IN THEORY, we associate Lent with moments of contemplation and tending to our inner life; in practice, it is too often a season infused with the busyness of new disciplines and multiplied church activity. These are pressures that we create for ourselves, in a bid to come closer; in a mission to do God’s will.
Yet, as I learned one Easter while reflecting on the part played by Simon of Cyrene on Jesus’s way to Calvary, our well-intentioned endeavours may obscure the pauses that are vital to discovering and responding to God’s will; for our moments of pausing can be an important component of what God is asking of us; and — contrary to our human instincts — those stops, or apparent failings, may be both part of God’s plan, and essential in enabling us to pursue it.
About ten years ago, I read, in a women’s magazine, an interview with our current Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. She described how, one weekend, she had a rare opportunity to spend some time alone, without the responsibilities of work, or being a wife or mother. When asked how she spent those few hours, Cooper answered that she sat and gazed into space, and that it was bliss.
I read this article at a time when my own life was an endless wheel of Westminster pressures. I, too, was chasing rare moments of respite, working as a Private Secretary to a government minister, where life consisted of long hours in the office, evenings and weekends at the mercy of a Blackberry, overseas trips, work engagements, and the enduring threat of the destabilising news story. In this context, Cooper’s words struck a thousand chords. Nothing sounded sweeter than to sit and gaze into space. Yet, it wasn’t until some years later, as I sat and contemplated Jesus’s encounter with Simon on the road to Golgotha, that it began to take on biblical resonances.
AS PART of my church’s Holy Week reflections on the Stations of the Cross, I was asked to consider Titian’s painting of the moment when Simon of Cyrene relieves Jesus of the cross. That process caused me to consider how we might reframe our view of pauses and collapses: how pausing was not necessarily a failing, or a break from the will of God, but part and parcel of our journey through it.
Jesus’s encounter with Simon offers a wonderful irony: the Christ whose earthly purpose is the cross, the Christ whose greatest triumph is the cross, and the Christ who calls us to to take up our cross and follow him is the very one who has his cross taken from him. Yet, when that happens, he remains as he should be. He has not departed from the Father’s will.
As we reflect further on Christ’s Stations, we notice that Christ — the cornerstone of our faith — staggers and falls, thus offering us hope for our own trials and falterings. We, too, will stumble and fall, whether through fear, or sin, or simply the pressures of daily life. When we do so, we may feel that we are unfit for the task, or have a sense of great humiliation, or guilt.
Christ’s road to the cross changes that perspective; for Jesus is weary on the road: he has been whipped, stripped, beaten, and mocked, and — like us on our life’s path — buckles under the weight of his cross. This is a striking moment of Christ’s humanity: that very humanity that we celebrate at Christmas, and which makes him the empathetic, feeling High Priest to whom we can always run (Hebrews 4).
Unlike us, however, Jesus Christ is the King of Kings, the mighty lion of the tribe of Judah — and yet he, too, falls. When we ponder this, we start to realise that we have permission to struggle or catch our breath while fulfilling our call, not only because Jesus fell, but because his surprising vulnerabilities in no way put him outside the perfect will of God.
SIMON’s part in Jesus’s story shows us that, when lives are lived in Christ, we can accept pauses not as irritations, or as obstacles, but as stages of God’s design for us. They may prove the check on our self-made goals or pressures, where God seals a wrong turn, or suggests a rethink. Pausing facilitates the necessary transfer from man-made to God-led, and offers the space from which we gather both the strength and the perspective to go on — the transition from simply operating in the flesh to moving in grace.
For clergy and others in Christian ministry, the season of Lent and Easter may feel fully immersive: Ash Wednesday observances, Lenten Bible studies, and the daily services of Holy Week, culminating with the anguish and the triumph of the Triduum. These are busy times, and thus times when we may struggle; and yet we fail to stop. How could we? Simon of Cyrene shows us that we can, and that laying down our tools is not abandoning the task.
In our walk with Christ, even as we seek to push into him or offer him service, let us take care to not be so busy building what we think God wants us to build that we leave no chink for him to build what he knows needs to be built. Times of pause, or even collapse, can be necessary to discern his leading. They teach us to hear. They teach us to yield. And, contrary to what we may feel, those stops and starts can take place within — and not apart from — our seasons of activity, comprising precisely what we require to keep us rooted in, and equipped for, God’s will.
Sharmila Meadows is a freelance writer and journalist. A former senior policy adviser and ministerial private secretary in Westminster, she writes on cricket, faith, and politics. X: @WritingDesk27.
