Tuesday of Holy Week, March 26, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Take these ancient words and make me cry
Hear me, O islands, listen, O distant peoples.
And in your hearing, in your listening, know how close God is to you, within you, in your very eardrum and nostril, God is.
The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name.
And here, now, even within my breast you speak the truth that sets us free. When I am afraid, you are there. When I am at peace, you are there. In all my hopes and dreams, you are there. When I climb the tree and when I fall, you are there.
He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm. He made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me.
Only land and power and fame are at stake in our battles, and what one side wins today, the other side takes back tomorrow. Our battles are boring, and never-ending, even as the bloodshed of their sons breaks the hearts of mothers.
But your sharp-edged sword and polished arrow don’t kill the children of men. They are for defeating Satan, the endless author of human death.
You are my servant, he said to me. Israel, through whom I show my glory.
In The Chosen, Simon the Zealot chooses to follow Jesus after Jesus heals his older brother at the Pool of Bethesda. He and Jesus are walking beside a river. Jesus asks Simon for his dagger, which he throws into the water. What good am I to you without my dagger? But Jesus says, “I have a bigger sword.”
Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, yet my reward is with the Lord, my recompense is with my God.
Jesus doesn’t carry a sword. He is the sword. Jesus doesn’t carry a polished arrow. He is the polished arrow. Jesus does not point the way to the truth. He is the way. He is the truth.
He is the life.
Where else can we go?
For now the Lord has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him.
Isaiah writes this while Israel is exiled in Babylon, 600 years before Jesus was born. He declares the mission of the Messiah, but he mistakes the sword and arrow of the Christ as weapons to be used against other men.
Why not? What else have men ever known?
And I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord, and my God is now my strength!
But God’s words through Isaiah’s pen whisper of something MORE victorious, more triumphant, which will not require the deaths of men fighting one another, which will not demand the sobs and sorrows of their mothers.
It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel.
Take these broken wings and learn to fly … all your life … you were only waiting for this moment to arise.
I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
Words that flow through the veins of every missionary who ever lived. Words for all of us.
Pierce the darkness. Follow the light. Let it shine.
Hear me, O islands. Listen, O distant peoples.
(Isaiah 49, Psalm 71, John 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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