So far we have given all our attention to those who were enemies of Jesus. Let us look at some of those "who were there" at the Cross as His friends. It was not as though He had no friends at all. They say it is when we are in trouble and the world is against us that we find out who our real friends are; we discover who those people are to whom we matter more than their own convenience or reputation.
First there was the man who carried His cross for Him, Simon of Cyrene.
He was compelled to do it, to be sure. He was not a volunteer sympathiser. A prisoner was supposed to carry his own cross to his execution. It was part of his punishment, intended as a deterrent; the Romans deliberately made the prisoner carry it the longest way round to the place of execution so as to give maximum publicity to the message the exercise was intended to convey: "Crime doesn't pay."
But Jesus could not do it. He was too weak. He had had a sleepless night, during which He had gone through the ordeal of Gethsemane, four separate trials and a merciless flogging that had left his back a mangled pulp. He fell in a heap. It was a delay the Roman Centurion would not tolerate, and he impressed a black African in the crowd to carry it for Him. I have no doubt Simon resented it at first. He would have felt as you or I would feel if we came upon a disturbance in the mall, and we were suddenly pounced on to take a part in it. Our first thought would be, "I want no part of this."
But he couldn't, and he got involved. What passed between him and Jesus as they made their distressful way to Golgotha, I wonder. Something must have passed between them.
Identified with him in that unexpected way, too, Simon would have got more of a feeling than most for what it is like to carry your cross. It is a one-way trip. There is no tomorrow. You are held in contempt and no-one is allowed to help. Except in this case, Simon was …
It seems he became a Christian later; Luke in Acts 13:1 names him among the teachers and prophets in the church at Antioch: "Symeon who was called Niger" (Simon the Nigger - there would have been no opprobrium in the use of the word then; Simon the Black).
Forget for the moment whether it was willingly or unwillingly - he got involved. And by getting involved he probably did Jesus the best kindness that was done Him through the whole of His passion.
The best kindness we can do Jesus still is to get involved with Him … to be identified with Him … to share His reproach with Him … to do for Him with our body what He can no longer do with His own … like befriending the friendless, and comforting the sad, and healing the sick, and serving the helpless, and sharing the Gospel. Simon put his back into it, what's more.
As I say, he did not do it willingly to begin with. But it turned him round, changed him in the long run into another man. No-one ever got involved with Jesus, the Son of God, but it did that to them.
There was the soldier at the Cross who moistened Jesus' lips when He cried, "I thirst."
Have you ever really thirsted? It tears your insides. Remember what it was like to be on a cross. Your wrists and your feet are nailed - you cannot move to do a thing. Speech is all you have. But that is unbelievably difficult, because the Romans knew how to string you up so your body weight, hanging from your outstretched arms, made it impossible for you to draw breath unless you heaved yourself up by pressing down on the nail through your feet. Only seven times did Jesus speak in six hours - from nine in the morning to past three in the afternoon. When, through loss of blood, you were too weak to draw breath any more, you suffocated. That is why the prisoner could be finished off by breaking his legs. It was a last cruel refinement of torture; to the last no mercy was shown. The whole object of the exercise was to shame and degrade the prisoner to the maximum possible degree.
But a soldier took pity on Him. He could have got into trouble for that. It was a breach of standing orders.
When did we last risk a reprimand to do Jesus a service? Like the Christian who turned up for work when the union had called all the men out on an unjust strike; that was bad enough - he would be "sent to coventry." But when one of the management injured himself on an unfamiliar machine trying to keep production going, he gave him first aid.
Then there were the women who offered Jesus drugged wine. It seems there was in Jerusalem a Guild of Women who did it.
Crucifixions were quite common. Jesus in his boyhood in Nazareth, after a Galilean uprising at the time, would have witnessed miles of crosses erected by the roadside leading out of the town.
They offered the victims a drink which was partly drugged so as to take the edge off their agony. It was not a job for the squeamish. Men were crucified stark naked for one thing, and the dislocation of their limbs when the cross was dumped into its hole with the prisoner already on it, and the pain of threatening suffocation, twisted their bodies till they looked inhuman. There was blood, and flies … and people were coming up to Jesus and spitting in His face.
But like nurses in a Vietnam casualty station, they did their job.
Jesus did not take the drink. He was not going to be drugged while He experienced the pain of God, bearing the sins of the world. But I think He must have been grateful for their concern.
There are times when the one thing we are able to do isn't any good. To offer to do it though is cheering.
I guess most pastors have that experience. We have all taken money from our Fellowship Funds to folk in need who've resolutely declined to accept it. But they know someone has cared.
It means such a lot - to know someone cares. It eases the burden. It does.
Then there was the company of his family and friends who just were there: Mary His mother, and John and his mother, and Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less, and Joses and Salome, and other womenfolk … many of them, the Gospels tell us … among them women who had ministered to Him in His Galilee days and had followed Him to Jerusalem. Many of them.
They did not do anything. They just were there.
They would have spared themselves a great deal of embarrassment and shock and pain if they had stayed away.
