SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, we give you thanks this morning for your presence here.
SPEAKER_00: And as always, we want to just recognize that you are here in this moment with us in this place and this time.
SPEAKER_00: We ask you to give us clarity of thought this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Would you come by your spirit, not just teach us, but would you transform our hearts and give us new hearts, hearts of flesh where our hearts have grown hardened and renew us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you see this.
SPEAKER_00: Morning, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: How are we doing?
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: One quick announcement.
SPEAKER_00: We have a Discover Central class coming up.
SPEAKER_00: So if you are interested in becoming a member, um, and you don't you're not signing on the dotted line on this day, but if you're like kind of interested in hearing more about who we are, what we're all about, uh, then we have a Discovery Central class.
SPEAKER_00: It's on, I think it's on Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Do we have a slide for that by chance, Mark?
SPEAKER_00: I have the notes right here, if not, but um, it's on March 15th.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Sunday, March 15th at 11:15 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: Snacks provided.
SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're like, hey, I want to know more about Central, meet some of the staff, hear, you know, your vision for the church, the mission, what we're doing, come on Sunday, March 15th at 1115.
SPEAKER_00: So at the end of the last gathering, and Kirsten and Sonia and myself will be there.
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to kind of walk you through that.
SPEAKER_00: Looks like, and then you can kind of ask questions and go from there.
SPEAKER_00: So Sunday, March 15th, 11:15, snacks provided.
SPEAKER_00: Sound good?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: We are in the middle of our journey to the cross, is our sermons here, and we're just exploring the different events leading up to the cross and the and eventually the resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning.
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, we uh this morning's serve uh sermon is called The Cyrene.
SPEAKER_00: So we're reading about Simon of Cyrene, which is this crazy story.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's pronounced Cyrene, too, by the way, Simon of Cyrene.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a story where Jesus is going to the cross and they randomly pull out of the crowd this passer by named Simon, who we know very little about, and they drag him out of the crowd to come be a part of like this incredible, uh, incredibly historical moment, which reminds me of a story that I want to tell uh where something just like this happened.
SPEAKER_00: Although the the consequences were much less, you know, dire and uh, you know, what's the word?
SPEAKER_00: Magical, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: But my buddy Justin got married when he was younger, and we per we did a bachelor party for him in downtown Denver one night.
SPEAKER_00: And my buddy Justin is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was like all in all the goofy things we made him do, and we made him do all kinds of goofy things.
SPEAKER_00: Well, downtown Denver has this really cool part uh called the 16th Street Mall, and there's always like street performers out there at night.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, hey, let's make Justin do an ad hoc impromptu street performance.
SPEAKER_00: Just make him do it.
SPEAKER_00: And we're like, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So and there's like maybe 15 of us guys, and we thought it would make him nervous.
SPEAKER_00: So we tell him, like, hey, you got to go out there and just do a street uh random street performance.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Yes, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, like he was way too excited for this.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes out there and we just gathered around him.
SPEAKER_00: And you know how a crowd draws a crowd.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he starts like doing all this crazy stuff, like miming.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden we have this big crowd start gathering around him, doing this impromptu random street act that had no meaning to it at all.
SPEAKER_00: And we're like, this is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what is happening?
SPEAKER_00: And uh at one point, he calls a kid out of the crowd to be a volunteer.
SPEAKER_00: And we're like, what's he doing?
SPEAKER_00: He pulls this kid, it must have been a 10-year-old kid out of the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: And this kid comes forward and he's like, stands there like this.
SPEAKER_00: And my buddy Justin was like, you know, just pantomiming.
SPEAKER_00: And at one point, my buddy Justin puts his coat over this kid's head as though he's gonna make the kid disappear.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, where are we going with this?
SPEAKER_00: This is wild.
SPEAKER_00: And the crowd's like all into it, and they're like cheering and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00: And uh he my buddy he goes, Okay, ready, one.
SPEAKER_00: He's like counting down the to three, and the crowd starts cheering with him, like, one, two.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what's he gonna do at three?
SPEAKER_00: This kid won't disappear, right?
SPEAKER_00: Three, and he rips the coat off the kid.
SPEAKER_00: And the kid, unprompted, goes like this.
