Scripture Daily

Context No. 1485 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 23:26-31: in context

26When they led him away, they grabbed one Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, and laid the cross on him to carry it after Jesus. 27A great multitude of the people followed him, including women who also mourned and lamented him. 28But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29For behold, the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ 30Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31For if they do these things in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”

As Jesus is led out to be crucified, the soldiers seize Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and lay the cross on him to carry behind Jesus. A great crowd follows, including women who mourn and wail for him. But Jesus turns to them: daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. Days are coming, he warns, when people will call the childless blessed and beg the mountains to fall on them; for if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?

There is something remarkable in Jesus turning, on the way to his own execution, to comfort and warn the weeping women. He is the one suffering, beaten, condemned, carrying the instrument of his own death; and yet his concern is not for himself but for them, for their coming grief, for the judgment that would fall on Jerusalem within a generation. Do not weep for me, he says, but for yourselves and your children. Even under the weight of the cross, his love was turned outward, thinking of others rather than himself, warning them of what was ahead out of care for them. This is love in its extremity, a heart so given to others that even in its own agony it forgets itself and reaches out. Most of us, in our own suffering, turn inward, wholly absorbed in our pain, unable to think of anyone but ourselves; Jesus, in his deep suffering, turned outward, toward the grief of others. And notice too the figure of Simon, compelled to carry the cross behind Jesus. What began as an unwelcome imposition, a stranger forced to bear a condemned man's cross, became, in the providence of God, a share in the sufferings of Christ, and Simon is remembered for it ever after. The scene holds both a picture of self-forgetful love, in the Christ who thinks of others on the way to his death, and a picture of the unexpected privilege of sharing his burden, in the Simon compelled to carry his cross.

Even in my own suffering, can I, like Jesus on the way to the cross, turn my concern outward toward others rather than inward on my pain, and do I receive the burdens I am made to carry, as Simon carried the cross, as an unexpected share in the sufferings of Christ?

Sources