Like most pastors, I have had my share of being with people as they have died, including those who have known they were dying and there was nothing more to be done. Their commonest request of those they know and love is just, "Stay with me." They know there is nothing they can do. But it matters that you not be alone then.
That is human - and our Lord was human. I am sure it comforted Him to know that among the howling, merciless, fiendish rabble there were some who were there, just loving Him. They saw it through.
It was very trying. A crucifixion was such a shameful thing. To be transfixed, naked, to the gaze of a contemptuous crowd of people while you are suffering excruciating pain must be almost beyond our power to imagine. But these women were saying, "The shame in this … we share it with you." Who ever said women were the weaker sex? Physically maybe, but not in sheer strength of character. They were brave souls. They "went to Him outside the camp, bearing reproach for Him," as the writer to the Hebrews put it. (Hebrews 13:14)
When did we last bear shame for Jesus - and stick it out? I was impressed by a story my father told of Dr. Campbell Morgan, whose Bible Classes in Westminster Chapel he used to attend. Dr. Morgan had been an invited platform guest at a public function, though not, as it happened, as a speaker. The man who did speak was scathing in his contempt of religious faith and poured scorn on Jesus. Afterwards the chairman introduced Dr. Morgan to him. The man extended his hand expecting him to shake it, but Dr. Morgan placed his own resolutely behind his back. "No sir, you have dishonoured my Lord."
He did not do anything; he just stood quietly by his Lord in His humiliation.
There was the faithful John to whom he entrusted his mother.
John's service to Jesus was of a different order to those we have considered so far. They were all "momentary ministries", if you like; John's was a lifetime commitment.
"When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home." (John 19:26-7)
I think the way Jesus made the request suggests a level of communication, a rapport, between John and Jesus - just, "My lady, behold your son," and "Behold your mother." That is the language of deep friendship, of people who do not have to waste words to be understood, who communicate well.
But I wonder how surprised by it John was. Did he do a mental double-take for a few moments, while it registered with him what it was he was taking on? In that moment the future must have looked a blank - all his hopes and dreams were expiring with his Master on that Cross. Where was he going to take Mary? How would he support her? Must he go back to the fishing business?
But it was not the time or place to argue about it; he was obliged to accept the responsibility, no questions asked. And He did.
I imagine that must have been a huge comfort to Jesus. It always is a huge comfort to Him when disciples take on big responsibilities, no questions asked, and commit themselves to that responsibility … for life.
Have we done that? It is worth observing too that by this time John was "standing near." All the others stood afar off. Not John; he was as helpless as the rest but he was up close … where he felt the humiliation and the wretchedness of it all with more immediacy, but where he was also closer with whatever comfort his being there afforded. Noble John. How close to Jesus are we?
Finally there was the thief who believed in Him.
He afforded Jesus the one moment of exultation He knew in all those dreadful hours of anguish - except, of course, for the last triumphant moment when He launched His Spirit with a fierce confidence into His Father's hands.
"Today you shall be with me in Paradise."
Paradise did not appear to have been much in His thoughts till that moment. He had been too preoccupied with pain. But this man's simple trust in Him - against all the odds - was the one thing that lifted His spirits. "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Me," He had said once, in balmier days. This man was a harbinger of the truth of it, an assurance that his faith was not misplaced. The man's confession was like the little cloud no bigger than a man's hand on the empty horizon that had once fired Elijah's faith. Such a little thing in itself; but it held the promise of everything. The thief's faith in Him held the promise of everything. "Beyond the darkness of His travail He shall see light and be satisfied."
Nothing satisfies Jesus more than when we believe in Him. "There is joy in Heaven over one sinner that repents," He had said once. The rejoicing in heaven was matched by His own on earth.
There is nothing we can ever do to bring more satisfaction and joy to the heart of our Saviour than to believe in Him.
Is it hard to do so because everything looks so black at this moment? Are we are asking, "What can He do for me?" Well, are things blacker for us than for the thief in that hour? Can we rise with him to the faith that was His?
Simon bore His Cross; we too may do
that.
The soldier gave Him drink; we may do that, by doing it for even the
least of His brethren.
The women cared; we may do that.
His family and His friends stood by Him, and stuck it out; we too may
do that.
John took on a lifetime responsibility for Him; we may do that.
The thief believed in Him; so may we.
When we reflect on it, Jesus was doing for us every one of the things we have seen being done for Him.
Simon was identified with Him in the
sentence He was enduring; but that is what Jesus was doing going to
the Cross: identifying Himself with us in the sentence passed on our
sin.
It was to slake our thirst for forgiveness and a renewed relationship
with God that He went to the Cross.
He was there because He cared - for us.
He stood by us, and saw it through. "All the way" to Calvary He went
for us.
He took on lifetime responsibility for us too; indeed, because He
"ever lives to make intercession for us," 'lifetime' means "for
ever."
And He did it all because, as is love's way, "He believed all things"
of us. (I Cor. 13) He will see it through, the work in us He went
there to begin.
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