Isaiah 50: 4-9 (links validated 3/3/24)

All preachers face the temptation of falling back on the same favorite or preferred way of encapsulating Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. As a thought experiment, you might ask some married congregants to one attribute or role their spouse plays that is central to the health and vibrancy of their marriage. Some might say friend, others teammate, wise counselor or lover. But if you were to ask a follow up question: “And is that all your spouse is to you?” One hopes their immediate answer will be an emphatic, “NO!” Similarly, we preachers — owing to our tradition, experiences, or present moment — may prefer one metaphor over another but should never think that is the only thing Christ has done for us, for God’s people and the world. Thankfully Scripture itself grants us a deep well of understanding who Jesus is and what he has done for us: Emmanuel/God-with-us; Rabbi, Healer, Miracle-Worker, Lord, Messiah, Son of Man, Redeemer, Savior, Lord of Life, Resurrected and Ascended King. This morning’s text — one of four “servant songs” — demonstrate layers of meaning to Christ’s work on our behalf. Similarly, the early church fathers were not afraid to understand Christ’s work, specifically on the cross, through the lens of multiple metaphors. This last Sunday before the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday is a good time to remind God’s people to be on the look-out for all of the ways God loves us in and through Jesus Christ.

("What is this week all about? One way to say it is as John Proctor does in this scene from Arthur Miller’s drama about the Salem witch trials, written while Joseph McCarthy and others of us were, and are, in our own ways, rooting out “witches” and “subversives” and whatever other “threats” to our “homeland security” in the early 50's...")

In his autobiography I Never Had it Made, Jackie Robinson describes a “wild and rage-crazed minute” in his first, most traumatic and abusive season as the first black Major League baseball player. Under vicious heckling from the opposing dugout, he thinks, To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create. I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of bitches and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all. I’d never become a sports star. But my son could tell his son someday what his daddy could have been if he hadn’t been too much of a man...

When I was in college, we sang a lyrical setting of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poem, “Von wunderbaren Maechten still geborgen” (loosely translated as, “By Gracious Powers So Wonderfully Sheltered”). He wrote it just months before the Nazis hanged him for his Christian resistance to their murderous rule. In it Bonhoeffer includes the line, Gott ist mit uns am Abend und am Morgen, (loosely translated, “God is with us night and day”). In doing so, he reflects, among other things, Isaiah’s confidence that “He who vindicates me is near” (9). Yet Bonhoeffer’s “God is with us night and morning” also perhaps deliberately plays on the German military’s slogan, Gott mit uns, (loosely translated, “God with us”)...

("In his book, Searching for Home, Craig Barnes claims that many people today sense the incompleteness of life as it is, but they don't know where to look for anything better. So they keep trying to fill in the holes in their lives by indulging in food, by increasing their consumer spending, by seeking new experiences, by trying a new drug, by changing careers...")

years ago when my son was in the 8th Grade (he just turned 27 so this was indeed some years back now!), his Christian school teacher was preparing the students to watch the whipping scene from the Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of the Christ, which at the time had come out quite recently. Long before they got to viewing the actual video clip—in fact, they never did watch the clip—the teacher’s rather graphic and gory descriptions of Jesus’ torments in the film were sufficient to cause one young man in the class to keel over, fainting dead away. I can only imagine what Mel Gibson’s actual overly gruesome movie scene would have done to this young man if not to many others in that middle school classroom. If you’ve seen that movie, then you know that the whipping scene is embellished far, far beyond the biblical witness, which in most gospels is just a single verse: “But [Pilate] had Jesus flogged”. The scene is excruciatingly long and bloody as the Roman soldier in charge of the beating keeps reaching for more deadly whipping implements, culminating in a nightmare whip studded with nails, bits of bone, and a couple of other things even Stephen King at his most terrifying might not have dreamed up. But what was most striking in that scene was the depiction (as some critics at the time noted) of “Jesus as Braveheart” (evoking another Mel Gibson movie from that era). As the flogging proceeds, there are several occasions when Jesus is brought to his knees from the pain of it all. And on a couple of those occasions, it looks like the soldier is about to give up, deeming that the man has had enough. But then Jesus heroically and stoically rises back to his feet, juts his chin out just a bit, and seems essentially to be saying, “Bring it on.” The soldier obliges and returns to the merciless beating...