SPEAKER_00: The coat comes off, the kid goes like that.
SPEAKER_00: And the crowd starts cheering.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what am I witnessing?
SPEAKER_00: This is the craziest moment of my life.
SPEAKER_00: Like, nothing really actually happened.
SPEAKER_00: The kid just did this on, you know, uh spontaneously, and the crowd loved it.
SPEAKER_00: They were cheering.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, wow, and so this is why you can never trust the crowds.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's good or bad.
SPEAKER_00: It's hilarious, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But I was wrong, like every time I think about that moment, I laugh because here I am, you know, two decades later telling the story about some random kid who we didn't know who he was.
SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of like the Simon of Cyrene story.
SPEAKER_00: So thanks for indulging that story.
SPEAKER_00: I love that story.
SPEAKER_00: But Simon is like this random guy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, in this random verse, it's one verse only.
SPEAKER_00: It's an odd detail that Mark and Matthew and Luke put into their gospels.
SPEAKER_00: And we know nothing about this guy, Simon of Cyrene.
SPEAKER_00: It's sort of this really random thing that's kind of put in there.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no suggestion about why it's even in the gospels.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing about gospel writers: they they didn't have a ton of space to write like these, you know, verbose uh accounts.
SPEAKER_00: So every detail in these accounts matters.
SPEAKER_00: And so here it is, this random one line.
SPEAKER_00: Here's Mark's version of it.
SPEAKER_00: And that says they were they compel the passerby who was coming in from the country to carry his cross.
SPEAKER_00: It was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, which raises the questions like who's Simon and who are Alexander and Rufus?
SPEAKER_00: Who are these three men in this story?
SPEAKER_00: And why do three of the gospel writers include it in their story?
SPEAKER_00: Again, space was limited.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you read a line like this in the gospels, like a one-off line that sort of seems random, one, you need to know it probably is very important because it's only one line in there, and they included it on purpose because they didn't need to.
SPEAKER_00: They could have just plenty of details didn't make it in the gospel accounts.
SPEAKER_00: They could have just left it out.
SPEAKER_00: But they included it for a reason.
SPEAKER_00: And there's all kinds of reasons why potentially it could happen.
SPEAKER_00: One of them is whenever you see this in the gospels, like they will include a random detail, it usually anchors the story in reality.
SPEAKER_00: For example, I don't know if you know this, but uh in Mark's gospel, uh uh there's this story where they're out at sea and there's a storm that comes up in Mark 4.
SPEAKER_00: A furious squall came up, a squall is a big storm, and the waves broke over the boat, so it was nearly swamped.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was in the stern sleeping, but not just sleeping, he's on a cushion.
SPEAKER_00: Why would Mark tell us that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it lends credibility.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, I was there, I saw the cushion.
SPEAKER_00: So it's this random detail kind of anchoring the story in real life.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is why he mentioned it.
SPEAKER_00: Like it sounds like a guy who was really there in the boat.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's on a cushion, a blue cushion, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the funny thing about Mark.
SPEAKER_00: Mark, as you probably know, was not one of the 12.
SPEAKER_00: So how does Mark know there was a cushion in the story?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Mark was actually a friend of Peter's.
SPEAKER_00: They kind of hook up later on, and many scholars believe that Mark is telling you stories that he heard Peter preaching in the early part of the church.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter was with Jesus in the boat that night, hears and sees all this happening.
SPEAKER_00: He tells, he's preaching the story probably one day in the early church, and Mark hears it, and then Mark later writes the gospel of Mark about Jesus, and he includes these details that Peter uh mentions.
SPEAKER_00: Mark later becomes friends with Paul, and Paul was, of course, connected to Rome.
SPEAKER_00: So just watch out for any signs or pathways that lead from Peter to Mark to Rome to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Fair enough.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't forget that.
SPEAKER_00: Hold that away for a smoke.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another one, though, for example.
SPEAKER_00: Uh young man wearing nothing.
SPEAKER_00: This is like at the end of uh when they arrest Jesus in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: This is a hilarious scene.
SPEAKER_00: Young man wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.
SPEAKER_00: Most scholars believe that even though Mark wasn't one of the 12, he was kind of hanging around these guys at different points of the story, knew Peter.
