Wednesday of Holy Week
I marvel at how the prophets and psalmists heard God’s voice so clearly as to put into writing the prophetic words about the Messiah who would suffer for his people. Today’s text from Isaiah describes in incredible clarity the specific torture that our Lord endured and the precise ways in which he suffered. (See Isaiah chapters 49-55 for the “Suffering Servant” texts.) It’s just simply incredible how receptive Isaiah was to God’s voice!
King David, in today’s psalm references the gall and vinegar offered to Jesus as he hung on the Cross. Even the prophet Zechariah saw that the price for betraying the Great Shepherd would be 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah ch. 11). These writers lived centuries before Christ Jesus was incarnated! Centuries! I stop to imagine what these men, prophets and psalmists, thought and felt as they heard God’s voice speaking these difficult words to them. Imagine Isaiah – what must he have felt in his soul as he wrote about someone unknown to him, someone yet to come, who would be so cruelly despised, rejected, tortured . . . I wonder if Isaiah wept as he described this horror and cried out, God, who is this person, and why is he suffering so? Similarly, with David. Did David somehow know that he was describing one of his descendants, one who would come from his own family line? What must he have felt, what pondering did he undertake in his heart? Both Isaiah and David write in the first person. Surely, they must have felt deeply the anguish of the One with whom they so closely identified as God revealed these circumstances to them. How awesome that Jesus didn’t just suddenly appear to enter our humanity as the Son of God, as Suffering Servant, but his passion was foretold. What a mighty faith-builder that is, if we allow it to be. Let’s marvel today that God’s plan of salvation is eternal, and that God chooses to reveal pieces of it to holy men and women throughout all of human history. Let’s marvel today that God speaks to us – to you and to me and invites us to play a role in announcing the life, love, and mission of our Messiah!
Isaiah says, “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear . . .” Can we know today, that God doesn’t single out individuals to be “super saints,” ones that have a unique hotline to God? God’s voice never quiets, and his Word constantly speaks. Whose mouth will God use today if not mine, if not yours? Morning after morning he opens my ear . . . We are the Body of Christ, we are Jesus’ mouth, the ones who bring Good News. Are there weary people among us today? YES, plenty of them, if not all of us. The current pandemic crisis has burdened each of us and we are weary. As Isaiah desires, “that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.” Who in your household needs to be roused? You may say, but I don’t have a “well-trained tongue” like Isaiah. Do you have a receptive heart, do you have open ears? I think of the words of St Paul, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Cor. 1:3-4). We don’t need to be well-trained outwardly to share what we have received inwardly. I pray we might each awaken to the needs of the others in our domestic churches this day and share the love and compassion that we have each received from God. Let’s share what we have with each other.
I am moved by today’s psalm, as David transitions from crying out in pain and anguish to jubilant praise: “I will praise the name of God in song, and I will glorify him with thanksgiving: ‘See, you lowly ones, and be glad; you who seek God, may your hearts revive! For the Lord hears the poor, and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.’” From agony and despair to joy and resurrection; from the defeat of death to the victory of life. Isn’t that our story this Holy Week? Isn’t it our story as we weather the storm of this global pandemic? I take great comfort from knowing that God has held God’s people securely through all generations – I see evidence of that in the clear communication of the prophets and psalmists centuries before the coming of the Messiah. Just as God’s plan of salvation was and is secure and everlasting, so is God’s intimate care and providence over us right now in this present moment. Today, in the midst of our shared suffering, can we trust that our Suffering Servant has already redeemed our suffering by carrying it to the Cross. Today, in the midst of our angst, can we sing songs of praise, dispelling the darkness of fear and anxiety by our songs of thanksgiving. Today, can we be the mouth of Jesus as we speak words of hope and encouragement to those around us, such that their hearts may revive. Praise be to God!
- Elizabeth Wourms