Text: Psalm 22:1-26, Isaiah 53:1-3, Luke 22:63-65, John 19:1-5
Any day now, I’m going to have a baby.
Birth is one of those elemental moments in life: I’ll get to really yell and really cry. I love birth because I just can’t control it; I’ll go into labor when the time is right. One day soon I’ll be folding laundry, or lounging in a co-worker’s nice leather chair, and SOMETHING will HAPPEN—I’ll go into labor. Don’t you just love it with something happens?
So many days follow suit, one after another—but when something really happens we all stop and stare, or yell, or get out our phones to make videos. We really pay attention in these elemental moments of pain. Folks are always asking me to prophesy WHEN the baby will be born, and I keep dodging with, “I’m not going to miss it.” That’s just it. Some things in life are so big, and so intense, it’s not possible to miss them. When the baby comes, I won’t just sleep through it.
Intense moments grab our face on both sides and force us to pay attention. In my moment of need, I will be center stage. My husband will rub my back, my facebook friends will pray for me, my church is already preparing casseroles for me, my doula will speak encouraging words, and my midwife will attend me like a queen. It’s true. These people who love me will drop everything and turn their faces to me.
But for Christ, in His moment of greatest intensity, when SOMETHING is really HAPPENING, we see that people are turning their faces away from Him.
We are painfully aware of the human side of Christ in these passages. He is in agony (Psalm 22), He is alone and isolated (Isaiah 53), He is mocked (Luke 22), and He is rejected (John 19).
In Jesus’ darkest moment, His best friends—those disciples who are like brothers to Him— deny and abandon Him. They look around for places to hide.
The law turns its back on Him. Pilate finds no reason to punish Him, but allows Him to be taken away in spite of justice.
And finally, most painful of all, His Father turns away from Him.
When Jesus feels the sharp crown of thorns pressed into His head, He is alone. At a time when we all should be there, lovingly attending Him, we turn our faces away. Although Jesus was 100% God, He was also 100% man, and this isolation was real for Him. Everyone He loved left Him to suffer the hardest moment of His earthly life alone.
Let this moment grab you by the face. Yell if you have to. Turn your face towards our Lord and see the cost of our sin piled on His sacred head.
O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown;
O sacred Head, what glory, what bliss till now was Thine!
Yet, though despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine.
What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! ’Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.
What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest friend,
For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee.
“O Sacred Head Now Wounded”
attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux, 1153
Wow, yeah great devotion today. Loved the tangible connection to childbirth. That was amazing, thanks!
Oh my Word. Today’s devotion is literally bringing me to tears. I am overwhelmed with joy at your description of childbirth…that is just the way it should be (and was for me). And then brought so low by Jesus’ pain, for us. For me. Thank you Lord Jesus.
Couldn’t agree more, Bonnie! I feel the same after reading.
I couldn´t identify more with your words, as I am also having a baby any day from now. First, thinking how the words of Isaiah became truth for our Lord. He WAS truly rejected when He -been 100% man – needed his friends (and his Father!) more than ever.
Second, it also makes me think of the idea you started with…. been born. It happens and we just CAN´T control it. And it applies to both terms of birth. Jesus uses just the right words when He told Nicodemus: “ The wind blows wherever it wants. Just as you can hear the wind but can´t tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can´t explain how people are born of the Spirit”
There is so much truth in these words. It gives me gratitude, but also hope. Hope that all the people that I´ve been praying for, will, if God grants it, stop turning away from Him and turning TO Him to be "born of the Spirit". So, I feel comfronted by your words, as well as hopeful.
May my Jesus help me turn my face to Him everyday!
First of all, I’m THRILLED to have caught up with everyone on this study! I’m sweaty and out of breath but finally on the front lines with everyone else ;) and also this is just so deeply good. I recently had a baby and it’s true how the whole world slows to attend to and encourage and protect you. But for Jesus, not so. Oh dearest friend Jesus, may I never outlive my love for you!
How I needed to be reminded that grace has a cost. But more than that, Jesus paid that cost so that we didn't have to! To Him be all glory, the Risen Savior!
Amen! Thanks for the extra reminder, Hannah! So glad you joined us today!
xoxo-Kaitlin
To look upon the cross of Jesus. I will never be the same. God open my eyes more to what makes your heart cry. Open my eyes more to what happened on that good Friday years ago that changed everything.
What a great, great love for us. To endure, to be willing to take on all of that suffering so I can know him. So I never have to know what it is like to be separated from my Father and my God. My heart is filled with sorrow for what he endured but also making me forever grateful. There aren't words but this is unfailing love. How painfully beautiful!