SPEAKER_00: And so most scholars believe this is actually Mark writing about himself.
SPEAKER_00: And it lends credibility.
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is actually what happened.
SPEAKER_00: I was there.
SPEAKER_00: I, and you know, his buddies were like, yo, man, you got to include that part where you ran naked into the crowd because you were so afraid.
SPEAKER_00: And Mark's, I don't know if I should.
SPEAKER_00: No, you got to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Fine, he writes it down.
SPEAKER_00: He fled naked, leaving his government behind.
SPEAKER_00: So whenever you see a detail like this, like a random, odd, unique, one-off detail, it usually anchors the story in reality, in history.
SPEAKER_00: It also could be that there's some theological reasons behind it, like there's some theology being taught.
SPEAKER_00: Like when Jesus in the garden, they say, Hey, uh, which one of you is Jesus of Nazareth?
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I am, and he's quoting God in the burning bush with Moses.
SPEAKER_00: There's a theological sort of reason that he says, I am.
SPEAKER_00: He's teaching you like theology that I am, in fact, God.
SPEAKER_00: So, does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you three over here?
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
SPEAKER_00: So, what why why does Mark mention this?
SPEAKER_00: Simon of Cyrene, Rufus, and Alexander, what's happening?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Simon, some random passerby, who probably was not planning that morning on being a part of one of the greatest stories ever told, who never would have imagined his name being mentioned today in 2026 in a place called Elk River across the pond, if you will, from where he was growing up.
SPEAKER_00: And he never would have imagined this, that he's mentioned here in these ways.
SPEAKER_00: He's only out in the country.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mark says he came in from the country, he was doing some things up there, and he has no idea probably what's about to happen to him.
SPEAKER_00: And we have no idea as the readers.
SPEAKER_00: Who even is this guy?
SPEAKER_00: And what's he doing?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we know he's from Cyrene, and Cyrene is here.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, actually, by the way, here's where we are in the story.
SPEAKER_00: So you had the arrest of Jesus uh two weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Sonia and I kind of tag teamed that one.
SPEAKER_00: Then the trial of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're at the Cyrene where Simon of Cyrene is pulled out of the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, here's Cyrene, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: It's in northern part of Africa.
SPEAKER_00: So you can see the little star, and then if you zoom in, it's up on that coastal area there.
SPEAKER_00: So it's an African man.
SPEAKER_00: Cyrene had a large Jewish population at this time in the first century in the New Testament times.
SPEAKER_00: And there were lots of Jews down there.
SPEAKER_00: But he's a foreigner.
SPEAKER_00: He's not from the area.
SPEAKER_00: He's probably coming into town for Passover, I would imagine.
SPEAKER_00: No one knows if he was a Jew or a Gentile.
SPEAKER_00: I like to think he was a Jew who comes into town on a pilgrimage for Passover.
SPEAKER_00: It's Passover, a huge holiday for the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_00: And he's coming to town for that.
SPEAKER_00: And he's so he's probably going to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the scene.
SPEAKER_00: The streets of Jerusalem crowded, full of people, bustling area.
SPEAKER_00: And he's headed to the temple to partake in some rituals and ceremonies for Passover.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: And he's a foreigner from a foreign land.
SPEAKER_00: Some people think, oh, this is the scholar, or this is the uh, you know, the gospel of Mark, and actually all three gospel writers, sort of just letting you know, hey, let it be known that in his final moments, Jesus was helped by a foreigner, which is pretty great.
SPEAKER_00: Any Africans in the room this morning?
SPEAKER_00: We got Africans that come to the second gathering, but okay.
SPEAKER_00: He's an African guy who shows up on the scene and is pulled out of the crowd to help Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why is he helping Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Well, some people think that Jesus was beaten so badly.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they had beaten him, they whipped him, they like spent hours just like tormenting Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And many folks think that Jesus at this moment of his life, on the way to the cross, is near dead.
SPEAKER_00: So they beat him so badly, he's almost dead.
SPEAKER_00: He could probably fall over and die right then and there.
SPEAKER_00: So it could have been like a moment of compassion that these Roman guards, like, hey, let's have compassion on this guy.
