Monday of Holy Week

Lectionary: 257

Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
Upon whom I have put my Spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations....

In the desolation of Babylon, as the Jewish exiles waited without expectation for relief, Isaiah prophesied, 

See, the earlier things have come to pass,

new ones I now declare;

Before they spring forth

I announce them to you.

They recalled their past servitude in Egypt and their escape through the Red Sea; they remembered the sojourn in the desert and the Lord's providing for them through all those desperate years. But they also knew the shameful history of their ancestors who, despite God's promises of complete security and superabundance, feared their enemies and hoarded their wealth against the poor, needy, and aliens. 

In Babylon they were desperate again, and the LORD seemed to have abandoned them. Their nation was gone and their holy city razed to the ground. Their future would be dissolution among the senseless religions and inane cultures of the earth. There would be no history of God's mercy. It would be as if Moses had never led them out of Egypt, or God provided water from the rock, manna, and quail. David's victories, Solomon's temple, Hezekiah's reforms, Jeremiah's prophecies: all would be lost -- psalms, stories, proverbs -- as if they never happened. How many thousands of other cultures and cities have disappeared without a trace? 

But through Isaiah God promised the exiles, "...the earlier things have come to pass, new ones I now declare. Before they spring forth, I announce them to you."

In Holy Week, we remember the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Jesus's arrival in Jerusalem. 

Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,

The new things declared are found in the man who arrived in Jerusalem several centuries after Isaiah, riding a colt, the foal of an ass. A silent prophet recognized him in Bethesda. While his disciples and friends were feting him with a banquet Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, slipped into the room, 

...with a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

Only Jesus knew what it meant, that new things were about to occur. The woman acted with a compelling intuition like that of the magus who presented myrrh to the mysterious child in Bethlehem. It was necessary; it was good. The events of the following days would prove its prescient wisdom. The man was born to die for our sins. His hour of new things had come; he would not flee from it. 

From the throne of his crucifixion, he will announce the coming of his kingdom, "See, I make all things new!" (Rev 21:5)