In his book, Searching for Home, Craig Barnes claims that many people today sense the incompleteness of life as it is, but they don’t know where to look for anything better. So they keep trying to fill in the holes in their lives by indulging in food, by increasing their consumer spending, by seeking new experiences, by trying a new drug, by changing careers. But, of course, none of it satisfies for long. At one point Barnes observes that you know people have hit bottom when, instead of longing for a time when suffering will be no more, they plod on in life while never allowing their hopes to rise any higher than the furtive wish, “Maybe tomorrow we will suffer a little less.”...

At the heart of the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy is Katniss Everdeen, the brave teenager whose suffering was voluntary and substitutionary. When the authorities do their annual lottery to pick the young people who will do gladiatorial battle in the annual entertainment spectacle called the Hunger Games, Katniss’ little sister, Pim, is picked. Katniss immediately volunteers to take Pim’s place. She goes to the Games, improbably wins, and becomes the symbol of a rebellion against the evil President who rules Panem. She not only takes her sister’s place, but also stands in the place of her home district and, indeed, all of Panem. She sets her face to go up to the Capital city to suffer and die, in order to save Pim and Panem.

Last week I mentioned the novel, Purple Hibiscus, which is set in a troubled time in Nigeria. It focuses on a well-to-do family whose sternly Catholic father abuses the family, even as he showers his church and community with benevolent gifts. At one point, JaJa, the teenaged son rebels. He refuses to participate in the Eucharist and he finally rejects the Faith entirely. When the abusive father is found dead in his office, thus freeing the family from his depredations, JaJa’s sister piously says, “God knows best. God moves in mysterious ways.” The embittered JaJa laughs and replies, ‘Of course God does. But have you ever wondered why? Why did he have to murder his own son so we could be saved? Why didn’t he just go ahead and save us?” That will be the response of many unbelievers (and some Christians) to our text’s focus on the active and passive obedience of the Suffering Servant of the Lord.

At the heart of the best-selling Hunger Games trilogy is Katniss Everdeen, the brave teenager whose suffering was voluntary and substitutionary. When the authorities do their annual lottery to pick the young people who will do gladiatorial battle in the annual entertainment spectacle called the Hunger Games, Katniss’ little sister, Pim, is picked. Katniss immediately volunteers to take Pim’s place. She goes to the Games, improbably wins, and becomes the symbol of a rebellion against the evil President who rules Panem. She not only takes her sister’s place, but also stands in the place of her home district and, indeed, all of Panem. She sets her face to go up to the Capital city to suffer and die, in order to save Pim and Panem.

One of the ways that artists have shown that voice of God is through a dove, symbolizing the Holy Spirit, whispering into the ear of prophets or gospel writers or, here, David as he writes the psalms. The dove, a soft-feathered creature, is also the symbol of hope and promise in the story of Noah. It was the dove who returned to the ark with an olive twig in its beak. It is also a symbol of peace. That's not exactly the feel of this dove. The giant bird (compare the size of the bird to the width of David's shoulders) is balanced on one foot on David's crown. The other leg and foot are thrown out for balance. The bird's beak appears to be in David's ear, not just directing words toward the ear in hopes that David will hear. The bird is literally speaking into David's ear as he composes the psalms...

In his book, Searching for Home, Craig Barnes claims that many people today sense the incompleteness of life as it is, but they don’t know where to look for anything better. So they keep trying to fill in the holes in their lives by indulging in food, by increasing their consumer spending, by seeking new experiences, by trying a new drug, by changing careers. But, of course, none of it satisfies for long. At one point Barnes observes that you know people have hit bottom when, instead of longing for a time when suffering will be no more, they plod on in life while never allowing their hopes to rise any higher than the furtive wish, “Maybe tomorrow we will suffer a little less.” That resigned attitude lets suffering have the last word. In despair, our suffering begets only more suffering in the dismal belief that suffering is what we were made for. The Gospel goes another way, seeing suffering as something that can produce hope. But this hope is not the shrunken hope that says we can do no better than try to suffer a little less. Instead Jesus gives the hope of glory that comes when you realize that by loving the unlovely and by bringing life out of death, Jesus can now give peace even in the midst of suffering.

("The scene is the last day of school before the Christmas holiday. The boys and girls of an elementary school had just finished their Christmas program for the parents and now it was time to go home for the two-week vacation. One set of parents was waiting for Bobby, their Kindergartner who was carrying home a special project--the Christmas gift for Mom and Dad that the kids had been working on for weeks...")

["In his book, Searching for Home, Craig Barnes claims that many people today sense the incompleteness of life as it is, but they don't know where to look for anything better. So they keep trying to fill in the holes in their lives by indulging in food, by increasing their consumer spending, by seeking new experiences, by trying a new drug, by changing careers...")