Mark Keown

I was thinking about the Simon of Cyrene incident in Mk 15:21. Jesus' having been psychologically interrogated, physically beaten including 40 lashes with a leather whip laced with broken pottery and other destructive broken objects, beaten with sticks, a crown of thorns pushed on his head and not having slept for a night is told to carry his cross to Calvary. Yet no sooner than they set out on the journey, the soldiers grab some poor passer by en-route to Jerusalem and tell him to carry Jesus' cross. The text does not tell us why they conscripted Simon. Perhaps Jesus was exhausted. Perhaps he was moving too slow and they had a timetable to keep. Perhaps they just felt like it. Perhaps Simon said something to them about the cruelty of what they were doing? Who knows. The irony lies in linking this verse to Mk 8:34 where Jesus told his disciples that if they wanted to be a follower of Christ they must take up their cross and follow him; what strikes me, is that Jesus did not act...