Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration.
Lectionary readings:
Old Testament: Isaiah 53.4–12
Psalm: 91.9–16
New Testament: Hebrews 5.1–10
Gospel: Mark 10.35–45
God is with the lowly.
It’s something we say, something we treasure, something we believe. We know that God has an affinity for the oppressed and the low – that is evident throughout scripture. We see this exemplified in Jesus. The gospel accounts are littered with examples of Jesus eating, drinking, touching, healing the low, the marginalized, the wounded, the outcast, the stranger. Jesus was with the lowly.
But there’s a problem here. Something is off in our picture of Jesus with the despised, the low, the suffering. We See Jesus among the lowest, but we still see him as separate from them. Burned into our imaginations is this image of Christ as savior – more like a superhero. He is handsome, charming, charismatic, strong. He is a perfect specimen of humanity and health, a literal god among men. He is surrounded by the hurting, the lonely, the wounded, the disabled, and he stands among them as a promise of what they could be if they had faith.
But – simply put – this image that sits in our minds is wrong.
As much as we want Jesus to be something akin to Michelangelo’s marble sculpted David, Jesus isn’t that. Jesus isn’t with the lowly; Jesus is one of the lowly.
The writer of Isaiah fifty-three caught a glimpse of this. In writing about the servant of the LORD, they gave us a taste, a foreshadowing of who Jesus actually is.
We read that Jesus bore our sufferings and carried our sorrows. Growing up, I was taught that this was a foreshadowing of the cross. There Jesus carried all our sickness, sin, and pain so that we could be free. Sounds nice, but I still get sick – I’m fighting the flu right now. I still have sorrow, grief, pain. And sin? Well, there’s a reason that the confession in the liturgy still stands.
I want to suggest something that sounds radical to me, but that very well might be a key to changing our Christological imaginations. Maybe the sorrow, the suffering Jesus carried, maybe it wasn’t spiritual. Maybe it was physical.
Immediately preceding the Isaiah reading, we hear something that changes the perspective on this passage. Isaiah 52.13-53.3 describes the servant as unattractive.
“…Just as the many were appalled at him—
So marred was his appearance, unlike that of man,
His form, beyond human semblance—…
…He had no form or beauty, that we should look at him:
No charm, that we should find him pleasing
He had no form or beauty, that we should look at him:
No charm, that we should find him pleasing.”
Then Isaiah launches into the fact that “Yet it was our sickness that he was bearing,
Our suffering that he endured.” The suffering – our suffering – Jesus carried in his very body was a suffering of rejection. There was nothing about Jesus that made him special. He wasn’t some charming magnet of a man. He wasn’t handsome. In fact, it’s not out of the realm of speculation that he could have had a disfigurement or disability.
Whatever the reason, Jesus wasn’t some super attractive, charismatic man who gave it up to stand with the lowly; Jesus was one of the lowly, the rejected, the outcasts. This was our sickness he was afflicted with. The human rebellion away from God leads to the us vs them dynamic, which is the rebellion he was wounded for.
This passage may not be about the crucifixion as I was taught. Maybe it’s about a rejected man, full of hurt and sorrow that understands what it is to be powerless in society precisely because that’s what he was.
Maybe, like me, Jesus was bullied growing up. Maybe he was pushed down to the ground and had snow stuffed up his pants. Maybe he had a nickname that hurt; a name others gave him to mock his appearance. Maybe he got his locker lock spit on in gym class. Maybe he was threatened with violence. Maybe he was laughed at for his ideas.
Maybe Jesus lived in a society that didn’t accommodate a disability he could have had. Maybe he had to work extra hard on the stairs. Maybe people turned their heads – or even worse, stared – at a birthmark on his face. Maybe Jesus Gathered the twelve to make up for the friends he never had.
Whatever it was, Jesus had no social capital, nothing to make him stand out, nothing that gave him power. He had rejection and sorrow as his companions.
So, James and John come on the scene with a ballsy request. They wanted to be given seats of power in what they believed was going to be Jesus’ political kingdom. Jesus asks them if they can drink the cup he is about to drink. They answer (thinking it’s a request for them to fight beside him in the revolution) yes, yes they can. So Jesus tells them they will be baptized with the same baptism Jesus is about to undergo (the cross, torment, death) but that it’s not for him to grant what they ask.
See, Jesus didn’t have any power to give them, and that is what they were asking for: power. Jesus was a man acquainted with sorrow, full of our sickness and rejection. James and John didn’t get that. They thought of him as a revolutionary, someone who would wrest power from Harod and overthrow the roman hold on Israel. They saw him as someone who would rule in the glory of military might.
They didn’t see Jesus.
They didn’t see the broken man in front of them, the mistreated one, the lowly Christ that Jesus fully was.
James and Joh may not have seen it, but we do, and we rejoice in it.
See Jesus as the rejected, lowly one means that our high priest knows what it is to be full of sorrow, grief, hurt, and loneliness. He is not without compassion because of what he endured. He is one of us, one of the lowly, one of the hurt. For those of us who grew up on the outside, those living with disability, those living on the margins of society, those who are laughed at, shunned, stared at, Jesus is near because he is one of us. He understands us.
In this light, his words about leadership take on a different feel. This is not someone saying leaders in the kingdom of God need to lower themselves from power to serve; he’s saying that the servants will lead, and the powerful will be last.
See, Jesus came to serve all those lowly people that society rejects, and he is their ransom, buying back their worth and value, giving them what is their God-given right: dignity.
The way of Jesus, this way of love, is a downward way. Not as some savior of the lowly and hurting. No, it is becoming the lowly and the sorrow-filled. It is giving up our ideas of power, of sitting beside Jesus in glory, and actually following Jesus, becoming a slave to all.
We are the lowly and oppressed, with a high priest that understands because he is one of us.
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