Back in 1941, workers opened a burial tomb in Jerusalem and found, among other things, a limestone ossuary — a bone box, the kind families used in that era to gather the remains of their dead. Scratched into it was an inscription naming Alexander, son of Simon. For decades that sat quietly in the record. Now New Testament scholar Dr. Jeremiah Johnston has drawn attention to how remarkably the pieces line up, because of one sentence in the Gospel of Mark.
Here is the sentence: “And they compel one Simon a Cyrenian, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear his cross” (Mark 15:21).
Now, honesty first. Archaeology asks us to hold things loosely, and the researchers themselves say so. Simon was a common name. So was Alexander. No one has proven this is that family, and it may never be proven. I am not going to build your faith on a box. But I will tell you what the headline did to me: it sent me back to a verse I have read a hundred times and never slowed down over.
A detail Mark did not have to include
Mark is the briefest of the Gospels. He moves fast — immediately, immediately, immediately. He is not a man padding his word count. And yet, in the middle of the most important paragraph he will ever write, he stops to tell us the names of two boys who are not in the story.
Why? The likeliest reason is the simplest one. The people reading Mark's account knew them. Alexander and Rufus were somebody in that early church — known faces, known names, people you could go ask. Paul greets a Rufus in Romans 16:13, and calls Rufus's mother his own mother too. Something happened in that household.
Think about what that means. A man is grabbed out of a crowd on the worst morning in human history, handed a crossbeam, and told to walk. He did not volunteer. He was coming in from the country — he had errands, obligations, a day planned. And that unchosen, unwanted, unfair ten minutes became the hinge on which his whole family turned.
The errand he did not choose
I notice how much of what God does in a life comes in through the side door. We plan the day. The day does not cooperate. The phone rings, the neighbor is standing in the driveway, the person two rows over in church is clearly not okay and you are the one who sees it. None of that was on the list.
Simon did not wake up that morning intending to touch the cross of the Son of God. He was simply the man who happened to be close enough to be asked.
And I would say this gently to anyone who feels like a bystander in their own faith: proximity matters more than you think. Stay close to where Jesus is going. Keep showing up. The Spirit has a long history of assigning holy work to people who were just passing through.
Known by your children
There is one more thing in that verse I cannot get past. Mark does not identify Simon by his trade, his wealth, or his résumé. He identifies him by his sons. The man is remembered as the father of Alexander and Rufus.
If a stone box in Jerusalem really does carry that boy's name, then here is what it marks: a father's unplanned obedience became a son's faith, and a son's faith became a name the church knew. That is how this moves. Not usually by platform. Usually by one person carrying something heavy and someone younger watching them do it.
Slow down over the small lines
This is exactly the kind of detail we end up chewing on at Bible Study on Wednesday evenings at 6:30 — a half-sentence most people skim past, and then the room gets quiet, and the Holy Spirit does what He does: He makes an ancient line feel like it was written about your Tuesday. If you have never come, come. You do not need to know anything. You just need to be close enough to be handed something.
And here is where it lands. Simon carried that beam for a few hundred yards. Jesus carried it all the way — and carried more than wood. He carried what we could not lift, to a place we could not reach, for people who had not asked.
Whatever you are carrying today that you did not choose, you are not carrying it alone, and you are not carrying it pointlessly. The One who was helped that morning is well able to help you now.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.