My oldest daughter, always a voracious reader, has the
curious habit of skipping ahead to read the end of a story first. As you might imagine, my Teutonic DNA simply
can’t fathom reading a book out of order.
How can you understand the end of the story, without knowing what leads up
to it? Caitlin takes the opposite view,
of course: How can you appreciate the
story without knowing how it ends? Well,
looking at our reading for Morning Prayer, it seems that Caitlin and the prophet
Isaiah take the same approach. They prefer
to keep the end in mind.
Our passage from Isaiah comes from the very beginning
of the Suffering Servant narrative, where Isaiah tells us the end of the story
first. Before we learn of the suffering
that God’s servant will undergo, we hear how it all turns out: “My servant shall prosper, he shall be raised
high and greatly exalted.” It’s the same
with the Gospels. Jesus teaches us about
the wonders of the coming Kingdom before he speaks of his passion and death. I guess God’s not German. Don’t tell Pope Emeritus Benedict.
Why would God, through Jesus and the prophets, tell us
the end first? Perhaps it’s because we
couldn’t handle the brutality of the passion without knowing that everything
turns out alright. Perhaps it’s because we
couldn’t handle the challenges of life without knowing that everything turns
out alright. There’s a lot of suffering in
this world, and more and more people seem to be turning away from God because
of it. But if we turn away from God, if
we reject his promise of eternal salvation, happiness and peace, then we have
nothing to hope for. God tells us the
end of the story first to give us hope.
Knowing, indeed,
believing the end of the story carries us not just through the events of Good
Friday, but through every challenge we face in life. The hope of salvation sustains us in times of
trial and gives us the strength to persevere. With hope we can bind our sufferings with
Christ’s on Good Friday and every day, knowing that in the end, “all shall be
well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
As hard as it is for me to admit, maybe Caitlin and Isaiah are right: We have to keep the end in mind.
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