SPEAKER_00: Let's grab someone to help him carry the cross the rest of the way.
SPEAKER_00: So it could be compassion.
SPEAKER_00: It also could be like just expediency, like, hey, we gotta, we can't let this guy die right here.
SPEAKER_00: This would be a bad show.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta bring him all the way to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: We're we're the guards in charge of him.
SPEAKER_00: We can't let him die right now.
SPEAKER_00: This would be terrible.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be a bad look for us.
SPEAKER_00: So they like grab someone to help him out to get him to the to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we'll get in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: So it could be that.
SPEAKER_00: It also could be that the Romans, in many ways and instances, were bloodthirsty people, generally speaking.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they invented the cross.
SPEAKER_00: They were it was a torture device that they would hang criminals on to like to help them die in the most horrendous way possible.
SPEAKER_00: So it could be like, like, hey, we can't let this guy die right now, be too easy on him.
SPEAKER_00: Let's make this suffering prolonged.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stretch it out, get someone to help him, make him march in front of this guy and carry his cross all the way to the hill.
SPEAKER_00: Then we'll kind of extract some more blood from this guy, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe it was compassion, it could have been expediency, could be that there's this bloodlust of the Roman people, that they wanted to see him sort of uh suffer even more.
SPEAKER_00: But either way, they grab Simon of Serene and they have him carry the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Now, probably the cross wasn't the entire thing.
SPEAKER_00: Scholars believe that there was all kinds of ways the Romans would hang you on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: One way was there would be a stake in the ground, and they would just hang you from the stake on the far left.
SPEAKER_00: That's one way of being hung on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Some folks, the one in the middle, this is kind of like the more traditional or even the one on the right, the more traditional Christian cross that we see on our necklaces and in paintings and so on.
SPEAKER_00: And that cross beam across this one that goes lateral here, that wasn't attached yet.
SPEAKER_00: So they would have that, the criminal carry that cross beam up to the point of where the stake is, excuse me, or a tree.
SPEAKER_00: And they would then nail that cross beam to that stake in the ground or to a tree.
SPEAKER_00: Then they would hang the criminal from that cross beam, and they probably wouldn't have nailed him through his hands because the hands would have ripped open at that point.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, they would have probably hung him through his wrists down here or tied him to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: They would occasionally tie the criminal to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The way you would die on a cross was through suffocation, mostly that you would eventually just hang there for so long, your body couldn't keep yourself upright, and you would suffocate yourself on the cross after having been beaten and scorched and whipped, and you're bleeding and swollen, and your internal organs are shutting down.
SPEAKER_00: It's a horrendous way to die.
SPEAKER_00: Like the Romans often try to find the most horrific, uh atrocious way to die because they were bored.
SPEAKER_00: If you read the history, uh people like Seneca the Younger and Pliny the Younger, they would talk about this, especially during the days of the Jewish Revolution in the 60s and 70s after Jesus was around.
SPEAKER_00: They were bored, and so like invent more horrific ways for folks to die.
SPEAKER_00: As a way to tell you and remind you, don't mess with Rome, or this will happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what Seneca writes about the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Seneca writes this about the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He says, executioners could vary the form of punishment.
SPEAKER_00: It would be different ways, whether it's a stake or a tree or a cross beam.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I see crosses there.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, Seneca is a Jewish historian, or sorry, not Jewish, but he's a first century historian.
SPEAKER_00: I see crosses there, not just of one kind, but made in many different ways.
SPEAKER_00: Some have their victims' heads to the ground, so like upside down, they would hang folks upside down.
SPEAKER_00: Peter has this happen to him.
SPEAKER_00: Some impale their private parts.
SPEAKER_00: Others stretch out their arms on the cross piece.
SPEAKER_00: It was an awful way to die.
SPEAKER_00: And the Romans, many of them did it because they were just bloodthirsty people that wanted to watch things happen like this because they were bored.
SPEAKER_00: So they grab Simonus Irene, and the text tells us that they compel him to carry Jesus' cross.
SPEAKER_00: Although he's just a random passerby who's out in the country, and they grab him, they compel him.
SPEAKER_00: Here's something that's really cool.
