Isaiah 53:1-6
1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 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.
3 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.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 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.
6 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.
The melancholy prophet returns! Having used up his joyful exuberance in chapter 52, Isaiah reminds us that we can’t celebrate Christmas without the iniquity of us all. As a fellow melancholy often wondering why I can’t “feel Christmas-y” – by which I mean the tall order of having nothing to be depressed or exhausted about while simultaneously being dazzled by every whim of the season – there are nights when the toddler tornadoes of holiday cheer are finally sleeping and the house is trashed and I can no longer stomach my pandemic hair and refugee children are still in cages at the border…I get it, Isaiah. This passage of scripture is devoid of jingle jangle, and I am too.
Here’s the God of Stumps again, that tender shoot growing up out of dry ground. Not beautiful, not desirable. Despised, rejected, a co-sufferer of human pain, “yet we considered him punished…stricken…afflicted.” Isn’t that just the human way? When we see someone in pain it makes us uncomfortable, and when we don’t want to press into that discomfort – which often will call us to action or empathy or, even worse, the unheroic action of quiet contemplation – we instead scapegoat. Boy they must have done something really wrong this time. If they could just do this and that, get their life together…
And when it happens to us, the mental illness or the inescapable grief or the relationship crumbling, we heap on the same measure of shame and judgement. If only I had… If only, if only, if only. If only the Lord had laid on someone else our iniquities. If only we could find peace on the other side of our wanderings. If only we had a co-sufferer in our collective low self esteem.
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering…and by his wounds we are healed.” It is this surety that we look forward to as we light our candles in the dark, dark night.
God of Stumps, you feel what we feel. Cut off. Abandoned. Despised and rejected. In our lowest moments, remind us that joy comes in the morning and walking with you is never walking alone. Give us extra strength to reach out to the poor and the lonely this holiday season despite our own discomforts and sorrows. Amen.
