For today, a step away from sports and a step into Easter for a look at a trio who witnessed that first Easter weekend …
Simon of Cyrene could not have known when he woke up that first Good Friday that his life would, in mid-morning, change forever. After all, he was just passing through. By divine circumstance, his path crossed the path of the beaten and bleeding Savior.
A scared and timid step forward, a shove, and Simon was in an unwanted spotlight, “compelled” by a soldier’s whip and order into a moment that would capture his life in God’s Word for eternity.
But it would also capture his heart.
He was told to help carry the condemned man’s cross.
Few people run toward the cross. Most of us have to be compelled by the soldier of misfortune, suffering, disease, and any of a thousand pains and problems. Even then, we pick it up kicking and screaming.
But what if we could be like Simon. Surely . . . after looking into Jesus’ eyes that day, after seeing up close his shredded back, His crown of thorns, surely . . . Simon knew that, in comparison, the yoke was easy. Jesus always does the hard part.
How could Simon look at that and not be changed forever?
That Friday evening, while Simon and so many others tried to process the events of the day, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in strips of linen “in accordance with Jewish burial customs,” John writes in his gospel record. They did it secretly for fear of the Jewish leaders. But, with Pilate’s permission, they did it.
These two Jews — well, Pilate too — knew there was something about Jesus. Something…
As tombs go, the new one where they placed the body of Jesus after the crucifixion wasn’t used for very long.
On the third day, a day we celebrate as Easter, Jesus rose, by the power of God.
That’s the kind of power that’s available to us. Wonder-working power, is how the old hymn puts it.
Our actions say so much about the human condition when we consider how we fret over things that God wishes we wouldn’t. We have his power available to us, and we so often ignore it.
The tomb, the scriptures say, was close to Golgotha, a Latin word meaning “the skull.” But in the shadow of death there on that hill was eternal life. On Easter, God raised his son.
An empty tomb represents what God accomplished in the fullness of time. The empty tomb represents what God offers through his son: grace and life, protection, provision, and peace.
In the emptiness is a fullness only God can offer, grant, and sustain. Forever.
Joseph and Nicodemus must have been among the first to have heard the news of the empty tomb. More than curiosity must have pulled them to the place where they’d placed the dead man. But they’d found only linens. No body. “We knew,” they must have thought, “that something was different.” They just didn’t know how different.
A whole new way of dying. And a whole new way of living.
Then in the days and weeks after, as news of the Resurrection spread and reached Simon, I imagine his horror of that day turned into an overwhelming feeling of honor. I imagine him on his knees and, through tears, gazing toward Heaven, arms extended, awed, overcome. I imagine his arms around his sons, his grateful whisper in their ears: “I walked with that Man . . ..”
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
