Word of Salvation – Vol.32 No.13 – April 1987
Man Of Sorrows (1)
Sermon by Rev. A. I. DeGraaf on Isaiah 53:2, 3.
Reading: John 18:37-19:16a, 1Cor.1:18-25
Singing: Ps.H.14, 379, 354, BoW.H.302.
Grief makes lonely. Have you ever discovered that? Not only do you think: “Nobody understands me, leave me alone with your cheap talk, I don’t want your pity!” but there is another side to this story, too: We do not like people who are sad, who cry. They are not popular. We do have a tendency… to leave them alone. They upset us. Everyone who has discovered that hard and bitter truth, has seen a glimpse of what our text says here about our Saviour, the Man of sorrows. Such a Man is not popular. He does not fit into our company and our world. Strange, really, because our world is full of sorrows!
Yes, but we don’t know what to do with these sorrows, do we? Someone who looks like being a failure we try to avoid because he reminds us of what we could become all too easily ourselves. The more of a macho, and the more of a loud-mouth bully a guy is, the less he wants to be reminded of the fact that, inside, he is so vulnerable.
I deserve that kind of bad luck, too.
A failure in our world is a bad shock for our bad consciences: “Why am I better off than that one? I don’t want to know about it, keep quiet!”
“Let’s pretend that the prize goes to the winner… and that I am such a winner !” We turn our head away from the Man of Sorrows. From the One who knows all about our sicknesses. Also because those sorrows spring from our sin, that sickness was there for my sake. That is the biggest reason why grief makes lonely: we know no grief without guilt. Only He did: the guilt was not His, anyway. It was ours… it was that which He bore… and bore away. But that is something to which we shall look next time.
No we see him as the One Who was NOT WANTED. But then I have to add something too. NOT WANTED, we see… but NOT UNFOLLOWED.
- NOT WANTED
During the last war “NOT WANTED” was being said about the JEWS: you saw those notices everywhere: “JEWS NOT WANTED HERE”! You saw them near all places where people could enjoy themselves or where people could be together: parks and pubs, cafe’s and concert halls, even the tram and the bus. They were walking around on the streets… yet shut out of life. Terrible!
But you know, what was at least as terrible? That people who were not Jews, and who had been friends with these people, (unless a miracle happened), had the feeling inside them, the impulse, to withdraw a bit from these Yellow-star-marked Jews. Not only because of the danger that was threatening them and which also could hit those close by, but also because we have a tendency (a natural tendency, that is) to shrink back from those in trouble, not to want to know about those in grief: there is a rancid smell of poverty about them and we like to keep our noses clean.
We shudder away from the pitiful, from what whimpers and is ugly or misshapen. Sure, suffering can have something heroic, and we can admire that: The courage with which it is borne! The victory in which it is overcome! We can have sympathy, of course we can. Ah, but it should not last too long. Ask any unemployed. Ask parents of retarded children. Ask anyone with a chronic illness. Or just ask any widow: At first they are all there… but after a while… where have they all gone?
Grief makes you lonely. As the proverb says: Laugh and the world laughs with you… but cry… and you cry alone.
If this was true of anyone, it was – says the prophet and shows in the gospels! – true of Jesus Christ. The One who bore sorrows deeper and more than any mortal will ever bear. And who therefore was not understood… not wanted! That’s what our world is like, the world He chose to come and set free.
We do not want a man of sorrows. We do not want one plunged down in sickness. We want beauty, and youth! When old age comes creeping on we paint and anoint, we brush and brighten ourselves. We like to brighten Jesus up, too: “Beautiful Saviour”, we sing, and pay good money for pictures, like that of Salman, which make Him look like the hero we like, one who could captivate us on the silver screen: Superstar..!
Jesus’ early disciples thought of Him that way, but when He laid down that glory and that beauty, and chose to go the way of sorrow and suffering… then Judas turns traitor and twice Peter says: “Lord, I will not allow THAT to happen to you: the second time he even underlined that statement with a sword fight! Because it hurts to see how His ugliness is the ugliness… we have given Him.
Superstar! Sure we want Majesty…! Ah but OUR KIND of majesty! The majesty of success! The majesty of one who got to the top! and about whom you and I could say “We could do that, too, given a bit of a leg-up, we could get there, too, given half a chance!” And so the majesty of the hero becomes our encouragement.
What is it that makes a man popular… wanted? If Jesus had it at all, He laid it down; He didn’t want it. Instead, He became the Man of Sorrows, and that meant bitter disappointment: Judas betrayed him because He was not the guerrilla fighter he had expected, and Peter denied Him: “I know not that man” because He was too meek. Where was His ego?” Pilate shook his head: “You can have Him, let him go, what harm is there in a sissy like that?”