SPEAKER_00: That word compel is only used three times in all the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: One is here, one is in, I think it's Luke's gospel in the same passage, and the other one is in the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: So rewind in Matthew 5, Jesus is teaching the Sermon on the Mount, and he says, Hey, if anyone forces you to go one mile or compels you to go one mile, go a second mile.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned this last weekend.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what's happening: Jesus, like, hey, Romans could could legally grab anybody who was under Roman rule and make them carry their gear, Roman soldiers, make them carry their gear for an entire Roman mile.
SPEAKER_00: And they had mile markers along the road so you could know how far you were going.
SPEAKER_00: That was law.
SPEAKER_00: You could have them carry your stuff for a whole mile.
SPEAKER_00: So they would frequently grab random people out of the crowd and make them carry their gear for a whole mile.
SPEAKER_00: It was humiliating.
SPEAKER_00: It was coercion, it was you know, they would compel them, they'd force them, and you had no agency.
SPEAKER_00: So, like, how do you respond?
SPEAKER_00: If you push back and rebel, they'll kill you.
SPEAKER_00: If you just put your head down and are weak about it, it's like, well, that's not, you know, you lose your dignity and your humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus offers a beautiful third way.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, if they do that and they can and they will, they'll compel you to go a mile.
SPEAKER_00: Um, go ahead and go a second mile.
SPEAKER_00: And you like flip the script on them because you take back your agency.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you want me to go a mile?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna decide to go a second mile because I'm in good shape.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna stick it to you.
SPEAKER_00: It sort of like reverses the course, like, hey, yeah, now I'm taking back my dignity and my own agency as a human being.
SPEAKER_00: And it humiliates the guard.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Well, like you're they're trying to embarrass you.
SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, you turn out to embarrass them, and it flips it on its head.
SPEAKER_00: The empire can control your body, he says, but they cannot control how you respond.
SPEAKER_00: Go a second mile, watch what happens.
SPEAKER_00: So you take back your dignity, your agency.
SPEAKER_00: And it's beautiful, it's a beautiful moment.
SPEAKER_00: And so uh Jesus then later on is going to the cross, and the Roman guards compel this man named Simon of Cyrene to come out and pick up this cross.
SPEAKER_00: And he enacts this Sermon on the Mount instruction.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when they compel you to go all the way.
SPEAKER_00: Now he doesn't go a full two miles, but what happens here is he's sort of randomly chosen to carry this cross, doesn't know what's going on, but somehow he physically enacts discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: It's wild.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, check this out, this is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, and also the tool of domination in this moment becomes the path of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: Like they're trying to, you know, burden people, or at least Simonus Irene, it flips it around and becomes the path of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the cool thing though, too.
SPEAKER_00: Uh when when uh Luke tells this story about the Simonus Irene, it says, as they led him astray or way, they seize a man.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the story according to Luke, and they make him carry the cross behind Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why would Luke mention that?
SPEAKER_00: Another random detail.
SPEAKER_00: It's a theological reason for this in this case.
SPEAKER_00: This is discipleship language.
SPEAKER_00: You would follow a rabbi if you were a disciple.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus goes ahead of Simon, and unintentionally, Simon becomes this enactment, a physical enactment of discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: He follows Jesus, carrying the cross of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: So this is discipleship language.
SPEAKER_00: Remember back when Peter they're going to the cross?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is earlier, and they're headed to the cross, and Peter rebukes Jesus, like, we're not going to the cross to die.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go to Rome and the sentencer, we're gonna take over.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus turns to Peter, like, hey, get behind me, Satan.
SPEAKER_00: I love this verse, it's so funny to me.
SPEAKER_00: What's he saying?
SPEAKER_00: He's telling Peter, hey, you're out of order.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the rabbi, you're the you're the follower.
SPEAKER_00: Get behind me, follow me.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get out ahead of me.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us get into trouble when we get out in front of Jesus, and we need to be told, hey, get that's very sweet of you, but go ahead and get behind me.
SPEAKER_00: Fall back in line.
SPEAKER_00: And here's this random guy who doesn't know Jesus, and he's sort of compelled by the Romans.
