This morning, like many of us observing Good Friday, I started with a reading of Isaiah 53. But, while I’ve read Isaiah 53 many times before, have preached from it, and know it well as one of the primary Old Testament Messianic prophecies about the torture and crucifixion of the Messiah, as well as about his substitutionary atonement for sinners, the last part of the chapter hung around me throughout the day, coming to mind over and over. The first part of Isaiah 53 is familiar and quoted often. The last part is there and read, but we have usually already experienced the impact of the first part and the last verses, if read at all, are usually read before we go back and explain the first part. That is a shame.
Isaiah 53:11-12
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he poured out his soul to death
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors.
“Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”
“make many to be accounted righteous”
“he shall bear their iniquities”
“divide him a portion with the many/divide the spoil with the strong”
“he poured out his soul to death”
“was numbered with the transgressors:”
“bore the sin of many”
“makes intercession for the transgressors”
That passage – those phrases – have penetrated my thinking of the suffering of Christ and how, through His suffering, He secured our redemption. He was both numbered with the transgressors, bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. He prays for those who transgress. Jesus prays for sinners. He prays for His enemies. He loves His enemies. He bore the sin of His enemies. He died for his enemies. He prays for transgressors.
How different this is than us? We often want to see our enemies defeated. We want them sent away and to be protected from them. We want to see them stripped of any power they might have or that they might use against us. But, do we love them? Do we pray for them? Would we die for them?
Before the worship service today, I went downtown to Court Square in Montgomery, my town. There is a great coffee shop down there, but I didn’t go in today. I just walked around Court Square. This is ground zero of American history, in my opinion. At this square, there is a fountain where one of the largest slave markets in the South used to be. African American men, women, and children were bought and sold there. On one corner is the building from where the telegram to start the Civil War was sent in 1861. On the other side of Court Square is where Rosa Parks got on the bus that day in December, 1955, one of the signals of the beginning of the end of Jim Crow. This part of town saw thousands and thousands of Creek Indians marched through the streets in chains in 1836 to fulfill the Federal demand of Indian Removal to the West. Two blocks away, Black and white Freedom Riders were beaten bloody in 1961.
So much has happened here. Westward Expansion, Slavery, Indian Removal, Civil War, Civil Rights Movement. So much conflict and chaos. So much pain. I go there and I pray. I saw my friend, Michelle Browder, giving a tour and telling the Montgomery story to a group of tourists. I give my own tours and tell the story here. But, on this day, I was praying for awhile.
Then, I went to the Good Friday service just a couple of blocks away at my church, First Baptist, Montgomery. We sang the old African American spiritual that many historians believe was written by slaves in the South:
Were you there when they crucified my Lord? (Were you there?)
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
O sometimes it causes me to tremble! tremble! tremble!
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
I was overcome with emotion and began to tremble myself. I saw Jesus on the Cross, suffering for my sin. I thought of Isaiah 53:11-12 – the anguish of his soul, making many to be accounted righteous, bearing their iniquities, pouring out his soul to death, bearing the sin of many, making intercession for the transgressors…” Pastor Jay Wolf talked about how Jesus, stripped and bloody, suffered. The Roman soldiers gambled for his clothes. He was despised and rejected. We esteemed him not. Then, when he died, everything went dark for 3 hours, the veil in the Temple was torn from the top down, graves opened up and the dead came forth. The earth shook.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
I thought about African slaves singing this in cotton fields. I thought about them being marched down Commerce Street from the docks on the Alabama River to holding pens where they would wait to be sold at Court Square. I thought about them mounting the auction block and being shown off to prospective buyers and then being bought and taken to surrounding plantations to bring wealth up out of the ground. Then, as we sang I thought about them singing …
“O – O – O – O …. sometimes … it causes me to tremble …. tremble … tremble.”
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?”
Slaves sang this. In the South. They drenched the ground with tears and remembrance of the Crucifixion of the Son of God in the midst of their slavery. They prayed and cried out and longed and remembered something they had never seen, but by faith, they knew to be true.
“Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”
“yet he bore the sin of many,
and makes intercession for the transgressors”
It was too much. Jesus, on the Cross, dying for my sin. For the sins of people who lived long before and who will live after. For the sins of slaves and slave owners, for the wealthy and the poor, for the powerless and the powerful. He makes intercession for the transgressors. That is all of us. Singing “Were You There?” in the sanctuary of FBC Montgomery today I could hear their voices from 150 years ago calling me to look back further, not to the horror of the past that we can never wash out on our own no matter how hard we try; not to our own failings and sin that we can never break free from on our own; not to the current conflict in our nation, our world, and even our churches; but rather, the voices of slaves pointing to a bloody crucifixion when the Son of God was numbered with the transgressors called out to me. Look to the Cross. Look to Jesus. We need a Savior.
Next week, thousands will gather in Memphis for MLK50. I’ll be there. I plan to write about it. I will speak in a breakout session on ministry to the vulnerable at the margins, primarily immigrants and refugees. There has been quite a bit said about this conference here at Voices and on social media, including criticism from some as to why we would gather for this purpose. But, when I think about Martin Luther King and what he called us to, I think first about Montgomery, where he started his ministry at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. I think about a movement that didn’t begin on December 1, 1955 or when he spoke at Holt Street Baptist Church for the first mass meeting of the Montgomery Bus Boycott a few days later. Rather, the movement I think of goes back further, to slaves in the fields singing, “Were you there when they nailed him to the cross?” To human beings hoisted on to auction blocks to be bought and sold praying “God help me” under their breath. I don’t think just about MLK himself. I think about all that came before and what he called us to. And, more than that, I think about the God who gave so many of them hope in the midst of massive abuse and oppression. I go back much further and I think about a movement that really began at the Cross, the Hinge of History.
Ever since the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, we’ve been playing out a Redemption Story where the Cross and Empty Tomb hang over us. How will the truth of Jesus be manifested and revealed to each society and culture and generation at given times and in specific places? Montgomery has a part in that story, both for good and for ill. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a part of that story for a while. So were slaves, politicians, planters, and soldiers. And many more. But, beyond that is Jesus, dying on a Cross for our sins, making intercession for transgressors, rising from the dead. The only hope we have for redemption, healing, unity, and to break the cycle created by the sins of the past is the Cross of Christ.
Can we hear the question the African American slaves sang to us so long ago, in the midst of their bondage? How will we answer today? They speak.
“Where you there when they crucified my Lord?”
Jesus prays for transgressors. He prays for us.
