Good Friday of Holy Week, April 10,
2020
See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human, and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about. Isaiah 52:13-15
To say that
Peter was startled when Jesus began to wash his feet is to muddle around in the
understated. Peter was mortified that
the Holy One could even bear to have him around, much less treat him so well as
to kneel in front of him like some faceless servant. But that’s the nature of the greatest of all;
he is willing to become the least of all to lift up the most lost of all.
Isaiah’s
prophecy pointed to the startling, amazing, mouth-dropping reaction we have at
seeing a humbled God…a crucified God.
And it worries us greatly, because, if he’s like that, and we are his
disciples, the specter of becoming like that is in our future.
It’s in our
DNA, this understanding of God’s image in us; we hardly think about it with the
front-burner of our minds, but, deep inside we want to be exalted, lifted-up,
and the center of attention – if you doubt that, just watch a two-year-old for
a while. But, at the same time, because
of God’s image/stamp on our souls, we know our sin disqualifies this
self-worship and separates us from even being near the throne, much less on
it! Like Peter, we’re startled, even
repulsed by the thought of it.
This is what troubled
young Francis of Assisi as he struggled with the pathway of his own conversion
to Christ. According to one story of his
journey, early in the process of committing his life to God’s way, Francis was
riding a horse down a road that passed a leper colony. Lepers were the dirty side of life,
emaciated, gray, and despised. The horse
saw the leper in the middle of the road and was startled. When Francis got the beast under control, he saw
the bedraggled, nearly former human standing in front of him. After a long, frightening, paralyzing moment
he dismounted, went to the man (who was motionless, expressionless, nearly
lifeless, except for the automatic, unthinking breathing of lungs and beating
of what was left of his heart).
Doing the
unthinkable, Francis took the leper’s hand. It was a poor emaciated hand,
bloodstained and cold like that of a corpse.
Francis pressed the hand and brought it to his lips. As he kissed the lacerated flesh of the
creature, who was the most abject, the most hated, the most scorned of all
human beings, he was flooded with a wave of emotion that shut out everything
around him….it taught him that following Christ may require doing some things
that repulse us. What Francis didn’t
know then was that something greater was prompting him, allowing him to do that
which, humanly speaking, he was incapable of doing.[1]
Perhaps the
greatest lesson Francis learned in this moment was what Jesus did for Francis;
when Jesus died for Francis on Calvary, he was kissing the sin-lepers
of all eternity.
And that kiss
makes us whole.
For You Today
There’s no
shortage of lepers in this world.
When’s the last time you kissed one?
You chew on
that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
For another post on Isaiah 52 and Good Friday see This Holy Week – Part 5
