Hilton Head Island, SC – April 28, 2024
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 3:13-19; Mark 15:21-32
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. – Mark 15:21 (RSV)
This sermon was inspired by seeing the recent movie One Life. It was based on the true story of an English businessman named Nicholas Winton, utilizing a book about him written by his daughter. The movie starred Anthony Hopkins as the elder Mr. Winton fifty years later, after the events that made hjm famous, with flashbacks to another young English actor playing his life in the months leading up to the beginning of World War II in Europe. In 1939 Winton was in Prague on business, and he saw Jewish children being rounded up by the Gestapo. Acting entirely on his own, he decided to put as many of those children as he could on trains headed for England.
In just a few weeks, he managed to save the lives of over seven hundred children before the war broke out. As you can imagine, it took great effort and organization to accomplish this miraculous feat, and it required assistance from many brave adults. Afterward he always wondered what had happened to those youngsters who were welcomed into families throughout the UK.
Fifty years later, there was a small news story about his exploits in a London newspaper. As a result, a British television talk-show arranged for him to be a special guest in the front row of the studio audience. After telling Hinton’s story, the host of the program introduced him, and then introduced him to a woman on one side of him and a man on the other side. They were two of the Winton refugees the producer of the show had managed to locate. All three of them were overcome by emotions flooding back half a century. This instantly became big news in Britain, and the next week he was again invited back to the TV show. This time it turned out the whole studio audience was comprised entirely of people whose lives he had saved. Nicky Hinton was overcome, as were we in the movie audience.
In both the book by Nicholas Winton’s daughter and the movie, this man was portrayed as a modest, unassuming gentleman. It was estimated that over six thousand people were alive in 1989 because of what Mr. Winton had done in 1939. Much to his amazement and almost embarrassment, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his daring exploit.
Nicholas Winton was an ordinary man who led an ordinary life until he felt compelled to start a rescue operation for children who otherwise would have ended up in Nazi death camps. No one might have known who he was had his daughter not written the book about him. His one life resulted in the lives of hundreds of girls and boys being saved, who produced several thousand of their own children, and they their grandchildren.
Jesus was unknown to everyone except the people in Nazareth when he began his public ministry. For the first few months, he simply went around the region of the Galilee, preaching and healing people. Then he selected twelve men to be the disciples who would follow him for the rest of the way to Jerusalem and Golgatha. First he chose two sets of brothers, Peter and Andrew, James and John, who were fisherman in the Galilean lake. Then he chose Matthew the tax collector. No Gospel says where the other seven came from, or what their occupations were.
Without doubt, none of them would have been in Who’s Who in Judea, had there been such a compendium back then. None of them, except Peter, is mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament. No one knows what later happened to any of them. There are traditions about all the disciples which may or may not be factually accurate. Nonetheless, Jesus surely had a profound effect on their lives when he was with them, and they passed on that transformation to others who became involved in the establishment of the early Church. Without disciples, and particularly without those key twelve disciples, we might never have heard of Jesus.
Most people lead ordinary lives. They grow up, they either do or don’t marry, they do or don’t have children, they pursue occupations, and if they live long enough, they retire. Nowadays, most people live into retirement, as is attested by almost everyone in this congregation.
The word “extraordinary” means “beyond-” or “above-ordinary.” Most golfers are ordinary or less than ordinary. Scottie Sheffler has shown himself to be extra-extraordinary. The people of Hilton Head are pleased that he came here and won the Heritage just a week after he won the Masters, and after he had won three other tournaments in four weeks before that. We probably had the biggest Heritage crowd ever. However, in life as in golf or anything else, most of us are merely ordinary. Still, we can do extraordinary things if we put our minds to it.
Jesus was arrested on Maundy Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane. Soldiers took him to the Praetorium, the headquarters of the Roman occupation of Judea. Probably he was kept awake all night. In the morning he stood trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, Reluctantly, Pilate found him guilty of sedition. He was taken to the courtyard, and there he was publicly flogged until his back was covered with bloody welts. A crown of thorns was brutally thrust down onto his scalp.
A heavy cross was then laid upon his shoulder, and he was made to carry it to a hill called
Golgatha. In his weakened state, he fell, and the cross slammed down on his shredded back. The soldiers realized he was unable to carry the cross any longer, so, in all three synoptic Gospels, it says they forced a man named Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross for him. Cyrene was in Libya. But in Mark alone, it says that this man had two sons, Alexander and Rufus. Why would Mark say that when the other two didn’t mention that detail? Was it because he assumed his readers would know who they were, and that they also had become followers of Jesus? Did Simon later become a follower as well? We don’t know, but because all three of the Gospels say this man was drafted to carry the cross, it almost certainly happened. Simon may have resented it, but it is possible that he too became a Christian because of his compassion for Jesus in his desperate plight. Ordinary people can do amazing things when a holy dose of adrenalin kicks in.