He was so different, and so the contempt of our kind of world became rejection: OUT! NOT WANTED! On a cross with such a one! Our elections and opinion polls would not have picked him, no rating at all! Our world… HEY – now wait a minute! For that’s not how Isaiah talks: “Our World”. This prophet does not hide behind that kind of general statement! This Israelite, this member of God’s people, this church member says: “WE!” Yes, even Isaiah, who was full of good-will, (had he not said to his God: ‘Send me!’?) He says: WE did not want this man of sorrows! WE did not feel attracted to His kind of beauty.
WE were turning our faces away, WE did not want to know about Him…This was the suffering of Jesus too: I was among those who voted against Him, I, elder of His own church, I, minister of His own Word, did not want Him, either. He was not my taste, either. Often still isn’t.
If only He would have been an angel. Bad enough never to be able to enter a room without having to calm people and say: “Fear not!” as if one was some kind of monster or something, but at least that can be expected of someone coming in from outside. But for Jesus it was so much worse because He was one of us, He was our Brother, He belonged to the family, and HIS OWN KIND turned their faces away.
Our brother… and we were ashamed of Him. We treat(ed) Him as the Black Sheep of the family about whom one had better not talk. The embarrassing one. That hurts! The thing one can take from one’s enemies become unbearable from one’s relatives! That is what Jesus went through. We turned our heads away. Not that one, we said, please not that one! We prefer a murderer, a robber… to that one. And the amazing thing is that He took it, because that was o u r sorrow. This, too, was Our own sickness. NOT WANTED! – now let us go further and see:
- NOT UNFOLLOWED!
You know, I haven’t even talked yet about that loneliness that was MORE bitter still: where he was forsaken, ignored and thrown out, by GOD HIMSELF. That is the worst part. But also that being-forsaken-of-MEN is what our Redeemer went through for us. In our place. For our sake. Thus He made it possible (for He not only BORE our sorrows but bore them away!!) that we, getting Him as our Brother, could learn to BE brothers and sisters again. It is also onto THIS road he beckons us, when we have learned to confess Him as our Redeemer and Liberator, to follow Him. Go in His steps. He said it already in the Sermon on the Mount: BE HAPPY when you begin to discover that people treat you as they treated Me: Then you will notice that you belong to Me! The follower of Jesus will be after something BETTER than being popular. That is also true in the church. Now what does all this mean?
First:
Jesus was not ashamed to be called our Brother even while we were embarrassed and ashamed of Him! We will have to go to Him with that and say “Sorry” about it. We have to ask Him for the Gift of the Spirit which Peter got on Pentecost Day: the Spirit that made him profess Jesus’ Name gladly, no matter what the cost. That confession starts already when we sing His praises in church.
Second:
If sorrow made Him lonely, then I will never be that lonely any more, because he is my Lord and He understands: even when people have trouble understanding me. I will have to talk to him about that!
Third:
When we see brothers and sisters of ours in sorrow and grief – even if it is their own fault – we shall do what we can to break through that loneliness, we who became Jesus’ brothers and sisters through the miracle of His love. We shall try to be their brothers and sisters, too, even if they begin by telling us: “Stay away!”
Fourth:
To say this a bit stronger still: It is especially the unlovely, and inelegant member of the body, the ugly character or the person who kicks your outstretched hand away, or the one who always complains, and never sees blessings, (and often people are like that because they try to protect themselves and could we not understand??) It is especially that kind of people that should discover what kind of Brother Jesus is when finding out what kind of brothers and sisters Jesus makes US… His followers.
Fifth and finally:
One of the main reasons why Jesus was UNWANTED is that He was different. Remember however that to you, His believers, He says: BUT YOU: BE DIFFERENT, NOT IN THE MOULD OF THE WORLD! That means that you too are called onto a road where that world will shun you. Is that what you really want? Outside Jesus the world is as it was then. And the ways human hearts define popularity are still the same: you can see it in Christian schools, and in Christian organisations: success is the measure and egos strut supreme.
Success is IT: “getting there” and “Making-it”. Even in church these are the “beautiful people” whose company we often prefer to that of the sufferers, the ones who have about them that smell of poverty. But Jesus who bore our diseases looks at us today, and asks: what kind of followers of Mine, are you? – Do you really know Me? I am the Man of sorrows… do you WANT to know me?
AMEN.