Skip to main content

Communion Reflection Isaiah 52.13-15

In this passage, much like the more famous chapter 53, Isaiah foretells the Lord’s Servant who will be exalted.

This servant, who we are told will be exalted, is also described as suffering, of being beaten and disfigured beyond recognition even as human.

These two verses don’t seem to fit together. How can someone who the Lord is going to exalt, suffer like this?

Isaiah anticipates our conundrum with this seeming impossibility. But this is the divine secret, the basis of the mystery hidden before time, but now revealed.

When the Servant comes, His glory, His exalting will be accomplished through this mystery, and as a result, peoples and kings will not be able to utter a word. They will be dumbfounded by the way this Servant will be exalted.

Paul tells us in Philippians that His name has been exalted above all other names – Jesus, Messiah, the Christ has triumphed in death for us. In doing so, He has blessed and cleansed – or text says sprinkled – the entire world.

This is our God, the promised Servant who loved us so much that He was willing to be exalted through beatings and death. This love, this kind of love, this depth of love, when seen is truly dumbfounding to us, and especially to those who expect exalting to be done through obvious power, through physical might.

When we reflect on this sort of love, we two have our mouths stopped because they are surprised and shocked, and yet now they and we understand this plan, this Servant, this love.


Pray with me. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Passover, The First Born, Abraham, and You

Israel has been in captivity in Egypt, Moses has completed his contests with Pharaoh, and the People of Israel have been expelled from Egypt. The death of Egyptian firstborn children and livestock has compelled their removal into the wilderness. At the end of Exodus 12, God institutes the Passover in remembrance of the Angel of Death passing by the homes of Jews on the night the Egyptian firstborn children were killed. Notably, they were spared if in a house with blood around the door.  The Passover is established for Israel herself, including their slaves who have been circumcised. If a sojourner wants to celebrate the Passover with you, he can after he circumcises all males with him. I suspect that pretty much eliminated any visitors participating. In chapter 13, the protocols include redeeming Israel's firstborn. In this discussion, God says your firstborn belongs to God, and you must redeem your firstborn or you must kill it. God has redeemed Israel's firstborn by the blood...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wineskins II

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Faith to Faith

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1.16-17, ESV) There are various renderings and understandings of the phrase as it is used here, "faith for faith." Both words for faith derive from pistis, with the first being pisteos (genitive) and the second, pistin (accusative) . Faith, we are told, begins in faith and leads to faith. The import of this origin and fulfillment is found in the next sentence above, the righteous shall live by faith (genitive). We might word this as "already held or possessed faith will result in or lead to faith. As it is written, the one who has faith will parlay that faith into a salvific faith. Faith held by the believer will lead the believer to greater or more complete faith, resulting in her s...
Post a Comment
Read more