READ your BIBLE during HOLY WEEK and prepare to rejoice fully on Easter Sunday. There are readings from Monday through Sunday, just keep scrolling down each day. (I'd love to hear your comments or suggestions for improving these devotionals.)

By way of Introduction
Jesus was nothing like the first disciples expected.  Instead of rescuing them from Roman oppression, Jesus died an ignominious death at the hands of the Romans.  It seems that we too have problems with Jesus’ identity and try to redefine him to fit our current wishes.  It was the prophet Isaiah who helped the early Christians figure Jesus out, and is still a guide for us today.  I have, therefore, chosen the Isaiah readings from the 4 Servant Songs for most of Holy Week.  All of the readings are known as ‘servant songs’ and outline, in broad strokes the vocation of Messiah.  While the identity of ‘servant’ in each of these songs is unclear, the church now reads them through the lens of Jesus and sees in them teaching about Messiah, helping us get Jesus and his mission, then and now, correct.
If you’d prefer to read the New Testament lessons from John’s Gospel, scroll down until you come to the devotions for 2016.


MONDAY OF HOLY WEEK (April 10)
PREPARE TO LISTEN: I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you.  (Isaiah 42:6)
READ: Isaiah 42:1-9 (I have only printed vv1-5; the focus of this devotional.)
Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. 
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; 
a bruised reed he will not break,
   and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. 
He will not grow faint or be crushed
   until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
The passage begins simply: “Here is my servant.”  No explanation is given and it’s hard to know the exact identity.  It’s up to us to look carefully at the description the ancient prophet gives.  The servant in this passage isn’t anything like the images we sometimes conjure up of Jesus—our own conquering hero come to rescue us from our sin and other messes.  It’s hard to imagine a Messiah who comes quietly and non-violently, but that’s how Isaiah describes “my servant,” what he does and doesn’t do.
We begin with a description of what the servant does not do.  He doesn’t engage in any type of self-promotion or self-aggrandizement—his voice isn’t lifted up or even heard in the street (think ‘multi-media sites’).  He doesn’t break those who’ve been “bruised” or “quenched”; those so abused they no longer know who they are.  The servant comes gently and non-violently.
Second, we learn what the servant does do—faithfully bring forth and establish justice in the nations (not just one nation).  Justice is a word with several meanings in Scripture.  It is used here to mean that God’s servant will bring the truth of God’s Word to all nations, hence we’re told that “the coastlands wait for his teaching,” a word related to justice in this poem.  It also means making wrongs right.  Jesus as God’s servant, came to do both of these things.
Today, we’re God’s servants on earth and these are now our tasks—to bring the truth of God’s Word to all nations and to make wrongs right by attending gently and non-violently to the needs of the “bruised” and the “dimly burning wick”, whoever they are, in our midst.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Who are the bruised and dimly burning wicks in your place today?  Name them and seek ways to bring them healing and wholeness.
RESPOND TO THE LORD IN PRAYER. 
Jesus, Servant of the Living God, you always come gently and without violence and thus I often miss encountering you in my space.  Help me today to be alert to your ways, be they ever so soft and faint.  Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.


TUESDAY OF HOLY WEEK (April 11)
PREPARE TO LISTEN: Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!  (Isaiah 49:1)
READ: Isaiah 49:1-7 (I’ve only printed vv5-7, the focus of this devotional.)
And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honoured in the sight of the Lord, and my God has become my strength— 
he says, ‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ 
Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers,
‘Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,
because of the Lord, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.’
MEDITATIVE WORDS
The servant was formed, in the womb, “to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him.”  We can excuse Israel for thinking that salvation was only for them.  But then the LORD seems to ‘rethink’ the servant’s role.  To be for Israel only “is too light a thing” for God’s servant.  The task will be much, much bigger—a light to the Gentiles so that God’s salvation reaches to the very ends of the earth.  God desires that the servant “should be my [God’s] salvation”.  In other words, the servant isn’t merely one who brings salvation, but is the salvation the world needs.  God’s salvation agenda is generous and enormous, reaching the whole world through one person.  It isn’t narrowly focused on Israel, a single nation.
I think we often narrow the scope of salvation just as Israel did.  We think of it as a personal and individual thing (‘I’ll go to heaven when I die’) and forget God’s larger agenda that includes all nations and all world leaders, who one day will bow before the Holy One of Israel.  Yes, the servant (Jesus) is the salvation we need, and he is the salvation of the entire world.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
In Jesus, we (those of us who follow Jesus) are salvation for the world through what we say and how we live.  Reflect on ways you could be God’s salvation in your space today.
RESPOND TO THE LORD IN PRAYER. 
Holy One of Israel, thank you for anointing Jesus to be salvation for the world.  Thank you that you showed me your way of salvation.  Help me today to show, by word and deed, this same salvation to others, for your name’s sake, Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.


WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK (April 12)
PREPARE TO LISTEN: Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.
READ: Isaiah 50:4-9a
The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens--
   wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. 
The Lord God has opened my ear,
   and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backwards. 
I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
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 up together.
Who are my adversaries?  Let them confront me. 
It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This is the 3rd Servant Song and the only one in which the word ‘servant’ isn’t used.  God is addressed 4 times as “the Lord God.”  This can be translated, “Sovereign LORD,” where LORD (all upper case) stands for God’s name, Yahweh.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
“The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backwards.”  We’re not told what the servant was asked to do, just that the servant didn’t rebel.  In other words, the servant was obedient to God’s Word.  Obedience and a listening ear are often related, even equated in the Old Testament.  The obedience came, not because the servant spent time listening to God once in a while, when time allowed.  But, the servant claims, it was “morning by morning” that God awakened him to listen.  It was this daily discipline of listening that made possible the “sustaining word for the weary,” that is, a word that would energize God’s people to keep faith and hope alive in God’s continual work in renewing the world and bringing in God’s redemption.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
This sustaining word is the word we all need to hear today.  We live in times where so many world leaders are oppressive, corrupt, even anti-Christ and his way.  Who will give the sustaining word?  Who will waken morning by morning to listen as those who are taught and are teachable?  Will you?
RESPOND TO THE LORD God IN PRAYER.
Sovereign Lord, awaken my ear to listen as those who are taught that I may be able to sustain the weary, the down-trodden, the oppressed with a word that energizes hope in your sure redemption.  In the name of your Servant, Jesus I pray, Amen.                                                                                                    BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.


THURSDAY OF HOLY WEEK (April 13) Maundy Thursday
PREPARE TO LISTEN:
READ: John 13:31-35
When he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.  If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer.  You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.”  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.  Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Maundy means ‘command,’ and is used to refer to the command Jesus left his disciples with as found in our text today.  The command comes shortly after Jesus washed the disciples’ feet during his last Passover meal with them (read John 13:1-17) and immediately after Judas departed with the intent to betray Jesus.  Our lesson today picks up immediately after Judas had left.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
We know this command well.  Some of us even memorized it as children, but we’re less familiar with the words that come before it.  Five times Jesus uses the word ‘glorified’ and ‘glorify’.  He knew what was about to happen to him—arrest, suffering and death thanks to Judas’ betrayal.  He looked it full in the face and claimed, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.’
Glory has to do with God’s presence being known and felt.  In Jewish thought, God’s glory rested in the temple, the symbol of the very presence of God on earth.  Jesus’ death is the means by which God brings God’s space and our earthly space together.  God now rules here on earth (humanity’s space) as in heaven (God’s space) because Jesus has been glorified.
It is in this context that the disciples were commanded to love one another, the sign to the world that they belong to Jesus; the sign to the world that God now dwells and rules on earth as in heaven.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Reflect on ways you could glorify God today, that is, make God known and felt in your space today.
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER. 
Jesus, you humbly reached down and washed the disciples’ dirty feet.  Help me today to follow your example, to glorify your name by humbly serving those in need around me today.  For the sake of your glory, Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.


