Deformed, Disfigured, And Despised: A Marred But Magnificent Messiah
Sermon
Deformed, Disfigured, And Despised
First Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
The prophet gives the report, but who will believe it? The servant will act wisely. He will be lifted up and exalted. The problem is the new Messiah does not fit the description of the Holy One of Israel, the gallant one, the defiant and courageous who shall lift God's people out of the dregs of despair. He shall not come as one standing upright, but one who is disfigured and deformed, despised and rejected; a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. Who would believe such a report? That God would choose a lowly, humble servant upon whose shoulders the government would rest and who would be called the wonderful counselor?
Isaiah's depiction of the new Messiah does not meet the customary profile of success. He is the most unlikely to succeed. There is no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. He is familiar with suffering and will take upon himself our infirmities and our sorrows as the stricken of God. Could this be a travesty, a comedy of error? Could this be some kind of charade? How could the Messiah be deformed and disfigured, despised and rejected? How could this new Messiah usher in the new age with power and authority when he himself is so lowly and broken? How could it be that God would choose and call such an unlikely person to have such power and authority amid raging powers and principalities?
How could he heal others when he could not heal himself? How could he save others when he could not save himself? How could he bring hope and joy and the promise of the new Jerusalem with so sad a countenance, with so disfigured a body, with such a marred appearance? The image in Isaiah contradicts the image of the brave, stalwart warrior riding into Jerusalem on a white horse, brandishing swords and daggers to herald the violent overthrow of the enemies of God. This image of Isaiah is both poignant and deeply disturbing. God is using a new formula of the suffering servant to bring a new hope to new generations.
Josephus corroborates Isaiah's description of the Messiah in his book Halosis. The redactive and reconstructive work of Robert Eisler in the Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist confirms Jesus as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He is not attractive. "He is dark skinned, hunchbacked, with a long face and a long nose, with eyebrows above the nose so that spectators can take fright. He is a short man. He is an ugly man." This image of Jesus is not pretty. He is not someone who attracts the multitudes who are able and well, but compels those who are disfigured and marred like him to come unto him. Hear the words echoed in the temple that day, "Physician, heal thyself." The first century Jesus does not resemble the beautiful, attractive Jesus depicted today in modern art. He was something other; wholly different than what we see today. He was hideous. So horrible was he that we would hide our faces from him in disbelief.
The blind, lame, and lepers, the disfigured, despised, and marred came to him to receive healing from him. Yet he could not heal himself. Jesus attracted these people unto him. Why? Was there something about his physical condition that enabled them to identify with him? Because he looked like them did they sense he could provide a cure for them? Jesus embodies two basic contradictory realities: one of being deformed, disfigured, and despised, which is the man we shall never want to be; and the other is having the power to heal others, which is the man we hope to become. He at once is the personification of the extremities of our human condition. He is the man we never want to become and the man we want to become. Being disfigured and marred, he was utterly unattractive, which means his looks were repelling, repugnant, and repulsive. On the other hand, having this healing and redeeming power, he was compelling, attractive, and embraceable. Two powers on the opposite ends of the human and spiritual spectrum. One is the power to repel others away defensively. The other is the power to attract others to him offensively. This is the cross.
The new Messiah would become a perfect physical representation of our lowest and basest condition as humanity. He would also become the epitome of a perfect spiritual representation of our highest humanity. He is at once the man we never want to be seen with, never want to be around, never want in our company, but also the man we long for, the man whose company we seek, the one whose presence and power uplifts and enhances our reality as human persons.
He was deformed, says Eisler, due to a spinal kyphosis, which was not an uncommon malady developed by artisans of his time. There is speculation that Paul may have suffered from the same condition. He was disfigured; there was no beauty in his spinal curvature and marred appearance.
He was despised because few people understood how these extremities of rejection and attraction, of magnificent power and utter powerlessness, of exaltation and humility, could be combined into a single body. What was more offensive was the fact that he couldn't or didn't even heal himself. He had the power to heal others but wouldn't heal himself. He had the power to raise and heal others but wouldn't exalt himself. He had the power to transform and save lives, yet he couldn't save himself. What a paradox! What a contradiction!
He would not save himself, but he would save others by dying on a cross and rising from a grave. Here was a man who rebuffed, disgusted, and even nauseated people by his very presence. Yet he would conquer the forces of evil and death by dying on a cross and rising from the grave. To add insult to injury, he would give the same power to his followers and those who believed and had faith in him. Who would believe this insane report? Where crooked roads are made straight and rough places plain, where high places would be brought low and low places high? The paradox of this contradiction is a riddle; a great enigma.
The Messiah should be someone we should look up to. (So they thought.) Someone bold, fearless and attractive. Someone handsome, pretty, and wholesome. He would be violent. Someone who would destroy our enemies and make them his footstool. He would use hatred and divisiveness among the people as a weapon of conquest. Someone we would want to cuddle and embrace but who would put a permanent hurt on our enemies. The new Messiah would usher in the new age and all would bow at his feet and be subject to his dominion and authority.
