Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Morning by morning he wakens my ear.
“The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens - he wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.
The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, ..., I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me, therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint.” (Isaiah 50:4-9a)

In our need to find words after the reading of Jesus’ trial and death according to Mark Isaiah 50 stands ready to help with poetry and interpretation.

The songs and words of and about an enigmatic figure in Israel more than 500 years before Jesus was born and died, have served the Christian community since earliest times to help interpret the story of Jesus’ passion and death. They help us to come out of the feeling of tension, shame and guilt, the sense of judgment and verdict that the passion story creates.
The songs in Isaiah sing of unspeakable injustice and yet unsurpassed faithfulness of God to someone who is described as servant. In one of the songs the servant is to be given as light to the nations to proclaim God’s salvation to the ends of the world. Out of respect to the Jewish interpretation we must be mindful that the Christian reading of the servant songs is not the only, exclusive way of understanding them, but for us there could be no better literature and tradition to help us out when we face in these days of Holy Week the place where our human condition gets us.
The servant songs are indeed so compelling that the Gospels have directly applied some of the imagery into their own telling of Jesus’ passion.

“The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.”
This brings us to Jesus in Gethsemane, when he prays his Father that the inevitable which is about to happen might be averted. But then he says, not according to my will but to yours. (Cf. Mark 14:36) It is the obedient son of the Father whom we recognize in the servant’s words in Isaiah, “The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backwards.”

In short sequence follows the arrest, the trials, the sentencing and crucifixion. Jesus does not speak on his own initiative at all but only answers in terse replies. One scene follows upon the other, as inevitable and urgent as is the whole Gospel of Mark. Jesus’ three predictions that he must suffer and die, are being fulfilled exactly. The listeners and readers are not given any moments to pause or begin to find answers for questions what all this might mean. We as everyone are made to follow the breathless course of events without any room to wiggle.

It is so quiet. The scene of the crucifixion is so lonely, so forsaken. The disciples have all fled, Peter has broken down and left. The other people on the scene are so impossibly un-involved in the suffering before their eyes that it is hair-raising. Leaders and bandits alike speak in mockery, the soldiers who put him on the cross go right about casting lots for Jesus’ clothes without any signs of sympathy for a fellow human being. Most of all, the questions of the bandits and leaders are well put: “Where is your God?” because Jesus cries out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
On the cross Jesus is forsaken by humans and by God.

And yet, there is a word: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.”

The very first word that Jesus speaks to us in the Gospel of Mark is this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” The very first word that he utters is anything but casual. It is the central message of the good news in Jesus Christ and comes right after the bestowing with power in his baptism. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” This is the word for us weary. It is the word for us weary even from the cross. Jesus is the one who embodies the kingdom.
He has listened not only to God in obedience but amazingly also to us like a good teacher listens, to sustain us. He knows our needs and suffering, our shame and our guilt, our judgment and verdict. Jesus came to heal, Jesus opened eyes, he made people well. Jesus told parables of the kingdom, and in the end, in his death, became a parable himself.
The cross is Jesus’ coronation in humiliation. “I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” Forsaken and abandoned in the end.

It is in this king that we have been made well. It is this king whom we yearn to greet on Palm Sunday and welcome among us with hosannas of thanksgiving. His is not a white horse to ride on, nor the purple cloak or the royal wine mixed with myrrh. His throne is not of marble or gold but a wooden cross. He is the Son of God, seated at God’s right hand. And the first human voice to proclaim it in Mark’s Gospel is the Roman centurion who manages the crucifixions that day. “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
If he believed it or if it was just a continuation of the irony that had ruled the entire day, it does not matter. Because proclaimed it is.

Let us greet this king whose coming has fulfilled our time and all time, and prepare for the servant who has taught us hope beyond all hope: “The Lord God helps me, I have not been disgraced. I know that I shall not be put to shame, he who vindicates me is near.” (From Isaiah 50:7-8)

Let us go into this Holy Week with the peace of God which surpasses our understanding and guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.