To refresh your reading of this Scripture passage you can follow this link to the passage in the New Revised Standard Version and The Message –
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%2053%3A4-11&version=NRSV;MSG
V.
I asked in the last post to consider Jesus’ years with his followers and the crowds and see if this passage calls anything to mind.
Have you noticed anything?
Try reading this passage in The Message translation and see if that opens anything to you.
VI.
Consider these words from The Message translation,
- a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand
- we looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried – our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us
- even though he’d never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn’t true
- my righteous one, my servant, will make many “righteous ones,”
- he took up the cause of all the black sheep
VII.
Jesus weeps for Jerusalem.
He sees the crowds who need a shepherd, who need a nurturing mother hen.
He heals a man bound in chains and the townspeople’s eyes are so much on the livestock they lose they demand Jesus leave.
He speaks the truth and the religious leaders accuse him of being Satan’s spokesman.
He heals many of pain and disfigurement and touches them as one of them, hurting and disfigured as they are.
He takes those excluded and looked down on as “black sheep”, tax collectors for instance, and brings them to righteousness.
VIII.
What do you think?
What else do you see?
By all means, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.
charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}