FRIDAY OF HOLY WEEK (April 14)
PREPARE TO LISTEN: Who has believed what we have heard?  (Isaiah 53:1)
READ: Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (I’ve only printed 53:4-9, the focus of this devotional.)
Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. 
But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. 
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
   and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 
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. 
They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.
SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION
N. T. Wright maintains that this 4th Servant Song is at the very heart of Jesus’ understanding of how his vocation would be fulfilled (The Day the Revolution Began: 189).  The Servant in this 4th Song is readily identified as Jesus Messiah.  You could use this poem to retell the story of Jesus.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
The words are very heavy and filled with passive verbs and multiple terms related to sickness.  As the writer describes the suffering Servant he also admits how misunderstood he was.  The Servant is almost written off because “we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.”  Then it becomes clear all the suffering was for a purpose, God’s purpose.  He bore the punishment that makes us whole and the bruises that bring us healing.  The people’s response?  “All we like sheep have gone astray.”  This didn’t stop Messiah.  He too became sheep-like, but as a sheep that remains silent when being sheared.  Twice we’re told “he did not open his mouth.”  No one could have imagined this suffering for Messiah, but it happened.  Isaiah makes clear that Messiah’s suffering was for the forgiveness of sin; the sin that caused Israel to go into exile and the sin that brought separation between us and God.  Jesus has made possible a life free of sin and addiction.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Read the entire poem through slowly and simply be grateful for what God in Christ has done for your healing and wholeness today.
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER. 
Redeemer God, you made Jesus bear the punishment that sets us free.  Help me live today in gratitude for what Christ did on the cross and help me truly live the forgiveness I’ve received.  In the name of Jesus, Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.


SATURDAY OF HOLY WEEK (April 15)
PREPARE TO LISTEN: See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.  (Isaiah 52:13)
READ: Matthew 27:57-66
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus.  He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him.  So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock.  He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.”  Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, “He has been raised from the dead”, and the last deception would be worse than the first.’  Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’  So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.
MEDITATIVE WORDS
Joseph of Arimathea “rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.  Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.”  I wonder why these two Marys remained on guard at the tomb.  Did they have hope in Jesus’ promise to rise again on the third day?  Was their plan to remain at the tomb until that happened?  We don’t know what motivated them and the writer doesn’t tell us.  We can imagine that they were motivated by a certain hope in the words of Jesus that on the third day he would be raised.  Joseph, whom Matthew claims, “was also a disciple of Jesus,” shows no faith in the resurrection.  He rolled the stone over the entrance of the tomb and walked away.  Not being a regular follower of Jesus (as far as we know) perhaps he’d never heard Jesus assure the disciples he’d rise again and therefore didn’t know.  He didn’t stick around to find out.  The two women did, and, as we’ll discover in tomorrow’s reading, they were rewarded and blessed.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Put yourself in the story.  With whom do you most identify; with Joseph who appears to lack hope in Jesus’ assurance to rise again the 3rd day, or with the two Marys who act in a hope-filled manner and are prepared to wait?
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER. 
Lord Jesus, I believe, but please help my unbelief.  Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.


EASTER SUNDAY (April 16)
PREPARE TO LISTEN: Again you shall take your tambourines, and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers. (Jeremiah 31:4)
READ: Matthew 28:1-10
After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.  And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.  His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.  For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.  But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said.  Come, see the place where he lay.  Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.”  This is my message for you.’  So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.  Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’  And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him.  Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’
MEDITATIVE WORDS
Mary Magdalene and ‘the other’ Mary returned to the tomb on the third day.  It was a frightening experience—“a great earthquake” and then an angel with the appearance of lightning that filled the guards with fear so they “became like dead men.”  Not the women.  They stand their ground and were rewarded—the very first to hear the good news of the resurrection of Jesus, their Lord.  Not only that, they were the first to see Jesus alive.  Their response to Jesus’ simple word, “Greetings,” was immediate.  Without a word “they came to him, took hold of his feet [which means they bowed that low], and worshipped him.”  But, they had a task to fulfill.
Twice in the story the two women were commanded to “go and tell,” once by the angel and once by Jesus himself.  They were being asked to be witnesses of the most momentous act in all of history.  Women were being asked to do what women were normally not permitted to do—bear witness and this time it was to witness about Jesus’ resurrection.  Their worship of Jesus included accepting the mission Jesus sent them to perform.  They were overjoyed, not only at seeing the one they loved alive but also at being accounted worthy to proclaim this good news to the other disciples.  Did they dance the dance of the merrymakers as they made their back into the city?  I wonder.
REFLECTIVE WONDERING
Sometimes we take our role as witness to Jesus too casually.  Imagine being in the sandals of these two women and let their joy enter your soul this morning.  Celebrate the resurrection; go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
RESPOND TO JESUS IN PRAYER. 
Lord Jesus, all that we can do is thank you and lift our hands in praise.  Amen.
BE SILENT AND STILL: For a few moments, simply be in the presence of Jesus, who loves you, regardless.