I know you have heard this before because I have commented on it before. But, in ancient Rome, and in all the lands they conquered, there were forty one major gods. Imagine that! Forty one gods to keep happy. Lucky for the Romans, their gods all possessed very human characteristics, so to keep them happy you merely had to keep yourself happy. And then the Romans had non-Roman gods and goddesses, adding the gods of conquered lands in order to keep the locals satisfied. One such goddesses in Western Europe was Eastre, goddesses of fertility. The Romans already had Venus to fill that position, but you really cannot have to many goddesses of fertility, especially since the worship of such goddesses involves sex. Eastre was unique in that worship for her included rabbits or hares and colored eggs, all signs of fertility. In time, when the Roman Catholic Church came into power, they retained Eastre as a symbol of springtime and the fertility of nature. In doing so, they retained the rabbit/hare connection as well as the colored eggs. By the 1500s the Roman Catholic Church had linked Eastre to the Resurrection of Jesus and began calling Resurrection Day, Easter. And we still have that grand old pagan tradition complete with rabbits/hares and colored eggs. I know people get upset with me when I point these things out, but truth is more important than feelings.

        We have drifted so far away from truth! Is it any wonder that society has followed the great lie? People like color and flash and feelings. And, really, the truth is kind of ugly.

        Isaiah 53 is the prophet Isaiah seeing the future and seeing the time of the death of Messiah. Last week we looked at the first three verses; Isaiah 53:1.) Who has believed what he has heard from us?  And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? 2.) For He grew up before Him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. 3.) He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces   he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

        Well, no wonder! Who wants to tell their child of a homely man who didn't look like he was important, who was filled with sorrow and grief and who was despised? So much more pleasant to have cuddly, cute little bunnies and brightly colored eggs and chocolate and all those things. And Wal-Mart has all that ready to go, including fake grass!

        The truth can be ugly, but shouldn't we express the truth? In the nine years I worked at the funeral home I was often asked to talk to the children and explain the death of grandma or grandpa or whoever. Why was I asked? Because the parents could not bear to share the truth.

        In Isaiah 53 it does not get any better. In verses 4-6 we have this; 4.) Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5.) 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. 6.) All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—everyone—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

        Sure, that is very harsh. Those 'griefs' and 'sorrows' from back in verse three are not His, but ours that He took on Himself. There is more to this Jesus than a baby in a manger, and even more than a Man on a cross. And verse five tells us that all His suffering was because of us.  Verse six says we were just headstrong and stubborn and did wrong things and Jesus took our sin! That means we are the guilty ones. His suffering was because of us. 

        Pretty serious stuff. When I was in junior high my father, a jack of all trades, was hired to get rid of blood stains in a house. Back in the 1930s a wife had beat her sleeping husband to death with a hammer while he slept. The blood stains on the wall had been painted over multiple times, but always showed through after a short while. We wound up removing the plaster and cutting out the wood beneath, and then replacing it all. But people had started making joes about it, saying all kinds of things about the murder house. That is the way people are. We take the things that make us uncomfortable and gloss them over.  The birth was desperation time for Mary and Joseph. The death was horror for Mary and the others. We cannot shy away from the truth. Especially not with the Bible. Colored lights do not make the confusion and fear of Mary and Joseph any less real and colored eggs do not make the death any less horrific. 

        Amazing that Isaiah saw this all clearly just over 700 years before it happened and less that 600 years later, we were celebrating Easter instead of Resurrection.