Friday, April 2, 2021

Despised and Rejected

 

Good Friday of Holy Week, April 2, 2021

Who has believed our message?  To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm?  My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot, like a root in dry ground.  There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance, nothing to attract us to him.  He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.  We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.  He was despised, and we did not care.  Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down.  And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins!  But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.  He was beaten so we could be whole.  He was whipped so we could be healed.  All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.  We have left God’s paths to follow our own.  Yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all.  Isaiah 53:1-6

The mixture of ambivalent feelings is not an easy pill to swallow.  But, with age, it can be the key to understanding, even though it can never be an acquired taste.  I have lived through enough seasons of Lent and Passion Week to make sense of the way Christ’s sorrow, and the pain of being rejected, becomes his joy in securing our forgiveness. 

With every shed tear in the garden, slap on the face by his accusors, lash laid on his back, and nail piercing holy hands, the Man of Sorrows receives the weight of my sin, and every sense of my sorrow and rejection.  And to be forgiven of all that, released from the guilt of more than poor choices and victimhood as an excuse for my behavior, is the transforming power to make my life’s experiences, (both lofty and lowy) meaningful, not just endurable.  I, who am Barabbas, am freed, as the Prince of Peace suffers my violence on Golgotha’s hill.  He is despised and rejected by all humankind; I am absolved of even the guilt of knowing that he took my place. 

One who is condemned receiving full pardon is a familiar theme.  Ever since the discovery of DNA, evidence has been used to sort out who did a crime…and who didn’t.  Everything about Isaiah’s 53rd chapter cries out that Jesus was innocent, yet he received the judgment on behalf of the guilty. 

Isaiah compares all humanity, every one of us, to sheep, wandering, straying away from the purpose and goodness we were created-in, and, created-for, which is fellowship with God.  God, the faithful and righteous judge of our character and behavior knows we are not victims; we chose to ignore Him and follow our own desires.  And, in the next heartbeat, we find God taking on human skin and taking our beating.  With every swing of the crucifier’s hammer landing on three nails, the Lord of Heaven becomes the Passover Lamb.  Mankind, once again in bondage, is having innocent blood cover the household door of his life.

There are many responses to this unasked-for gift from our Creator.  Two of those responses are common, and way, way off-the-mark:

·       Some people take the I didn’t ask for anybody to be crucified for me attitude.  That’s just what Isaiah said, we turned our backs on him and looked the other way.  That’s just staying on the “I’ll be the one in charge of my life – just get out of my way” stance…defiance, self-reliant…still lost, still separated from God!

·       Others, understanding how unjust it is for the innocent to suffer for the guilty, fall into a deep sense of guilt, living the lie of trying to repay the gift.  But that just denies the purpose of the gift, which is to make us whole again, not cripple us with a different weight of unworthiness.

This gift of forgiveness is dragging us up out of the pit of mirey-clay so we can walk, unencumbered by our sins, into the daylight, validating that God does not die on a cross for the worthless worm, but rescues the apple of his eye, women, men, and children who were created in his image, people who are now sanctified to walk right into the presence of the King of Glory, look him in the eye and smile as we’re hugged like the long lost loved ones we are!

For You Today

This Good Friday, remember most that this is a Glory Story!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title Image: Gustave Dore’ (public domain) via Wikimedia Commons                                                              Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

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