“No sugar coating”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, April 18, 2025
Isaiah 52:13 -53:12 (Forward, p. 79) CEV p. 748
I really can’t help it, but immediately upon reading today’s passage I am put in mind of Handel’s classic oratorio, ‘Messiah’. And certainly, who can forget the haunting and melodious strains of “He was despised, and rejected (of men), a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”? However, no matter how thrilling and moving that oratorio might be, it cannot cover up the sheer awfulness and depravity of what was inflicted on Jesus that first Good Friday.
Isaiah did indeed prophesy it, but it hardly does justice to what was inflicted upon Him: ‘there were many who were astonished at him—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance” (Isaiah 52:14). The trials and degradation, flogging, the slow agonizing way to Calvary, and certainly the Cross itself—today all of that would be labelled as ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, as “inhumane punishment.’
But, that was only the physicality of it; the spirituality was even ‘worse’, or, at very least, far more awful and mind boggling, far more humbling for us: “He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises (stripes) were are healed (made whole). All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6).
There is no sugar-coating possible, no getting around it, of what it cost Jesus, what it cost God, to deliver us from the power of sin and death. Nothing else would have ‘done the trick’, and so God took the initiative, and took it upon Himself—all out of His love for us, and at a time when none of us deserved it. But that is the incredible love that God has for us. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He suggests that someone might quite logically give up
his or her life on behalf of a good or righteous person, but we were none of the above, and even so, Jesus did that for us. And so, on this day, of all days, we should remember, and take seriously, the tremendous cost of our salvation, the costs of which Jesus willingly bore for us, and for our life, freedom, redemption, and forgiveness. Let us never forget.
Forward notes: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (chapter 53:5).
“It is hard to choose which Scripture to write about today; the choices are so powerful. The passage from Isaiah spoke most loudly to me in its description of the real meaning of this day…a day we could hardly call ‘good.’ The author describes the disfigured form of the servant, reminding us of a world where there is great suffering, where people are despised and abused. We must slow down on this day, remembering the visceral suffering of Jesus and resisting the urge to ‘hop down the bunny trail.’ Today, we mourn from the deepest places within.
“I wonder how many more Good Fridays we will re-enact before we accept God’s redeeming grace. What connections can we make to those who suffer and insist that their suffering end? What possibilities for healing and renewal will we act upon so that the redemption of Good Friday is made real?”
Moving Forward: “Where do you see suffering, and how can you help to end it?”
A concluding note: I have a bit of trouble with today’s Forward Movement meditation, for it seems, to me at least, a little facile, a little quick, in turning from Jesus’ suffering to the suffering of the world. I do not think it wise, or profitable, to quickly gloss over or forget what it cost Jesus. Yes, He certainly had the suffering of the world in mind, but the solution to that must surely begin with us, with our acknowledgement and ownership that it was our sin that put Him there, our acceptance of His Lordship, and our determination to duly follow Him as Saviour and Lord. It is then, and only then, that the suffering of the world can begin to be dealt with in any constructive and meaningful way.