We never hear about Simon of Cyrene again. He was an ordinary man with an ordinary life who provided the last measure of human kindness that Jesus experienced before he died. In so doing, Simon’s ordinary deed, even if he was forced to do it, was a gift given to Jesus on his way to his execution.
Ken Kelm was a member of our high school class. He was well liked by those who knew him, but he was not all that well known. He went on to become the pilot of 747s on international routes, which likely surprised many of our classmates. After he retired, he became a volunteer pilot for an evangelical organization, and he flew missionaries into isolated places all over the world. I was impressed by his vocation, but even more so by his avocation. He was an ordinary person who did extraordinary work.
I know a woman who became an alcoholic in her twenties. She gave it up cold turkey when she woke up one morning sprawled outdoors, not knowing where she was or how she got there. Since then she has been a major factor in helping hundreds of other people overcome their addiction to alcohol, corralling them into AA and their family members into Alanon. She is on call twenty-four hours a day if she is needed and has organized many interventions. Single-handedly she has saved countless marriages and redirected lives spinning out of control onto orderly and productive paths. Much of this she has done for years after she retired.
I knew a man who was an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Morristown, New Jersey, when I was its pastor. He came out of a very ordinary background. I suspect this man was a natural introvert, and he may also have begun life with low self-esteem. Nevertheless he overcame those obstacles to become the president of a major Fortune 500 company. In that position he improved the lives of thousands of employees and millions of people who needed the prescription drugs and other health products that corporation produced.
For years years ago a woman I know went daily to see her husband in a nursing facility. Because she went to see him, she decided that afterwards she would visit several other people she knew who also were there. She got so used to doing that that she has continued doing it years after her husband died. Before she was always a ray of sunshine to everyone who knew her, but now she casts her light into the lives of many old and new friends on her visitation rounds. She is a beacon of Christian outreach to people who eagerly look forward to seeing her. She was no spring chicken when she started her visitation ministry, and she has been doing it for at least ten or fifteen years. It requires a lot of smiles and hearing the same things over and over again and repeating what she just said three minutes ago once more and perhaps again three minutes from now, but it brightens the days of those possibly cantankerous codgers who are always glad to see her, even though their happiness may last only three minutes after she leaves. She doesn’t have to stay long; being there at all is the thing that counts.
Most of us are in what are called our “twilight years.” We may resent that term, but objectively, it is a realistic observation of our current state. Most people in that situation tend to coast, and that is understandable. But if geezers don’t need to vegetate, they should perambulate.
There was a woman who lived in the Presbyterian Home in Summerville, South Carolina, who wrote a book perhaps thirty years ago about what it was like to live in a retirement home. It was called Out to Pasture But Not Over the Hill. It was a hoot. I loaned my copy to my mother when she was living her last years in a retirement.community. Its humor may have added a few months or more to her life. She loaned the book to other friends where she lived, who also read it. I never got it back, but that’s quite all right, because I think it probably brought enjoyment to some other old folks.
What are we old folks going to do for the rest of our lives? Are we going to coast, or are there still things we can do to rise above the ordinary in our ordinary lives?
If we are able, there are many volunteer organizations in our community who always need volunteers. Most of their volunteers are retired, because we have oodles of oldsters on this island. If we are physically and mentally able, and we find ourselves twiddling our elderly first-digits too much, we might consider checking out some of these outstanding groups, and thus contribute to their extraordinary outstanditude.
We all have neighbors who, for a variety of reasons, need new friends when most of their friends are gone. Isolation is the most obvious reality in their lives. We can become a lifeline for them. There are people for whom loneliness is the most prevalent emotion they feel. They may need an injection of an outside human connection to obliterate their solitary confinement. Befriend someone like that. And if you want to get extra stars in your crown, try to befriend someone who may be the hardest to reach rather than the easiest. Sociable people usually have lots of friends; it is the shy folks and the unsociable grouches who perhaps most need someone in their lives to fill the natural void which exists there.
If we are estranged from anyone in our immediate or extended family, we could make it our business to try to overcome that estrangement. Admittedly, this can be a very tough assignment, but if we succeed, we can transform ordinary human interaction into something quite extraordinary, especially given these sad circumstances. If we don’t start now, it may never get done. To eliminate such pain is to do the work of God.
Every one of the eight billion people on this planet is unique. Thus each one has unique gifts to give to others. God did not place us here only for ourselves. He wants us to utilize whatever talents we have on behalf of those around us. Though age may have diminished our abilities, we are still able to be workers in the construction of the kingdom of God on earth. “Ordinary” can morph into extraordinary when it is dedicated to the purposes of God.