SPEAKER_00: He's physically enacting this Sermon on the Mount, and he's actually becoming in this moment physically a disciple of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable this moment.
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
SPEAKER_00: Then the text, of course, tells us too that these two guys named Alexander and Rufus are there.
SPEAKER_00: Well, not they're not there, they're the sons of uh of Simon and Cyrene.
SPEAKER_00: They actually aren't there.
SPEAKER_00: So why would Mark mention these two guys, Alexander and Rufus?
SPEAKER_00: Who are they?
SPEAKER_00: And why doesn't he explain it?
SPEAKER_00: Alexander and Rufus.
SPEAKER_00: This is for some of the younger folks in the room.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get an amen?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, Alexander and Rufus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00: Alexander and Rufus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00: Alexander and Rufus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, one more.
SPEAKER_00: I had to have some levity in this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Who are these guys?
SPEAKER_00: By the way, whenever the text doesn't explain things like this, it's because the original audience would have known who they were.
SPEAKER_00: We don't, because we're 2,000 years removed.
SPEAKER_00: They all would have known, oh, that's the father of Alexander and Rufus?
SPEAKER_00: We know those dudes.
SPEAKER_00: So they would have known, well, who's the original audience of Mark's gospel?
SPEAKER_00: Gentile Christians.
SPEAKER_00: Brand new Gentile Christians in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: So after Jesus is resurrected, this church starts and it begins to grow and they grow, and then they write the gospel writers come out and they write these stories.
SPEAKER_00: And the early church would have known who Alexander and Rufus were.
SPEAKER_00: So when it's mentioned in the gospel, oh, this guy Simon is the follower of father of Alexander, we know those dudes.
SPEAKER_00: How would they have known those guys unless Alexander and Rufus had become Christian converts?
SPEAKER_00: Well, how would they have become Christian converts?
SPEAKER_00: Well, their father became a Christian convert.
SPEAKER_00: Could it be that this guy who's randomly drawn out of the crowd, who's from Cyrene in Africa, who's there for Passover, who's not a Christian yet, because those didn't really exist.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Jewish man, he's faithful, but he's there for Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus pulls him out of the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans officially sort of make him into this follower of Jesus, enacting the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy, I don't know, somehow has this incredible magical moment where he meets Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And somehow, between then and later on, when Mark is written, he becomes a Christian convert.
SPEAKER_00: And it changes his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: His kids, Alexander and Rufus, become converts, and everyone.
SPEAKER_00: In the early church would have known who these two guys were.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's Alexander and Rufus.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, I told you that Mark, who wrote the gospel, he knew Peter, and he would preach what, or he would uh he would write what Peter preached.
SPEAKER_00: Peter also knew Paul, and Mark knew Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Paul writes a letter to the Romans.
SPEAKER_00: You know this story, to Rome.
SPEAKER_00: So now there's a connection between Mark and Peter and Paul and Rome.
SPEAKER_00: In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes this.
SPEAKER_00: What do you notice?
SPEAKER_00: He's like, hey, greetings to all these people.
SPEAKER_00: Greet Mary, who's worked with me very hard.
SPEAKER_00: Greet Androsia, Andronicus, and Junior, my fellow Israelites who are in prison with me.
SPEAKER_00: They're prominent among the apostles, and they're with Christ before I was.
SPEAKER_00: Greet uh Ampellatus, my beloved in the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachis, and greet Apellus, who's approved in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus.
SPEAKER_00: Greet my fellow Israelite Herodian.
SPEAKER_00: Greet those who in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissists.
SPEAKER_00: Greet those who are workers in the Lord, Triphania and Triphosa.
SPEAKER_00: You know Triphania and Triphosa.
SPEAKER_00: Greet them.
SPEAKER_00: Greet my beloved Persis, who's worked with the Lord hard, and greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and greet his mother, who is also a mother to me.
SPEAKER_00: Well, who is Rufus?
SPEAKER_00: Most scholars think that he's greeting Rufus, the son of Simon of Cyrene, this random African guy pulled out of the crowd as he's going to the cross, who physically enacts discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: And there he is in Romans.
SPEAKER_00: He becomes a believer.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and by the way, greet his mother too.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get an amen from all the moms in the house this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Mom is finally getting some love.
