A God We Can Count On--March 31, 2026

A God We Can Count On--March 31, 2026

    "The Lord God helps me;

        therefore I have not been disgraced;
  therefore I have set my face like flint,
  and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
  he who vindicates me is near.
 Who will contend with me?
  Let us stand in court together.
 Who are my adversaries?
  Let them confront me.
 It is the Lord God who helps me;
  who will declare me guilty?" (Isaiah 50:7-9a)

The thing that keeps Jesus on the path that he knows is headed to a cross is his utter confidence that he remains in God's hands.  And unlike us so often, who keep thinking we have to take matters into our own hands, Jesus knows that he can count on the One he calls "Father" to put things right, to vindicate him, and to raise him up.  It is precisely that utter assurance in God--which is really what faith is, after all--that enables Jesus to give himself away all the way to death.  

Jesus knows it's not up to him to prevent his own death, to destroy his enemies, or to come out looking like a "winner" against Pilate and the Religious Leaders by sundown on Friday. It is simply his to be faithful.  And the God to whom he is faithful will be in charge of putting things right come Sunday.  Because Jesus knows he can count on the living God, he can be wholly focused on facing the hostile forces around him in a way that fits with God's character--which is to say, with love for enemies, with goodness instead of evil, and with mercy rather than cruelty. And this turns out to be the same for us as well.

That's part of what I think we can hear in these words from Isaiah 50, continuing the passage we heard yesterday and which many of us heard back on Sunday. While these words were written centuries before Jesus' last week in Jerusalem, they give us a way of understanding how Jesus faces the events of that first Holy Week.  As we saw yesterday, the prophet spoke of a non-violent response in the face of evil and insult--committing to be faithful to the message God had given even when it was met with violence and mockery.  And then today, we can see in the subsequent verses how the one speaking is able to keep on that path of self-giving love without being goaded into sinking to the opponents' level and answering their evil with evil of his own.  The thing that keeps him on course is his confidence that even when the powers of the day do their worst, he remains in God's hands--and therefore, he can simply focus on carrying out his God-given mission.  Because the prophetic voice in Isaiah 50 knows that God will vindicate him, he doesn't have to give in to the temptation to resort to the tactics of his attackers because they look more "successful" or "effective."

And of course, that's precisely how this week unfolds for Jesus.  There are multiple times where Jesus points out that he could use the same violence and rottenness that the empire and the riled-up lynch-mob have been using on him, but he is called not to play by their rules.  When they come to arrest him in the garden, he points out that they have come with swords and clubs but that he will use no such weapons to fight back against them--even stopping Peter when he starts swinging a sword to try to protect Jesus. "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword," he says in one gospel's retelling.  And in another, he heals the ear of the man whose ear Peter has just cut off.  He additionally notes that he has the authority to call "twelve legions of angels" to his aid if he had chosen to, but that this isn't the way God has called him to fulfill his mission.  Over and over again in the course of Jesus' final confrontations with the powers of the day, he remains committed to the message and mission he has been given, including his refusal to fight evil with evil or violence with violence. And he commands his followers to the same commitment as well: forbidding the disciples to attack the lynch-mob or the religious police back, and disarming them in the garden.  

At no point in any of the Holy Week storytelling does Jesus say he needs his followers to go into battle to defend him or advance his interests, just as he had taught throughout his ministry that God's Reign calls for love toward enemies. Jesus will never endorse killing in his name, no matter how many times throughout history people have blasphemously invoked his name to bless their wars. That is possible because Jesus actually trusts that God will accomplish the necessary vindication, and on God's terms rather than anybody else's.  That confidence allows Jesus to go all the way to the cross, even though the powers of the day will be bragging that they have defeated and destroyed him. Jesus entrusts himself to the God who raises the dead, and that allows him not to give in to resorting to evil's tactics.

For a lot of my life, I've heard people talk about how important it is for us as Christians to believe that Jesus rose from the dead at Easter.  And that's certainly true.  But I think even more vital before we get to talking about OUR belief in Jesus' resurrection is that Jesus seems to have been so convinced that God was not only able, but willing, to raise him from the dead that he was able to walk the road to the cross without needing to fight back in kind or destroy his enemies. He really did believe that he could trust God to both redeem him and to vindicate him, and that allowed him to face down the powers of death with courage and conviction.  And as Easter Sunday assures us, the God in whom Jesus put his trust turns out to have been trustworthy all along.  The empty tomb insists that we have a God we can count on.

That is the kind of trust we are called into as well. How do you and I answer the question, "Can we count on God?" And how do we answer it, not merely in the abstract or the hypothetical, but in our actual choices and commitments? Can we dare to believe that God really does have us in a sure and certain grip, to the point of no longer believing we have to take matters into our own hands?  Can we act as though God really will set things right, no matter what the powers of evil do?  Can we trust that God will hold us even through death, so that we don't have to sell out our faithfulness to the way of Jesus out of fear?

That's what the whole life of discipleship really is--learning to trust God so fully and completely that we can walk the same path as Jesus.  But if we are walking on his path, then he is never far from us, and we are never--never--left to our own devices.

That is good news.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust as you trust, so that we can be as brave and faithful as you are, too.