Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Saturday, April 13, 2013 Read – Isaiah 5213-53:12 This is the last of the four “servant songs” and one that Christians have cherished as it adds its voice to the growing proclamation of just who Jesus is and what Jesus accomplished. Again, it is important to remember that these words had meaning to Isaiah and to those to whom he wrote long before they took on the meaning they do for Christians who read these words in light of what happened to Jesus. But, having remembered that, we can let the words of this “servant song” do their work in our hearing – this is who Jesus is – the one who gave his life in order that we might have life. We can imagine those first followers of Jesus contemplating the death and resurrection of Jesus and what it might mean and then going back to read their scripture in the Old Testament. Jesus must have “sprung off the page” for them as they read these words in Isaiah 53 and then thought of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. We are going to leave Isaiah behind now. I hope it has been beneficial for all of us to have read Isaiah in light of what happened to Jesus. Perhaps we have experience just a little of what those first travelers on the Emmaus road experience as Jesus opened the scripture to them to tell them why it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and die. We have had an exercise in “Messianic Exegesis.”