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
SPEAKER_00: This guy, Simon of Cyrene.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, greet Rebus and his mother.
SPEAKER_00: Random on a random whatever day this was, pulled out of the crowd and forced to carry his cross.
SPEAKER_00: And it changes his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: This moment that turns Simon of Cyrene's plans for the day, because he had plans that day.
SPEAKER_00: He was going to the temple for Passover.
SPEAKER_00: He had ideas in mind, not this.
SPEAKER_00: And he meets Jesus, and everything is interrupted.
SPEAKER_00: His plans are flipped upside down, and everything in his life, everything in his life, and his family's life from that day on has changed.
SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: And you thought it was just one little throwaway line in Mark's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: His plans for that day and his life evaporate.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus' story and journey interrupts his.
SPEAKER_00: And this day, Simon from Cyrene takes the first steps in fulfilling Jesus' teaching here as well.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, when Jesus says this, hey, whoever wants to be my disciple, who wants to follow me, live their lives in the way that I'm living my life, whomever wants to, by the way, whoever, whoever means whoever, here's what you do deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.
SPEAKER_00: Those who grasp for their life and grab at things, you're gonna lose it.
SPEAKER_00: But whoever gives up their life to follow me and gets behind me, lives their life in proper order, has things in proper perspective, those people who accept my teaching and put their faith in me and lose their life, they'll gain the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: They'll save it.
SPEAKER_00: And Simon of Cyrene takes this day the first steps in fulfilling this commandment of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable.
SPEAKER_00: And it begs the question if you ask, like, what if?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what if Simon hadn't have gone to Jerusalem that day?
SPEAKER_00: What if he was five minutes late?
SPEAKER_00: Or early?
SPEAKER_00: What if he was like three people back in the crowd that day?
SPEAKER_00: What would he have missed?
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
SPEAKER_00: What if?
SPEAKER_00: There's a story uh in June of 1914 in Sarajevo, this guy named Franz Ferdinand, he was the Archduke, you might have heard of him.
SPEAKER_00: He's driving through Sarajevo and uh on a tour trying to greet people, and there's a parade, and these young Serbian nationalists want to assassinate him, and they throw a bomb at his car, and the bomb doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00: So instead of catching the hint and leaving, which I would have done, Fran's friend's like, no, no, we're gonna stay and we're gonna be on the stay on the course.
SPEAKER_00: So they keep going.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, Fran's like, hey, I want to go to the visit of this hospital, and uh, they take a wrong turn.
SPEAKER_00: The driver does, because he doesn't know the English well or the uh the language spoken.
SPEAKER_00: So he takes a wrong turn and they end up in this alleyway.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't supposed to be there.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, hey, we've got to reverse out of here.
SPEAKER_00: And as they're reversing out of here, they stop the car, and lo and behold, right next to the car where they just pulled up is another young Serbian nationalist who wanted to kill Franz Ferdinand.
SPEAKER_00: Pulls out his gun, walks over the window, and shoots them both, him and his wife.
SPEAKER_00: This, of course, launches World War I.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what if what if they hadn't have gone to the hospital?
SPEAKER_00: What if they they hadn't pulled over right by this other guy who wanted to assassinate the guy?
SPEAKER_00: What if Dr.
SPEAKER_00: King was giving a speech in DC, you know the story?
SPEAKER_00: And the speech he had scripted was not going well.
SPEAKER_00: It was boring, a little dry, a little drab.
SPEAKER_00: So, midway through the speech, when he's up there trying to speak, this woman, uh Malia Jackson, yells out, uh, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: King, tell him about the dream you had.
SPEAKER_00: And he stops his speech and goes off script and gives the most famous speech in history, in the U.S.
SPEAKER_00: history, one of the most, the I Have a Dream speech, totally unscripted because she yells out, hey, tell him about the dream you had.
SPEAKER_00: This guy, anybody know what this is?
SPEAKER_00: Alex Fleming was a uh scientist, and he's studying bacteria, and he has all these petri dishes full of bacteria, and he leaves the lab and goes on vacation.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone know this story?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, many of you have taken this before.