How could our conquering hero be a suffering servant? Could this little, scrawny hunch-backed man become our savior for the ages? Why would God play such a cruel trick upon his people? He is ugly and unattractive. He cannot save himself. He has no political connections. He has no money in the bank and no armies marching behind him by day and by night. He has no large following. His disciples are a rag-tag bunch. He quit his job as a carpenter. He is homeless and jobless. He is friendless and wifeless. He has no children or posterity to carry on his name. He walks everywhere he goes. He is not a citizen of Rome or a rabbi in the best of our traditions. He goes to banquets with sinners. He attracts the blind, lame, deaf, and dumb. He heals the sick. He casts out demons. He raises the dead. He owns no weapons and he is an outcast of the Roman and Jewish establishments. Could this deformed, disfigured, and despised person be the new Messiah?
Being deformed he took on our deformities, our afflictions, and our grief. Being disfigured, he took on our unattractiveness, the horror of our disbelief. Being despised he took on our condition as outcasts and spiritual pariahs, as means of our relief.
He was a marred but magnificent Messiah. We don't want to see him, but we want to touch him. We don't want to suffer with him but want him to be our suffering servant. We don't want his physical looks but want his spiritual power. We don't want his association but want to claim his authority.
He was marred for our sins, iniquities, afflictions, and addictions. He was magnificent in the way that he bore our sorrows and took on our condition and freed us from enslavement to that condition. He was marred by our scars. We killed him! But by his scars and stripes we are healed. He was marred as the lowly and rejected of God. He was magnificent in the way that he raised us from the dregs and doldrums of sin and despair making us the accepted of God. He was marred in his grief but magnificent in the way he triumphed over suffering and the dirty things we did to him. He came to us to save us, and we killed him. But he got up from the grave and still comes to us with a message of love and redemption!
We pay tribute today to this Messiah -- this most unlikely to succeed; this man of sorrows acquainted with grief; this one who had no beauty in which to behold him, but who had more love, power, compassion, and strength than any man who has walked this earth. We pay tribute to him as a marred man without the earthly amenities, but also as a magnificent man with all heavenly power and authority. We pay tribute to him as one who was despised and rejected, but also as a man who stood as our accepted of God in the hour of great need.
He was marred but he was magnificent. He was lowly but exalted. He was rejected but accepted. He was disfigured but reconfigured the parameters of eternity. He was not attractive to look upon, but he loved us so much that he gave his life for us to make us attractive in the eyes of God and all creation.
All praises due to the deformed, disfigured, and rejected one who stood in our place against the power of evil and gave us victory! If we might come anywhere close to his shining example of manhood and exemplify his holy boldness and strength of character, God the Father would be pleased.
The savior of the world was not someone whose beauty we looked to but someone whose power we looked up to. He was not a man who could be measured by the superficial indices of this world, because he came to save the world. We pay tribute to Jesus, a marred but magnificent Messiah who gave his life for his people that they might become the man that he was and have the love, power, and joy that he shared through the gift of salvation!
Isaiah's depiction of the new Messiah does not meet the customary profile of success. He is the most unlikely to succeed. There is no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. He is familiar with suffering and will take upon himself our infirmities and our sorrows as the stricken of God. Could this be a travesty, a comedy of error? Could this be some kind of charade? How could the Messiah be deformed and disfigured, despised and rejected? How could this new Messiah usher in the new age with power and authority when he himself is so lowly and broken? How could it be that God would choose and call such an unlikely person to have such power and authority amid raging powers and principalities?
How could he heal others when he could not heal himself? How could he save others when he could not save himself? How could he bring hope and joy and the promise of the new Jerusalem with so sad a countenance, with so disfigured a body, with such a marred appearance? The image in Isaiah contradicts the image of the brave, stalwart warrior riding into Jerusalem on a white horse, brandishing swords and daggers to herald the violent overthrow of the enemies of God. This image of Isaiah is both poignant and deeply disturbing. God is using a new formula of the suffering servant to bring a new hope to new generations.
Josephus corroborates Isaiah's description of the Messiah in his book Halosis. The redactive and reconstructive work of Robert Eisler in the Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist confirms Jesus as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He is not attractive. "He is dark skinned, hunchbacked, with a long face and a long nose, with eyebrows above the nose so that spectators can take fright. He is a short man. He is an ugly man." This image of Jesus is not pretty. He is not someone who attracts the multitudes who are able and well, but compels those who are disfigured and marred like him to come unto him. Hear the words echoed in the temple that day, "Physician, heal thyself." The first century Jesus does not resemble the beautiful, attractive Jesus depicted today in modern art. He was something other; wholly different than what we see today. He was hideous. So horrible was he that we would hide our faces from him in disbelief.
The blind, lame, and lepers, the disfigured, despised, and marred came to him to receive healing from him. Yet he could not heal himself. Jesus attracted these people unto him. Why? Was there something about his physical condition that enabled them to identify with him? Because he looked like them did they sense he could provide a cure for them? Jesus embodies two basic contradictory realities: one of being deformed, disfigured, and despised, which is the man we shall never want to be; and the other is having the power to heal others, which is the man we hope to become. He at once is the personification of the extremities of our human condition. He is the man we never want to become and the man we want to become. Being disfigured and marred, he was utterly unattractive, which means his looks were repelling, repugnant, and repulsive. On the other hand, having this healing and redeeming power, he was compelling, attractive, and embraceable. Two powers on the opposite ends of the human and spiritual spectrum. One is the power to repel others away defensively. The other is the power to attract others to him offensively. This is the cross.
