom Mark first wrote his Gospel. Moreover, there are extra-biblical histories from the earliest days of Christianity that say Simon preached Christ in Egypt and died a martyr for the faith in Persia, which is now Iran.
Whatever he later understood, Simon could that Good Friday grasp no more of what all was then happening than Mary could that bewildering and disconcerting day. Consider her wonderment over what was unfolding – and over the kindness of a complete stranger.
Who Is That Man?
In being compelled to carry Christ’s cross, Simon became a model of what all Christians are called to do. He bore the burden of Jesus and shared in His suffering. While it seems Simon embraced this work of love, he did not volunteer for the job. It was forced upon him, maybe by racist and/or xenophobic prejudice, maybe by random chance. Either way, the painful labor he did not choose was the way God had chosen for him to serve His Son.
God has chosen every follower of Jesus to in some way bear His burden of love for the whole world and suffer with Him in the cause of compassion, justice and gospel witness. Our unique way for serving Him may not be one we chose. It may simply come upon us, almost out of nowhere, looking almost accidental. But the mission we find ourselves with is meaningful and purposeful; and we ought, like Simon, to accept our assignment, though it be hard, and give our best to fulfill our particular role in God’s great plan.
Let us meditate on Simon’s acceptance of his role.
Don’t You Know, Mary?
Simon appeared at first glance only another denigrated foreigner whom the soldiers coerced and exploited. But he was special to God. God chose him. And God blessed him by means of his serving Jesus and suffering with Him. Simon’s companionship with Jesus amidst all that hurt and hate must, I have to think, have opened his eyes to who Jesus is. It certainly made that marginalized man of Africa a hero to all Christians to follow. God gave Simon a privilege and honor He didn’t give to John, James, Peter or any of the familiar disciples.
God, you see, plays no favorites and engages even those others overlook as His partners in His most important achievements. God showed Simon a wondrous love by putting him in a position to support Jesus like no else that day, even while Jesus that day showed God’s wondrous love like no one else.
Hymn: What Wondrous Love Is This [215, stanzas 1-3]
Simon walked to Calvary with Jesus. He absorbed the crowd’s cruel jeers, breathed in the stink of the blood and sweat soaked into that crossbeam, endured its splinters stabbing him and gouging his neck and shoulders, as his knees buckled and his back broke under its weight with each jarring step up that steep hill.
Walkin’ To Calvary
As he watched Jesus walk his final steps without him and be nailed naked and alone to that cross, did Simon, who had given his everything to help Jesus, have to fight down feelings of his hard labor having been for nothing? As he beheld Jesus’ horrifying agony of body and anguish of soul, did Simon struggle against the thought that he’d failed to make a difference? Did he on that dark day have any capacity to muster hope he’d been a part of something incredibly great and immensely good?
We don’t know. But many of us know firsthand a struggle such as that. Yet, unlike Simon, we should know better for we know the rest of the story.
We would do well to bear in mind that a person can make a vital contribution to an infinitely valuable project of God, even if they, like Simon, can’t see it.
Jesus had to suffer and die as He did, though Simon couldn’t have any idea of it at the time. And Simon did something crucial and magnificent, though he couldn’t have any sense of it at the moment. But a lack of awareness doesn’t change any fact. And the fact is that, even if he was oblivious to it, Simon truly served the Son of God and truly become a model of authentic, self-sacrificial devotion to Jesus for all generations.
May we now imitate Simon and, like him, bear Jesus’ burden of love for the world and share in His suffering to save everyone. That hope of saving many was the joy that was set before Jesus in going to the cross; and that’s the reason He endured it all without saying “a mumbling word”. He did it with joyful hope out of love for us all!
The Crucifixion
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