4 April 2012

4 April 2012



"The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame."


Jesus does this in the face of the pain of betrayal.  He knows what is to come and he knows who will betray him.  How can he be so stolid in the face of such imminent physical and emotional pain?  I think it is fair to say that if most of us were in his shoes and knew what was coming we would have been sufficiently overwhelmed without even experiencing it to cause us to turn back and to run away.  


"Morning after morning
he opens my ear that I may hear;
And I have not rebelled,
have not turned back."


It is because he is so close to the Father that he can keep his feet moving forward in spite of what is to come.  He knows that he will be hit and spit on.  He knows that some of his closest friends will betray him.  But the word of the Father sustains him.  He knows, even seeing all of this, that he will not ultimately be put to shame.


Even though Jesus can see in his future all of this pain he is not overcome.


"Insult has broken my heart, and I am weak,
I looked for sympathy, but there was none;
for consolers, not one could I find.
Rather they put gall in my food,
and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink."


No sympathy?  No consolers?  How can he survive?  It is because morning after morning the Father opens his ears that he may hear.  When he calls "Lord, in your great love, answer me" he does not demand that he be answered according to his  own will.  In fact his will is to not suffer these things but he ultimately prays for the Father's will to be done and not his own.  But even knowing what is to come he has faith that the Father's answer is more than enough to compensate for all of this:


"I will praise the name of God in song,
and I will glorify him with thanksgiving"


And seeing him crushed and humiliated and yet lifted on high can give hope to all the lowly on whom the world tramples.


"See, you lowly ones, and be glad;
you who seek God, may your hearts revive!"


This is why he can still sit down to dinner with his betrayer and look at him with love when he asks "Surely it is not I, Lord?" vainly trying to conceal his plan.  Jesus answers that he "who has dipped his hand into the dish with me is the one who will betray me."  It is almost as if in his love for Judas, even traitor though he is, he has difficulty pointing the finger at him.  It is as if he says who will betray him ambiguously because he so wishes it were not so.  This can only be because morning after morning the Father opens his ears that he may hear. Let us come to see that there are no barriers to his love.  Let our hearts revive since we know that if we call out to him to answer us in his great love.