23:26
It was normal for the condemned man to carry his cross, hence Jesus’ earlier statement that if we wanted to follow Him we need to be prepared to carry our own cross. Following Jesus is no bed of roses. As we read in the other gospels (Matt 27:26; Mark 15:15; John 19:1), Jesus had been whipped and scourged, and so greatly physically weakened. So Simon of Cyrene was commandeered to carry the cross. Cyrene was a region in North africa with a significant Jewish population.
23:27-31
Earlier we read of crowds calling for Jesus to be crucified. We need to realise that that crowd consisted largely of the various religious leaders and their supporters. Here we read of other people who were mourning and wailing for Jesus, especially the women. Expression of mourning are a lot louder in middle eastern culture than ours. Desperately weak as He was, and walking towards His death, Jesus still taught the people. “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children”. Jesus knew the spiritual state of the people, and what was to come in AD 66-70. Often we can seek to avoid the problems and issues in our own lives by focusing on something or someone else. The suffering that was going to come upon Jerusalem in thirty to forty years time would indeed be terrible.
In verse 31 the “green tree” is Jesus. Jesus is completely righteous, yet these events were unfolding. How much worse things would be when God’s judgement fell upon a sinful nation? There is an interesting lesson here for us. We have a tendency today to focus on the physical agony of the cross. Crucifixion was indeed a very cruel manner of death, but the New Testament does not focus that much on the physical suffering, though it certainly does not hide from it. The key element of the cross was the righteous, holy, Son of God laying down His life to pay for our sins.
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