SPEAKER_00: He comes back after I don't know, days on vacation and finds that there's a mold growing in one of the dishes.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, oh man, ruined my experiment.
SPEAKER_00: The lat or the uh the mold had actually eaten up the bacteria, but instead of throwing it all away, he's like, wait a minute, this mold ate the bacteria?
SPEAKER_00: Well, he discovers in this penicillin and this antibiotic that saves thousands of people's lives by accident.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what if, man?
SPEAKER_00: What if?
SPEAKER_00: What if Moses had kept his head down that day?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm not gonna talk to this burning bush.
SPEAKER_00: I'm that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm busy.
SPEAKER_00: I got plans.
SPEAKER_00: I got plans, talking bush.
SPEAKER_00: David was out in the field, or he was actually at home, and his father's like, hey, your brothers who are at war need lunch.
SPEAKER_00: Go bring them lunch.
SPEAKER_00: What if he was like, nah, dad, I got plans.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't they just door dash some food?
SPEAKER_00: He brings him food and he sees this giant man talking trash to the armies of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: Who's this clown?
SPEAKER_00: Give me that weapon.
SPEAKER_00: How about this guy?
SPEAKER_00: The thief on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what if, man?
SPEAKER_00: What if he'd be like, you know what, dude?
SPEAKER_00: I agree with you over there.
SPEAKER_00: This guy's crazy in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: I'm with you, dude.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just get out of here.
SPEAKER_00: What if he had like, hey, uh, I don't know what's going on, but something about you.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, remember me.
SPEAKER_00: Would you remember me?
SPEAKER_00: What if he didn't say that?
SPEAKER_00: What if?
SPEAKER_00: I learned, I did my grandmother's funeral last week, and I learned that my my my father-in-law is my is my father-in-law's mom.
SPEAKER_00: I heard this story, my father-in-law was tricycling down the street.
SPEAKER_00: He's two years old, tricycling down the street, gets hit by a car.
SPEAKER_00: If you know my father-in-law, he's like the toughest guy in the world, third toughest guy in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he's hit by a car on a bicycle, goes to the hospital for two weeks, he survives, but then in the hospital, to boot, he he he uh he um he is infected with smallpox.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, but he lives.
SPEAKER_00: Man, what if he had died that day?
SPEAKER_00: Or in the hospital smallpox?
SPEAKER_00: He wouldn't have married my mother-in-law, I wouldn't have had my wife, and I wouldn't probably be preaching to you guys this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what if, man?
SPEAKER_00: What if Simon Cyrene wasn't there?
SPEAKER_00: What are your what if moments?
SPEAKER_00: See, we we come in these moments like, oh, this is an ordinary moment, or a bother, even a distraction, like, oh, this is an annoyance.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe embedded in that moment, like the divine work of God.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe every moment is a miracle, like waiting to be unfolded in front of you, and we just maybe we miss some of them all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Why are you here today?
SPEAKER_00: Here you are for a variety of reasons, and you're hearing me talk about a random guy from Africa who's pulled into this crowd, and his life has changed forever, and his whole family comes to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: And here you are.
SPEAKER_00: What is God saying to you this morning or doing with you, in you this morning, in this sacred moment?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what if, man?
SPEAKER_00: Central, may you know the story of Jesus going to the cross and how it includes this foreigner who helps Jesus in one of his most moments of like dire moments of need.
SPEAKER_00: Let it be known that a foreigner helped Jesus, this guy who doesn't belong in the story.
SPEAKER_00: And may you also know like that this guy's life was changed forever in a random, seemingly ordinary moment that maybe was an annoyance, but it changes his life as he physically enacts discipleship.
SPEAKER_00: And may you see the moments in your own life that God has like sort of arranged things or popped up and giving you like incredible moments that are sacred, and you don't even realize it in the moment.
SPEAKER_00: May you look for more of them.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna sing a song, and as we do, I want to encourage you to like just to close your eyes and reflect this morning and ask Jesus, what do you want from me this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Where do you want my attention?
SPEAKER_00: What do you want me to do today?
SPEAKER_00: And give me eyes to see and ears to hear how you would today and tomorrow and all of this week.
SPEAKER_00: And just see what happens.
SPEAKER_00: You never know.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.