Wonderful to share today with people who walk so closely to God and listen so attentively to the Spirit that they can offer God’s word to us right where we’re at – in the midst of our heart ache and struggles. Thank you to all from Lockhart, Culcairn-Henty, Pilgrim, and Tumbarumba (and further afield!) who came together to hold this solemn moment ….
This is the night where violence is the victor as ambitious men measure a man’s worth in silver and fearful men turn their backs on a friend, and powerful men trade what is right for whatever keeps them popular.
This is the day when the sun refuses to shine on the tear-stained cheeks of those who bear witness to such cruelty or the bewildered faces of those who can’t take back their wrongs or the hardened hearts already moving on to their next bit of entertainment.
This is the time in which God goes ahead into the nightmare landscape of pain and suffering, into the breach between divine love and human sinfulness, into the dark, into the deep, into death.
Out of the depths we cry to you: Lord, have mercy.
Gethsemane … by Glen Powell
As it was prophesied in the book of Isaiah, so has it come to pass:
See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. Just as there were many who were appalled at him— his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness— so he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand. Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (NIV)
Sovereign Lord, our great God of compassion, as we gather around the cross of Christ we can hardly believe what happened. Our hearts are shaken with sorrow, our certainty with disbelief, for a life so full of promise has been taken and we do not understand.
Cradle us in our confusion, meet us in our anger, contain our shock and sadness, bear the questions that have no answers, ease our regret and shame.
We must believe that you do not despise our cries of deep despair – that You do not look the other way when we are in pain. You are the first responder to our sufferings: let us remember that “it is finished” that we might overflow with life again. In Jesus’ name.