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Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. (53:4-5)

Before the dawn one Friday morning, a strong, handsome young man walked the alleys of the city. The six-feet-four man with arms like tree limbs was pulling an old cart filled with new clothes. He called in a clear, tenor voice: "Rags! New rags for old! I'll take your tired rags!"

Soon the Ragman came upon a sobbing woman sitting on her back porch. Her shoulders shook as her head was buried within her hands. Her heart was breaking. The Ragman stopped his cart and stepped around tin cans, broken toys, and Pampers as he quietly walked to the woman. He said to her gently, "Give me your rag, and I'll give you another."

He slipped the handkerchief from her. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked, and stopped crying.

Then, as the Ragman pulled his cart away, he put her handkerchief to his face, and he began to weep, as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. He continued calling, "Rags! Rags! New rags for old!"

The Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek. Now the tall Ragman looked at her with pity, and he withdrew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart. He said, "Give me your rag, and I'll give you mine."

The child gazed at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. He put the bonnet on her head.

And the wound went with the bandage! But the blood ran darker; it was the Ragman's!

The sobbing, bleeding Ragman pressed on as he cried out, "Rags! Rags! I take old rags!" He met a man leaning against a telephone pole and asked him, "Are you going to work?"

After the man shook "no," the Ragman pressed him: "Do you have a job?"

The man scoffed, "Are you crazy?" He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket stuffed into the pocket. He had no arm.

With a quiet authority, the Ragman said, "Give me your jacket, and I'll give you mine." The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman -- and the Ragman's arm stayed in its sleeve. When the unemployed man put it on, he had two good arms, but the Ragman had only one. He encouraged him, "Go to work."

After that he found an old drunk, lying unconscious beneath an army blanket. The Ragman took the blanket off the hunched, shriveled, and sick old man. He wrapped it round himself, but for the drunk he left new clothes.

The Ragman was weeping uncontrollably, bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, and stumbling from drunkenness. And yet, he skittered through the alleys until he came to the city limits. The sickly Ragman came to a landfill -- the garbage pits. He climbed a hill. With great labor he cleared a little space and sighed as he lay down. He formed the handkerchief and the jacket into a pillow. He covered his tired body with the army blanket. And then he died.

But on Sunday morning, a pure but violent light shined on that hill. There was the Ragman, carefully folding the blanket. He had a scar on his forehead, but he was alive! There was no sign of age or sorrow, and all the rags that he had gathered looked like new.

The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ!

(Walter Wangerin Jr., Ragman and Other Cries of Faith [San Francisco, California: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1984], pp. 3-6)