Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:06 Welcome to Lent Meditation and Worship with Westside Church during this lentin season. Meet us here each day as we read scripture, worship, and rest in the presence of God together. Know that as you listen today, you are doing so with others, whether in the same places you are not, and we pray that the Holy Spirit permeates the places we each find ourselves in right now. For more resources and define each week's prayer and song, visit westside church.org/lent. Let us start today by clearing our minds and opening our hearts to what the Lord wants to speak to us through His word. Take a deep breath in and out, and another in and out.
Speaker 1 00:01:06 Today is Ash Wednesday. It is the beginning of the season of lint that leads us to the glorious celebration of Easter Sunday. The early church observed the death and resurrection of Jesus with great devotion and began using the 40 days prior to Easter to prepare themselves for the celebration of renewed and eternal life that the resurrection of Jesus brings. This is a season of reflection and sacrifice and reconciling with our community and strengthening our faith. I invite you to join me in making the most of this lenton season. Let's challenge ourselves through self-reflection, prayer, fasting, and self-discipline to deepen our spiritual connection by reading and meditating on God's word. As we start this journey of repentance, let's humbly bow before the Lord, our maker and savior, recognizing our own human weaknesses and seeking his guidance and blessings while coming together. To make this a season of growth and transformation,
Speaker 1 00:02:19 We will begin our journey towards Easter with an Old Testament prophecy of Jesus life, character, and mission while on earth. Isaiah 53 paints a sobering picture of the son of God and how he will come to be known as the man of sorrows. He did not live a sad life on earth, but one that was well acquainted with sorrow more than humanity would ever be. Even though Jesus has experienced the worst that the world has to offer, he came out victorious and that gives us reason to celebrate. Over the course of these 40 days, we will learn what it means to both hold the sorrow of our own brokenness in sin, while also holding onto the hope and the victory we have in Jesus. Let's read Isaiah 53. Indeed. Who would ever believe it? Who would possibly accept what we've been told? Who has witnessed the awesome power and plan of the eternal inaction?
Speaker 1 00:03:28 Out of emptiness, he came like a tender shoot from rock hard ground. He didn't look like anything or anyone of consequence. He had no physical beauty to attract our attention, so he was despised and forsaken by men. This man of suffering, griefs, patient friend, as if he was a person to avoid. We looked the other way. He was despised, forsaken, and we took no notice of him yet it was our suffering. He carried our pain and distress our sick to the soulness. We just figured that God had rejected him, that God was the reason he hurt so badly, but he was hurt because of us. He suffered so our wrongdoing wounded and crushed him. He endured the braking that made us whole. The injuries he suffered became our healing. We all have wandered off like shepherd less sheep scattered by our aimless, striving, and endless pursuits.
Speaker 1 00:04:44 The eternal one laid on him, the silent sufferer, the sins of us all, and in the face of such oppression and suffering, silence, not a word of protest, not a finger raised to stop it like a sheep to a shearing like a lamb to be slaughtered. He went, oh, so quietly, oh, so willingly oppressed and condemned. He was taken away from this generation who was there to complain, who was there to cry foul. He was, after all cut off from the land of the living, smacked and struck not on his account because of how my people, my people disregarded the lines between right and wrong. They snuffed out his life and when he was dead, he was buried with the disgraced and borrowed space among the rich, even though he did know wrong by word or deed. Yet, the eternal one planned to crush him all along, to bring to him grief, this innocent servant of God.
Speaker 1 00:06:05 When he puts his life in sins, dark place in the pit of wrongdoing, the servant of God will see his children and have his days prolonged for in his servant's hand. The eternal's deepest desire will come to pass and flourish as a result of the trials and troubles that rack his soul. God's servant will see light and be content because he knows he really understands what it's about. As God says, my just servant will justify countless others by taking on their punishment and bearing it away because he exposed his very self, laid bear, his soul to the vicious grasping of death and was counted among the worst. I will count him among the best. I will allot this one, my servant, A share in all that is of any value because he took on himself the sin of many and acted on behalf of those who broke my law. Keep the scripture close at hand this season. Remind yourself of why we repent, why we grieve, and why we celebrate. Jesus gave up his own life and carried the death of so many so that we could live. Let's pray together from the book of common prayer,
Speaker 1 00:07:45 Righteous God in humility and repentance, we bring our failures in caring, helping and loving. We bring the pain we have caused others. We bring the injustice on society of which we are a part to the transforming power of your grace. Grant us the courage to accept the healing you offer and to turn again towards the sunrise of your reign that we may walk with you in the promise of peace. You have willed for all the children of the earth and have made known to us in Christ Jesus. Amen.
