The Man Who Betrayed Him
Read: Matthew 26:20-25 Is it I, Lord? (v. 22) Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion sets Matthew’s text of the passion story to dramatic music. When the soloist singing Jesus’s words announces to the disciples that one of them will betray him, an agitated chorus immediately breaks in with the disciples’ question, “Lord, is it […]
The Crowd That Acclaimed Him
Read: Matthew 21:1-11 Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! (v. 9) Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday and Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Notice three things about this familiar story. First, it was a deliberate act. As you read the gospel accounts, you can’t help but notice a sense of […]
The Heart of the Gospel
Read: Isaiah 53:5-8 The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (v. 6) What is the central message of the Christian faith? The apostle Paul summarized his preaching and teaching ministry as “the word of the cross” (1 Cor. 1:18). Later in that same epistle he says the message of the gospel […]
What’s Wrong?
Read: Luke 15:1-7 All we like sheep have gone astray. (v. 6) The prayer of confession for the morning service in the Book of Common Prayer teaches us to pray like this: “Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices […]
The Suffering Savior
Read: Isaiah 53:4-5 With his wounds we are healed. (v. 5) The Apostles’ Creed, the most ancient summary of Christian belief, describes the entire earthly life of Jesus between his birth and death with just one word: he suffered. When the Creed speaks of the suffering of Christ, it is referring above all to his […]
Jesus Is Accursed!
Read: 1 Corinthians 12:1-3 Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God. (Isa. 53:4) Imagine that you are part of a gathering for worship at a Jewish synagogue in a typical first-century Greek city—let’s say Corinth—in AD 50, give or take a year or two. The preacher, Saul of Tarsus, tells the story of Jesus’s […]
A Man of Sorrows
Read: John 11:32-43 . . . a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. (Isa. 53:3) Some people are spared much of the pain and sorrow of life. For them the sun always seems to be shining. They live and love and work and play and are scarcely touched by trouble or loss. But Jesus […]
Rejected
Read: Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by men. (v. 3) Of all the pains life can hold, among the bitterest is the pain and hurt of rejection. Some of us have tasted that and the effects still linger. To be told that you’re not wanted, that you’re not good enough, that you don’t […]
The Anonymous Messiah
Read: Acts 8:26-39 Who is the prophet talking about? (v. 34 NIV) When the Messiah would come into the world, says Isaiah, he wouldn’t “fit the profile.” He wouldn’t stand head and shoulders above the crowd like King Saul. He wouldn’t chase out the Romans and set up the kingdom of Greater Israel. As far […]