CUPC
Good Friday, 2014
Sermon
Isaiah 53:1-7 (NJB)
1 Who has given credence to what we have heard? And who has seen in it a revelation of the Lord's arm?
2 Like a sapling he grew up before him, like a root in arid ground. He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts;
3 he was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom, as it were, we averted our gaze, despised, for whom we had no regard.
4 Yet ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thought of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God;
5 whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises.
6 We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and Yahweh brought the acts of rebellion of all of us to bear on him.
7 Ill-treated and afflicted, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before its shearers he never opened his mouth.
1 Who has given credence to what we have heard? And who has seen in it a revelation of the Lord's arm?
2 Like a sapling he grew up before him, like a root in arid ground. He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts;
3 he was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom, as it were, we averted our gaze, despised, for whom we had no regard.
4 Yet ours were the sufferings he was bearing, ours the sorrows he was carrying, while we thought of him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God;
5 whereas he was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on him, and we have been healed by his bruises.
6 We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and Yahweh brought the acts of rebellion of all of us to bear on him.
7 Ill-treated and afflicted, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep dumb before its shearers he never opened his mouth.
“He had no form or charm to
attract us, no beauty to win our hearts; he was despised….” Who has seen in him
a revelation of the Lord?
Just a few short days before,
Jesus was being hailed as the son of David, the Messiah, the one who would save
Israel from the yoke of oppression. Here
on the cross, Jesus demonstrates that he knows the soul of David.
The writings that we have
ascribed to David represent a relationship with God that has no precedence in
earlier scripture. David treated God as
a personal friend, a counselor, a parent, a son. In his life David knew both the love and the
betrayal of family members, and in his relationship with God shown through the
Psalms David treats God as one who might also respond to him in the varied ways
that his loved ones had in the past. He
talks to God in words of love, devotion, praise, disappointment, anger, sorrow
and even abandonment.
On the cross Jesus pulls the
emotions of David from the depths of his own soul. Psalm 22 cries out: “[Psalms 22:1-2 (NJB)] My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? The words of my groaning do nothing to save me. My God, I
call by day but you do not answer, at night, but I find no respite.”
But in his final moments
Jesus recalled another Psalm, a Psalm of total trust: “[Psalms 31:4-5 (NJB)]
Draw me out of the net they have spread for me, for you are my refuge; to your
hands I commit my spirit, by you have I been redeemed.”
For David and for Jesus these
human fears of abandonment, these human doubts of God’s care, are linked to the
ultimate trust that we are still safest in the hands of God. No matter what is falling apart around us and
within us, we are always safest in the hands of God.
Only an intimate relationship
with God can produce these words of despair and these words of trust.
On the cross – and throughout
his ministry – Jesus wrestled with the question that haunts us: why do the wicked prosper? On Palm Sunday we
read the passage in John in which Jesus weeps over the fate of Jerusalem, a
fate that he surely recognized and was powerless to do anything about. Jesus felt impotent in face of evil and
sorrow. Is it any wonder that we do as
well?
In Psalms 74 David felt
totally abandoned : “[Psalms 74:1-2; 10-11(NJB)] God, why have you finally
rejected us, your anger blazing against the flock you used to pasture? How much
longer, God, will the enemy blaspheme? Is the enemy to insult your name for
ever? Why hold back your hand, keep your
right hand hidden in the folds of your robe?”
First and foremost, the Psalms are prayers to a God who is there. Prayer is the raising of the mind and heart to God, and if it is a heart heavy with anger, impotence or anguish, that too can find expression. Jesus tried to teach his followers the intimacy of genuine prayer. In the end he knew that no matter what was happening to him, his safety, his life and his glory was only to be found in the hands of the Lord.
Learning the lessons of
Jesus’ life can seem overwhelming to us.
We need to start with how he died so that we can understand how he lived
and calls us to live. Through such a
life, in our last moments, we too shall be given the gifts of trust, intimacy,
and a heart open to the Father, a gift which we build through a lifetime of
prayer.
Amen.
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