Tuesday, March 22
Scripture: Isaiah 53

Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows,
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days,
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
 

THE SUFFERING SERVANT        

Like many Evangelical Christians of my time, I wasn’t raised with a very rich or meaningful theology of suffering.  We did not spend much time in Sunday school studying the book of Job, nor did we observe Lent. There were no pictures of martyrs, only a gleaming white, sanitized cross to the right of the stage.  I remember, at some point, our church even changing the lyrics of the old standard I’ll Fly Away to make them more upbeat: “…just a few more happy days and then…” we would sing, not wanting to allow the word weary to escape our lips.

I wonder how I would feel about Christ and about suffering if I had grown up with Fra Angelico’s Christ Crowned with Thorns hanging in the foyer of my childhood church, rather than the pleasant maritime seascapes that adorned the walls. This painting allows no relief, crowding the unsettling and brutally real portrait into the old format of the devotional icon.

I invite the reader to now spend one full minute looking at this image in silence.

This is a painting that looks at you as much as you look at it and I find the vermillion eyes particularly difficult to look at.  If this were the image of Christ I was asked to live with as a child, I imagine that I would have mostly avoided those eyes through averting my own.  Even now as a grown man, can I look on him whom they have pierced?

As the painting searches me, I think about the moment of pride and triumphalism recorded in Matthew, in which James and John come to Jesus, by proxy of their mother, asking if they might sit at his right and left hand in his kingdom.  Is the kingdom of the crown of thorns what they had in mind?  Imagine their disappointment.  They did not know what they were asking for and Jesus poignantly rejoined:

“Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?”

The painting similarly queries me about my desire and ability to enter this King’s country and like James and John I might rush into a response that I don’t fully understand, just to give one.  These brothers were about to endure terrible disappointment, which made possible the real triumph of the Resurrection and coming of the Holy Spirit.  Yet, even after the victory of Christ, James would be cruelly martyred and John persecuted, tortured, exiled.  In all of this they were following the way of their King, the Suffering Servant.  This is the way I am invited to follow as well.

Isaiah reminds us in his breathtaking passage that suffering and disappointment were the hallmarks of Jesus’ life and ministry, not just of Passion Week.  One of the great mysteries of the Cross is that it gives meaning to all human suffering.  Christ’s suffering imbues the pain of this life with the potential to do inconceivably great good.  Unlike the implicit teachings of my childhood faith, suffering is not to be avoided or transcended, but is to be received, endured, overcome.  Indeed, in Christ, suffering is the very means of his saving work, and the very confirmation of his Lordship.

PRAYER

Holy Spirit,
Please show me the superficial and the profound pain and disappointment present in my life, and any sinful methods of avoidance, insulation, medication, or obfuscation I have employed. Give me courage to confront and live out the real and authentic life you have given to me, including its necessary suffering.  Allow me through this to have real compassion for others. Translate the guttural groans of my body and spirit into elegant prayer.

Jesus,
Please intercede for me in my suffering.  You contain stronger compassion, experience deeper grief, and feel pain more acutely than I do. You suffer more because you are more human than I am. Through your wounds please bind up mine, through your death, give me courage to face my own dying and the dying of those I love.  You have overcome the world, you have overcome death.

Daddy (Papa, Papi, or Father),
I thank you for my life that flows from you.  Take the cups of suffering from me that I do not need to drink, but as your Son submitted to your will at all times, so I submit now.  Your will is perfect, and I want it to be done more than I want to live. Amen.

Jonathan Puls, Associate Dean of SAS, Fine Arts and Communications