Who would believe what we have heard?
Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
each following his own way;
but the LORD laid upon him
the guilt of us all.
he shall take away the sins of many,
and win pardon for their offenses.
Today we commemorate a revolution. The very fabric of the universe was forever altered. God, the creator of Heaven and Earth, became man, and suffered one of the cruelest deaths man ever imagined for another man. By doing so, God set in motion the upheaval of the system left behind in those earliest days of creation. It was a in a garden that sin entered this world. The free choice of a man and a women separated humanity from the closest of relationships with God. In another garden one Man's free will to accept the cup, the fate, handed to him would lead to the possibility of man's reconciliation with God. A single act of sacrifice becomes the moment when the order of the universe is changed. Man has renewed hope to be in right relationship with God.
The words from Isaiah remind us of Christ's willing self-sacrifice. Isaiah reminds us of the gifts given to us through this tragic, revolutionary day.
Let us remember it is due to our sins, not his, that Jesus was on that cross we venerate today. As you meditate on the scripture, change the we to me. Put yourself in this passage. hear all that God has done for you. Then, offer God your response - it may be gratitude, humility, awe, silence, worship...maybe a little bit of many things. Take time today to respond to God's revolutionary sacrifice. A sacrifice made out of an unimaginable love...for you.
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