Even through exile's pain, God created redemption
Daily Scripture
Isaiah 53:4-6
4 It was certainly our sickness that he carried,
and our sufferings that he bore,
but we thought him afflicted,
struck down by God and tormented.
5 He was pierced because of our rebellions
and crushed because of our crimes.
He bore the punishment that made us whole;
by his wounds we are healed.
6 Like sheep we had all wandered away,
each going its own way,
but the Lord let fall on him all our crimes.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
Isaiah 53 occurred in a section of the book many mainline scholars call “Second Isaiah,” because it spoke first to Israelites returning from exile in Babylon. The prophet wrote about a divine servant whose suffering could bring redemption in ways most people couldn’t imagine. Scholar David Payne observed that Christians “unconsciously fill in any ‘gaps’ in the account. The prophet himself never named the Servant, nor even identified him plainly as the Messiah.” *
- The unnamed servant in Isaiah 53 didn’t suffer for his own wrongs. He suffered to change people who “have turned to other gods, trusted in politics rather than God, and let people with power and resources take advantage of people without power and resources.” ** How have God’s faithful servants, ancient and modern, at times suffered for nothing more than seeking to turn such people back to God’s ways?
- In Luke 22:37, Jesus quoted Isaiah 53:12 about being “counted with criminals.” The first Christians followed Jesus’ lead (cf. Matthew 8:17 quoting Isaiah 53:4 about Jesus’ healing power). Jesus intentionally lived this truth: “The only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there… it loses its power and goes no further.” *** What does Jesus’ choice to defeat evil as the Suffering Servant tell you about the kind of God you serve?
Prayer
Dear Jesus, thank you for being the ultimate suffering servant. Please let your power at work in me transform any suffering I endure into a creative, life-giving force as well. Amen.
GPS Insights
Emily Stirewalt
Emily Stirewalt serves as Resurrection's Silverlink Pastor specializing in pastoral care of elderly adults. She is an ordained Elder in the Missouri Annual Conference and has served since 2007. She is married to Randall, a special education teacher. They have two daughters, Elliott and Marlowe. Emily enjoys binge watching "Friends" or "Golden Girls."
How many of you have a go-to-set stories that explain your Wesleyan understandings of grace?
I guess I am truly a theological nerd because I can tell you where each interpretation of God’s grace in my life has been or will be explained by my life. I started thinking about that when I was discerning a call to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church. Given that I was a “cradle Methodist,” I had always swum in the waters of grace in my home church and not been aware that there were different theological understandings my peers might have been exposed to at the church down the street. What a blessing to always know that God loved me.
I do remember one Lenten season when I was about eight years old when the story of Jesus on the cross became personal. I do not remember what my Pastor said during that sermon, but I do remember the feeling of Jesus dying “for me” washing over me. It was not a guilty feeling. It was a feeling of acceptance and love. Substitutionary atonement would absolutely make its way into my hearing as I grew up. And there is value in knowing that I am forgiven for sure. But I understand that moment for eight-year-old Emily to be a justifying grace moment–a turning point for me in that God loved ME and that Jesus died for ME too. It set me on a different path–it validated my existence.
As I grew up and started asking more theological questions and went on to seminary, even when I have studied the theological theories of the atonement, that moment of justifying grace has stayed with me all these years. Whenever I feel like God could not possibly forgive me this time, or if I messed up so bad that this time it will be the end, I try and think of that overwhelming love and acceptance I felt that early Spring night in the middle 1990’s, on a lime green pew cushion and Pastor John’s voice saying I was loved, that Jesus was thinking of me on the cross. It has made all the difference for so many years. I hope you know you are loved too. Amen.
© 2024 Resurrection: A United Methodist Church. All Rights Reserved.
Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* David F. Payne on Isaiah in F. F. Bruce, gen. ed. New International Bible Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1979, p. 756.
** John Goldingay, Isaiah for Everyone. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015, p. 206.
*** Yancey, Philip, The Jesus I Never Knew. Zondervan. Kindle Edition, p. 204.
