Daily Scripture: Luke 22:35 He said to them, “When I sent you out without wallet, pack or shoes, were you ever short of anything?” “Not a thing,” they answered. 36 “But now,” he said, if you have a wallet or a pack, take it; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your robe to buy one. 37 For I tell you this: the passage from the Tanakh that says, ‘He was counted with transgressors,’[a] has to be fulfilled in me; since what is happening to me has a purpose.”[Footnotes:
Luke 22:37 Isaiah 53:12]
Isaiah 53:12 Therefore I will assign him a share with the great,
he will divide the spoil with the mighty,
for having exposed himself to death
and being counted among the sinners,
while actually bearing the sin of many
and interceding for the offenders.”
Reflection Questions:
Rabbis debated who Isaiah's fourth "servant song" was about, and suggested a variety of figures to whom the song might apply. The first Christians had no doubt. They quoted this song more than any other verses to describe Jesus' redemptive suffering. Before his arrest, Jesus quoted Isaiah 53:12 about being "counted with criminals." He set the stage for the way his followers applied Isaiah 52:13–53:12 by saying that the passage was about him.
- M. Scott Peck quoted an old priest who said, "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 by being the Suffering Servant tell you about the kind of God we serve? When have you faced evil? How can Jesus' example guide you toward the only way of true victory over evil?
- Paul, following Jesus, told Christians in Rome: "Bless people who harass you - bless and don't curse them." "Don't pay back anyone for their evil actions with evil actions." We trust God to deal with evil, so, he ended, "Don't be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good" (Romans12:14, 17, 21). Do you believe good CAN defeat evil, or do you think that is naïve and idealistic? When you have returned hurt for hurt or wrong for wrong, how did that change you? Did it make the situation better or worse?
Today's Prayer:
Dear Jesus, thank you for being the ultimate suffering servant. Please teach me how to transform my suffering into a creative, life-giving force as well. Amen.
Insight from Glen Shoup Rev. Glen Shoup is the Executive Pastor of Worship and a Congregational Care pastor.
Executed as a criminal, a doer of evil (a Kakourgois), a murderer, a thief, a rapist, a terrorist—that’s who gets crucified—and yet he was the antithesis of all these things.
When Jesus hangs on that Roman Cross (he was sent there by Jews and hung there by Gentiles…nobody’s hands are washed of it—despite Pilate’s disclaimer), he does so as one who is taking onto and into himself all that is broken, narcissistic, pathological and condemnable. Yet he was none of those.
The residual effects of human self-willfulness seen on full display in the opening chapters of Genesis (what we theologically call “the fall”), which continues to manifest in each of us a disposition towards that which is broken, narcissistic, pathological and condemnable…Jesus had none of! And yet here he is absorbing all of it. This makes his
This reality (that can’t fully be articulated) is what both of today’s reading touch on. You see this reality named in the last two sentences of the Luke reading and essentially all of the verse from Isaiah. But you see it in several other scripture passages as well.
Theologians have reflected upon it since shortly after it occurred, and yet—in 2,000 years of Church history—we still can’t fully articulate it. Depending on how you count/categorize, there are 6 theories of the “Atonement” (the theological word for what’s happening in Jesus’ death) that have classically been put forth [meaning from the early Church Fathers forward] and 5 to 6 more modern theories put forth in the last 200 years. Yet none of them singularly captures or fully defines what’s going on when…He became sin, who had no sin.
Somehow, despite our descriptive deficiency, we find a glimpse of what it means that He became sin who had no sin in what an old priest [quoted by M. Scott Peck] was getting at when he insightfully observed, “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.”[1]
In 1999, there was a rather dark, heavy film released called The Green Mile. And while most movies I see aren’t memorable enough that I can still recall them 15 years later, this one—or at least elements of it—were. Most notable to me was the character John Coffey, who’d been convicted of a heinous crime, but in the culminating scene of the movie we see that not only was he innocent of the crime—but there is this powerful moment where he decides to take into himself all the evil wrapped up in this heinous crime he didn’t commit and in making this choice, he absorbs the agony,
He became sin…who had no sin.
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