Isaiah 53:4-6 “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
When I see a police officer, I think corrupt and untrustworthy.
When I see a politician, I think bribes.
When I see a man in the red-light district, I think lust.
When I see a woman shove her way through the metro, I think rude and selfish.
When I see someone begging, I think of the underworld of slaves and child trafficking.
Ugh. We are a despicable people.
When I look at individual people, I have a hard time hearing cries for help. I see only ugliness: anger, jealousy, greed, hatred, pride. The flaws of humanity are quite strong.
What I don’t see is what Jesus saw: “Harassed and helpless.”
If there’s nothing new under the sun and history has a habit of repeating itself, I can see how the people of my world are very much akin to the audience of Isaiah’s time. And if that world was sick and disgusting like us, I have a very difficult time seeing how God could have looked and loved and chosen to send his son. Why would he save us? Even all these years after Jesus came, we are still in such a rotten state.
Until the day Jesus was born, the world was waiting for a savior, which sounds too romantic to be true-the stuff of fairy tales. It’s sounds too romantic because most of the world didn’t realize it needed a savior. How, then, could the world really be waiting? But God heard the cries rising from his creation-cries we as his creation can neither hear nor understand.
There are many days where I walk past appalling sights and wonder how God can allow us to continue. We are killing ourselves and killing each other, and there appears to be no end to this cycle. How can God let us continue? Why doesn’t he just come back quickly?
But I wonder if this is one of those times where I am like the first disciples. They thought they had everything figured out. Jesus was the Messiah, the king who was prophesied to come. They believed it to be true even until the day Jesus was taken up in the clouds, and it was true but just not in the way they thought. It took years for the disciples to hash out what Jesus coming as the Messiah really meant. Now as I sit in our world today and shake my head at God, thinking I understand what he meant by Jesus returning, I wonder if I really understand. I think maybe what I have figured out is me actually not understanding God fully.
Sometimes I think we are a little closer than the early Christians were to understanding God’s plan, but when I ponder myself and how I look at those around me, I realize I am much further away from understanding God’s plan than I hoped to be by this time in my life. I still see broken individuals rather than the whole. I still see the product rather than the cause. I still see evil rather than perverted goodness. I can’t hear the cries as clearly as God can: I can hear the cries of the innocent but not of the unjust.
But God didn’t see what I see. He saw beneath the outward skin and walls to what was actually happening. He heard through the noise of our anger and chaos to the cries of our hearts. When I take a step back to look at the implications of Jesus’ coming, I begin to see a bigger picture: people without a God of love, without hope beyond this world; people suffering under oppression and poverty; people abandoned and wounded. Sheep without a shepherd. Harassed and helpless. Despite all the times that God called out in anger at the injustice and evil his people were doing, he acted only in love and compassion. He sent his son.