The new Messiah would become a perfect physical representation of our lowest and basest condition as humanity. He would also become the epitome of a perfect spiritual representation of our highest humanity. He is at once the man we never want to be seen with, never want to be around, never want in our company, but also the man we long for, the man whose company we seek, the one whose presence and power uplifts and enhances our reality as human persons.
He was deformed, says Eisler, due to a spinal kyphosis, which was not an uncommon malady developed by artisans of his time. There is speculation that Paul may have suffered from the same condition. He was disfigured; there was no beauty in his spinal curvature and marred appearance.
He was despised because few people understood how these extremities of rejection and attraction, of magnificent power and utter powerlessness, of exaltation and humility, could be combined into a single body. What was more offensive was the fact that he couldn't or didn't even heal himself. He had the power to heal others but wouldn't heal himself. He had the power to raise and heal others but wouldn't exalt himself. He had the power to transform and save lives, yet he couldn't save himself. What a paradox! What a contradiction!
He would not save himself, but he would save others by dying on a cross and rising from a grave. Here was a man who rebuffed, disgusted, and even nauseated people by his very presence. Yet he would conquer the forces of evil and death by dying on a cross and rising from the grave. To add insult to injury, he would give the same power to his followers and those who believed and had faith in him. Who would believe this insane report? Where crooked roads are made straight and rough places plain, where high places would be brought low and low places high? The paradox of this contradiction is a riddle; a great enigma.
The Messiah should be someone we should look up to. (So they thought.) Someone bold, fearless and attractive. Someone handsome, pretty, and wholesome. He would be violent. Someone who would destroy our enemies and make them his footstool. He would use hatred and divisiveness among the people as a weapon of conquest. Someone we would want to cuddle and embrace but who would put a permanent hurt on our enemies. The new Messiah would usher in the new age and all would bow at his feet and be subject to his dominion and authority.
How could our conquering hero be a suffering servant? Could this little, scrawny hunch-backed man become our savior for the ages? Why would God play such a cruel trick upon his people? He is ugly and unattractive. He cannot save himself. He has no political connections. He has no money in the bank and no armies marching behind him by day and by night. He has no large following. His disciples are a rag-tag bunch. He quit his job as a carpenter. He is homeless and jobless. He is friendless and wifeless. He has no children or posterity to carry on his name. He walks everywhere he goes. He is not a citizen of Rome or a rabbi in the best of our traditions. He goes to banquets with sinners. He attracts the blind, lame, deaf, and dumb. He heals the sick. He casts out demons. He raises the dead. He owns no weapons and he is an outcast of the Roman and Jewish establishments. Could this deformed, disfigured, and despised person be the new Messiah?
Being deformed he took on our deformities, our afflictions, and our grief. Being disfigured, he took on our unattractiveness, the horror of our disbelief. Being despised he took on our condition as outcasts and spiritual pariahs, as means of our relief.
He was a marred but magnificent Messiah. We don't want to see him, but we want to touch him. We don't want to suffer with him but want him to be our suffering servant. We don't want his physical looks but want his spiritual power. We don't want his association but want to claim his authority.
He was marred for our sins, iniquities, afflictions, and addictions. He was magnificent in the way that he bore our sorrows and took on our condition and freed us from enslavement to that condition. He was marred by our scars. We killed him! But by his scars and stripes we are healed. He was marred as the lowly and rejected of God. He was magnificent in the way that he raised us from the dregs and doldrums of sin and despair making us the accepted of God. He was marred in his grief but magnificent in the way he triumphed over suffering and the dirty things we did to him. He came to us to save us, and we killed him. But he got up from the grave and still comes to us with a message of love and redemption!
We pay tribute today to this Messiah -- this most unlikely to succeed; this man of sorrows acquainted with grief; this one who had no beauty in which to behold him, but who had more love, power, compassion, and strength than any man who has walked this earth. We pay tribute to him as a marred man without the earthly amenities, but also as a magnificent man with all heavenly power and authority. We pay tribute to him as one who was despised and rejected, but also as a man who stood as our accepted of God in the hour of great need.
He was marred but he was magnificent. He was lowly but exalted. He was rejected but accepted. He was disfigured but reconfigured the parameters of eternity. He was not attractive to look upon, but he loved us so much that he gave his life for us to make us attractive in the eyes of God and all creation.
All praises due to the deformed, disfigured, and rejected one who stood in our place against the power of evil and gave us victory! If we might come anywhere close to his shining example of manhood and exemplify his holy boldness and strength of character, God the Father would be pleased.
The savior of the world was not someone whose beauty we looked to but someone whose power we looked up to. He was not a man who could be measured by the superficial indices of this world, because he came to save the world. We pay tribute to Jesus, a marred but magnificent Messiah who gave his life for his people that they might become the man that he was and have the love, power, and joy that he shared through the gift of salvation!
