Isaiah 52:13-53:12

"Good Friday" - Years A, B, C


Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12

"The Israelites are still the focus in that these verses offer them a revolutionary theology that explains the hardships of exile: The people had to endure the exile and the suffering it engendered because that suffering was done in service to God so that God, through their atoning sacrifice, could redeem nations." [note from NISB]

It is one thing to participate in "suffering" one's self and quite another to attribute it to an outsider on behalf of one's self or others. In either case, though, there are dangers aplenty.

Suffering qua suffering is not redemptive. Jesus' suffering was no more or less than that of thousands crucified then and still killed today for challenging one power structure or another principality. Stand-in suffering is particularly problematic. At the least it is patronizing.

But to suffer in one's self does set up the possibility of redefinition of meaning. To suffer in one's self while assisting another leads to a redefinition of meaning. One of the best commentaries on the whole suffering issue is Frankl's [Man's] Search for Meaning -- "the person who knows the 'why' for their existence will be able to bear almost any 'how.'"

The following is found here [MISSING URL][you may want to explore the Irreverent Guide at the bottom of the page]: "The main emphasis revolves around Dr. Frankl's observation that those prisoners who believe they have a reason to live, "meaning" in their lives, were better at doing what it takes to survive their ordeal. Suffering becomes less difficult when there is some purpose to the suffering, or more accurately, when the person doing the suffering believes that there is meaning to the suffering. Here is a concrete example from Frankl's book:

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?" "Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her" He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. (Frankl, 1984)

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/april2004.html

 


 

Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12

Making intercession for transgressors is not dependent upon suffering unto death, though that may come as one is active in intercession.

Imagine an abusive situation. Intercession is not just prayer that the abuser will stop. It is also providing safety for the abused and confrontation of behavior of the abuser. These are both dangerous activities as those abused can be so caught that they deny, refuse, battle any other pattern and those doing the abuse deny, refuse, battle any other pattern of behavior for themselves.

Making active intercession for transgressors (from either the receiving or giving end of abuse) is inherent in the command to "love one another." There can be no lesser definitions of "love" accepted that does not break these patterns.

It is not necessary to go to the extreme cases to see this. Take a look at any congregation down through history and you will find it present. There is theological and spiritual abuse as well as physical abuse in both church and society.

If we take the Maundy Thursday command seriously it will, not unexpectedly, lead to a good possibility of Good Friday without any recourse to the preconditioned necessity of suffering on the part the intercessor.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html

 


 

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25 or Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Persistence in the face of overwhelming sorrow (try reading the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson) can lead to provocation to love and good deeds, anyway.

Overwhelming sorrow can also deaden us to the point of non-responsiveness. It can call forth intermediary rituals to disperse such sorrow that eventually become a barrier to experiencing the sorrow at all. At this point we cling to our ritual rather than face again that which overwhelms us, every time. Far better to be obedient than to wrestle, as did Jacob of old, with unknown forces.

Suffering does come, as does everything in its time. But here the suffering may be more in the eye of the beholder than the actor. We do come to an empathetic and cathartic experience of suffering, but one that tends to keep us captive to it rather than release us into a new freedom to accept oursuffering and not run from it.

We do not seem to find a way through suffering (a better conversation between Buddha and Jesus would help many a Christian and their congregation). It becomes a totem for us and we carry it around our necks and tattooed on our bodies. A cross becomes an ending spot for us rather than a beginning, everything is seen through its lens.

Note: None of this applies to the kinds of suffering we cause and ignore to the least among us. That kind of suffering has nothing to do with redemption.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

 


 

We have been sold for nothing. It seems like we have arrived where we are by the most natural process available. Little by little we have come to today and we can’t figure out how it happened, it must have been nothing, just happenstance, and who can argue with that.

As importantly, the only way out of our present perdicament is as equally mysterious as nothing. On the farthest horizon a whisper of a messenger who seems to be taking such tiny steps in our direction. For the longest time an approach seems so slow. Little by little we catch advance echoes calling us out - “Depart, depart.”

Where we thought we were stuck, we find it was a wraithful illusion. We don’t go out in haste, but one deliberate choice after another choice deliberately made. We have heard, “Depart, depart”.

Though hard to hear, we found trust available. We have seen the courage of others before and around us. We sense a new wisdom rising in the next generation. Between these we are encouraged to think a new thought, even though threatened.

All that is said about a suffering servant could be said about you and me.

For now we simply focus on knowing this current situation cannot be defined as normative. We are called to, “Depart, depart.” No more retribution. Rather, the blessed will lead others to their own blessedness. May you so lead and light a new way. 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/12/isaiah-521-5312.html

 


 

Another long, long passage. There is much here that has been used for a too easy theory of bloody atonement. It seems as if there is an inherent quality of identity for this servant figure. Overlooked in the “will of the Lord to crush him” is the beginning of verse 8 - the power of regime, of privilege, of violence known as “oppressive judgment” or a “perversion of justice” or “seized by force and condemned”.

We all have a hand in delaying justice, which is denying justice. Our vision of other possibilities than the one we seem trapped in is too limited. In Isaiah all this allusive language is a stand-in for the nation, not an individual. We are called to evaluate our reality from the perspective of community. How are we doing as a people, not just my own sense of persecution? If we can begin to approach life communally, we may be able to do social course correction as well as the personal. This gives us an opportunity to redefine our present in light of where we would like to end up so life is not just G*D’s will, but also our engagement with one another as well as with G*D and creation.

Blessings to your journey to reframe judgment against into intercession for.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/isaiah-521-5312.html

 

 

How do you play with “bearing sin” and “revealing love”?

Our language is made even more difficult than usual for communicating when we say one thing to mean another.

If all we hear upon growing up is sin talk, it is difficult to later hear its derivation. There is nothing that can not grow from an initial impulse to love/create/release. Even sin is a subset of love—its absence or being redirected by some entitlement desire.

Note that no matter how despised and rejected, oppressed and afflicted, this beloved one might be, they are still a beloved. Even if ground into the ground the amazing reality of their presence cannot be reduced beyond belovedness. Their steadfastness, even to death, only reveals a larger love before which the hardest head and coldest heart will be seen.

Bearing sin here is not the bearing of sin of others, taking responsibility for the sin of others, but to recognize that it is the sins of others that brought about this perversion of justice. This can be heard in a comment from the Jewish Study Bible regarding verse 53:4-6:

Either the servant suffered on behalf of the speakers (i.e., the guilty were not punished at all), or he suffered along with the guilty, even though he himself did not share in the guilt of his fellow Israelites. The former idea (i.e., the notion of vicarious suffering) would be unusual for the Bible; the latter idea (the idea of corporate guilt) is not.

Again, how do you play with “bearing sin” and “revealing love”? Which is vicarious, a substitute for real life? Which is prophetic, a demonstration of how far we have gone astray together?

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/isaiah-5213-5312-friday.html