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
I definitely needed this after the end of a very long day! Thanks to SRT team and community!
Thanks for joining us, Abby! We love having you in our community!
xoxo-Kaitlin
I am just so thankful for the inclusion of hymns in our study pack. So blessed and moved by truths found here.
This Lenten season I gave up “idle time” and replaced it with devotions. I grew up going to the church that my babysitters went to. You name it I have been probably attended.
I went to a Catholic church with one and I participate in Lent and gave something up for 40 days and didn’t really get it. I just would try and find something I could live without.
Then as an adult I quit. It wasn’t really practiced in the church I attended. All those times it was “all about me”. A few years ago the new church I was at decided to participate in Lent. “I got this” was my thought…I Wil give up TV I don’t watch it much anyways. Needless to say I gave up. Each year they did.
This year was different. I have been ill not knowing what really is going on. Brain surgery, MRI, CT, and all kinds of testing. I received the first email about Lenten Devotionals. I said to myself this year I am doing it! I am all in. I try to be as destruction free as possible (except right now I have my little cat meowing, purring , and wanting to play). I want to use the terms surrendered. I surrendere my idle time (what ever was placed before my God is an idle) being I had so many free hours how could I not have one for Him?
I know this long bare with me. I learned this season what Lent was about and what it is not. It is about Jesus. It is not about us. I found my self repenting and renewed. He finds us and loves even in our brokenness. His life Something HAPPENED and nobody was there. We can’t say he doesn’t know how scared we are or hurt we feel…because he felt the ultimate aloneness. Thank you for touching my heart strings. Thank you for listening to our Father and writing what needs to be said for those of us reading. Yes, sometimes Something Happens! Good and bad and men and women need to know the ultimate something was his sacrifice.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! I identify with a lot of what you said/experienced minus the health stuff but in regards to Lent for sure. Thank you
We have to recognize the awful gravity if our sin to begin to recognize the awful/horrendous suffering Jesus endured ….. For me, so unworthy, and at time ungrateful.
“What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered, was all for sinners’ gain; Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain”. Jesus lived the life that I could not live because I was dead. Then He died the death I deserved so that I could live! Both aspects must be accomplished for redemption to be complete. He did it. Betrayed by men. In the plan of God. To redeem me.
Thankyou for helping me turn from self reflection to the Lord himself, on the cross, bearing my sin. That’s the place to look!
This is my challenge today; thank you for bringing it to me: set my face TOWARDS the cross. Know that by nature I would turn away and hide, but today, to choose to look upon my Saviour and know the price He paid for me. To look upon His pain and know that by His stripes I am healed.
On a liter note, I love your reply to comments about “when will that baby get here??” Made it lol when you said “I’m not going to miss it!” Im a doula and will definitely be sharing that word with my clients!! Praying for your birth!
Made me*