Isaiah 53:4-6
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 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.
6 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.
The Lenten season has grown to become a time of high importance to me personally. Easter is no less important but often I forgot or neglected to take into proper view the suffering Jesus, and aptly consider what that means for me. The empty cross is a beautiful symbol of victory for the Christian, but it is only because it wasn’t at one time empty. Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters have an advance on us sometimes because they are less hesitant to illustrate our Lord’s sacrifice. For them, Jesus is often lifted on the cross in front of them, the bleeding Lamb of God.
The power of this picture was demonstrated to me in a Good Friday service some years ago. We gathered as a family with our larger family to worship Jesus by remembering his suffering. The music, the readings, the video, all told the story of the culmination of Jesus’ sacrifice. The cross bore the weight of the Creator’s love. We heard what seemed to be the final words of the Messiah and this one who so many hoped would lift David’s scepter was himself raised upon a bloody cross. I was so transfixed by the emotions of the evening I scarcely noticed my grandson had left his seat and made his way to the altar and was bowed there alone. He was just a few days shy of six-years-old but something about what he had seen and heard invited him to do what he had seen others do before.
There in the darkness, in full view of a cross filled with Bleeding Love, my grandson accepted the sacrifice of Jesus as his gift and found forgiveness. That’s right, it wasn’t the Resurrected Savior that attracted him but the suffering one. His broken heart was attracted to Christ crucified.
So too might I, might you, bow in the view of Jesus, wounded, and find his love boundless and free.
Pastor Wes
