The Ragman – Isaiah 53:4-5

The Ragman
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Isaiah 53:4-5 – “Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

We protect ourselves. No one wants to feel hurt and rejection.

If we suffer, at least we need to deserve it.

But to suffer for another is beyond our comprehension.

Sometimes, it helps to understand from a safe distance.

In Walter Wangerin, Jr.’s short story, Ragman, a young man early on a Friday morning takes to the streets “pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new.” He called out, “Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags! Rags!”

He comes to a brokenhearted young woman, poor and hopeless, weeping into her handkerchief. He slips away her handkerchief, replacing it with “a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined.” Then as he walked on “he put her stained handkerchief to his own face; and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking. Yet she was left without a tear.”

In that same way he took on a girl’s blood-soaked bandage, his own head becoming bloody when he put it on.

And a one-armed man’s jacket, becoming one-armed in his place, and the filthy army blanket of a drunk who went away in new clothes.

At the end of the story, now three days later a bright Sunday morning, the observer of all this “said to the Ragman with dear yearning in my voice: ‘Dress me.’”

The sacrifice of Jesus is not a theological truth to be dusted off in a Sunday school class. Instead, it is intensely personal.

Isaiah could see it centuries before it happened. He said, “Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:4–5, ESV)

Another way of saying is that Jesus is our “rag man” who exchanges our dirty rags for clean ones.

So today, remember, that the clothes you wear were given to you in exchange for your own. And give God thanks for the new clothes.

Robert G. Taylor

robertgtaylor.com

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Robert Taylor

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Robert Taylor

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