Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, December 14, 2021
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
We like to think our justice system has come a long way since the Roman empire. But for large groups of people in the United States, justice is still perverted. Not for me—I’m white, middle-class, cisgender, and past child-bearing years. Our justice system is stacked in my favor. And I sometimes think that makes it harder for me to grasp the state violence that sent Jesus to his death.
I don’t hold with the notion that Jesus had to endure suffering to make God happy with us again, so I cringe a little at a lot of the language in this full passage. I do, however, believe that Jesus suffered the absolute worst that could be suffered and that, because of it, we can say that Jesus knows our suffering, no matter how horrible. So those who are still daily victims of state violence and perversions of justice in my country can maybe—just maybe—take comfort in the fact that Jesus knows what they are going through, and is right there in the midst of it with them.
How do I relate to the suffering of Jesus on the cross?
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