Servant Unto Death

When I was in high school, there was a growing sentiment among Christians that somehow found its way to the gravel roads of Iowa. The beginnings of what would become Christian celebrity culture had already seeped into youth group retreats, summer camp themes, and Christian magazine covers. It was simple: find your calling and then walk through doors of limitless blessing and influence and success. If we needed proof, it was offered in the form of young people doing “great things for God.”

This week in the Collect, as soon as we declare our need of family and parenting (Heavenly Father), we affirm together that the One who made us is also the One we are made for. Not for fame or good works or success, but for God. The track to celebrity is not often paved with lessons on our limited nature, but God’s design for us is full of them. We need sleep. We can’t be in two places at once. We are distracted by shiny things. We cannot single handedly save the world. Stepping into the marvelous Light will shine bright both on our good, heartfelt desires as well as the very real limits to realize them apart from the Lord.

Every year during Lent, the kids and I set out to memorize Isaiah 52:13- 53:12. We have actions and dramatic interludes and many invisible instruments. I find myself weeping at the picture of a holy God “prospering” as a servant, despised and rejected by the creation he made and then led to the slaughter like a little, helpless lamb. And I realize, every year in a new way, that God’s strength and defense against our enemies is in the picture of a lamb led to the slaughter. The most likely Christian celebrity– Jesus himself– became a servant unto death, even death on a cross.
 
It is no small thing that we end our prayer through Jesus Christ our Lord, who LIVES and REIGNS with you and the Holy Spirit, world without end. Amen.