The African Who Carried The Cross

This past Christmas my wife, Kim, got me an AncestryDNA kit. AncestryDNA reveals information about your family origin. The process is simple. They mail you a small kit with a tube in which you spit your saliva, close the tube and mail the kit back. In 6 to 9 weeks, results come back of your family origin and ethnicity. I recently did this because I wanted to learn about my family’s history. Our history is important because it makes us understand whose shoulders we stand on.

My AncestryDNA results came back as 99% Cameroon, Congo, and 1% Bantu people. Located right in central Africa. This came as no surprise to me.I was born in the Democractic Republic of Congo and was raised in the United States. Although I grew up in the United States, and have been immersed in American culture, I still feel a lot of pride being born in Africa. I like to joke and say “I am the real African-American” (but really). America is a great country, it’s why my family migrated here for a better life, but America also has an evil history with slavery. The institution of slavery robbed life from Black people. It set Black people back in terms of wealth, education and basic human rights.

I recently learned that Congolese, who were enslaved in South Carolina, led the largest slave revolt in American history. It was known as the Stono Rebellion. Knowing that my people led this revolt reminds me of how strong and powerful we are. I felt a sense of pride, but grappled with the thought they should have never been in that position in the first place.

Our Christians ancestry goes back as far as Abraham but along the way there is Simon of Cyrene, who’s often forgotten. We meet Simon in Luke 23:26. In this verse Jesus is on his way to be crucified and he’s carrying a 300 pound cross on his back. The weight of the cross alone nearly killed him. Roman soldiers didn’t want Jesus to die that way, they wanted him to die on the cross with 3 nails and a crown of thorn (spoiler alert he lives). To keep Jesus from dying from the weight of the cross, Roman soldiers seized a man named Simon to help Jesus carry the cross. And what’s where we get to Luke 23:26,

“As they led Jesus away, a man named Simon, who was from Cyrene, happened to be coming in from the countryside. The soldiers seized him and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.”

Besides this verse there is nothing else mentioned about Simon in the Bible. But just from this verse here is what we know, Simon is African. He’s from Cyrene which was a city in North Africa, and today is known as the country Libya. Regarding Simon, John Piper says, “let it be noted that a foreigner served Jesus in his final hour — indeed, an African.”

Yet, thousands of years later from that moment, Africans would be seen as less than human and in the United States Constitution counting only as three-fifths of a person. I don’t think the Roman soldiers randomly seized Simon to help Jesus. There are no random acts with God. Therefore there has to be a reason Simon was chosen to aid Jesus in his final hour. I believe that God strategically placed Simon at the exact place to remind us that, Black people in the U.S and people of African descent, are part of God’s story. We are a chosen people, worthy in his eyes, loved and redeemed by Him, no matter how the world sees us.

The next thing we know about Simon is that he demonstrates what following Jesus truly looks like. There is a beautiful imagery painted here:

“The soldiers seized him and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.”

One of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made in my life was accepting Jesus. One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made in my life was following Jesus. Accepting Jesus is easy, it only takes a few words, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). Easy right? Now following Jesus is another story. Jesus says, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me” (‭‭Luke‬ ‭9:23‬). Following Jesus is harder. If you’re going to follow Jesus, be prepared to lose friends, money, reputation, relationships, job and even family. And finally be prepared to take up your cross daily, meaning, constantly dying to the desires of the flesh. That is our calling as Christ followers and Simon paves the way.

Simon is only mentioned in this small verse but shows up big for Jesus. I would go as far as calling him the 13th disciple. I am certain that his gravestone read, Simon—Foreigner, African, aid to Jesus and Christ follower. I hope that the latter will be written on all of our gravestones someday.