When you compare Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 35 to Jesus’s words to His disciples in Luke chapter 18, you wonder if the two men are talking about the same thing.
Isaiah sounds like he is preparing the hearer for combat. Strong hands. Firm knees. Be strong. Fear not. God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. Jesus sounds like He is putting the fear of God into His disciples. See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise. Strong hands become weak, firm knees start knocking, weakness and fear make our hearts thump in our chests. This is not what we have been prepared for.
We are not alone. Saint Luke tells us the disciples understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. They, too, were unprepared for what was to come. Of all people, the disciples should have known what Jesus told them. This is now the third time over nine chapters of Luke’s gospel that Jesus predicts His death and resurrection. It’s not as if our Lord is springing a pop quiz first thing in the morning on them. They have had time to be prepared. Yet everything Jesus tells them seems to make no impact.
Unlike the disciples then, you and I today have the hindsight of a couple thousand years. In the case of Isaiah’s words, it’s 2,700 years. So we’ve had time to strengthen ourselves for what lies ahead. Still we are not ready to be earwitnesses once again to death and life contending in that combat stupendous. One look at the rest of Isaiah’s words in today’s Old Testament reading gives a hint as to why we might not be ready.
Isaiah commands us to be strong and fear not because the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. It’s no wonder that Jesus heals a blind man immediately after telling His disciples for the third time what is about to happen. The disciples, sojourners with our Savior for three years, still don’t get it. The blind man sitting by the side of the road cries out Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me and puts the disciples to shame in his cry of mercy. He can’t see Jesus, but He sees Jesus better than the Twelve see Him. He sees Jesus as Son of David, a Messianic title. Only the Holy Spirit working through the preached Word could imprint this title on the heart of a believer. He sees and believes without seeing, yet believing. Blessed is he!
Blessed are you, for even in your fear and trembling before Isaiah’s and Jesus’s words, you also see without seeing. You were not there that day. You are not an eyewitness of Christ’s miracles and His preaching. You, however, have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place.
So did the disciples. They had the prophetic word in the flesh! They didn’t need a Bible, let alone a scroll, to see and hear the living Word, and yet they didn’t understand a word of it.
If you look again at the disciples in Luke chapter 18, you’ll see yourself toward the back of the crowd. I’m back there, too. We’re all confused because our reason and all our senses expect Jesus not to say what He says. When He does say it, our nerves kick in and it’s fight or flight time. All the disciples except John succumbed to it and fled Jesus. You, also have had times when you have run away from Him. I can name many times when instead of turning to Him in prayer, I turned my back on Him and tried to find my own way.
Jesus suffers, dies, and rises from the dead for your sake for this reason. He knows you’ll fail. He knows you’ll desert Him. Jesus knows you’ll shake your head at the whole thing and think He’s crazy for going through with it. Jesus goes through with it because He loves you in spite of yourself. That’s grace. That’s one-way, unconditional love; a gift from God the Father just for you.
This one-way love from above strengthens weak hands and makes firm feeble knees. This one-way love from above says to anxious hearts, “Be strong, fear not!” Today Jesus declares these words to you through Isaiah in order to open your ears and your eyes, as well as to steel your courage. You get a front-row seat once again to hear Jesus suffer everything His people and the Roman Empire could throw at Him, even death on a cross, and rise from the dead triumphant over Satan and the grave. All these things He does for you. Yes, you.
Hands, firm. Knees, stable. Eyes and ears, seeing and listening to Jesus at work in His Word, in baptismal water, with bread and wine in His true body and blood. He will come and save you. Believe it for Jesus’s sake.
Media Vita In Morte Sumus 