by Ed Browning
We walked along the road, my friend and I. It was an ordinary road, and our feet felt heavy and gritty as the dust, warmed and dried by the heat of the afternoon sun, kicked up into our sandals. The wide flat path stretched ahead of us, climbing steadily as it wound around a small hill.
Other travelers shared the stretch of road with us, most carrying packs and herding sheep or goats or an occasional donkey. A man strode purposefully past us, a woman and a girl scurrying behind to keep up. A group of three women walked by in the other direction, one leading a goat with a length of rough rope. They were talking and gesturing animatedly, and none of them looked in our direction.
My companion glanced back and stopped as the goat planted its feet and let out a loud “maaaah!”. The rope went suddenly taut and jerked the woman’s arm back so that she lost her balance and tumbled to the ground with a shriek. A man going the opposite direction hurried over and squatted beside her.
“Quite a handful you’ve got there!” he said with a grin. “Are you okay?”
She blushed. “I’m fine. Except my pride is a bit bruised.” She attempted to stand up, but winced and immediately sat back down. “And my foot, apparently!” she groaned.
“Would you permit me to take a look?” the man asked, taking her foot in his hands. She gasped, but before she could pull away, he had untied her sandal and was peering closely at her ankle. “Twisted, I think,” he said after a moment. He closed his eyes for a brief second. When he opened them, he pressed his fingers on her heel, then gently tied the sandal back on her foot, rose to his feet, and offered her his hand.
She stood and placed her weight carefully on the injured foot, then looked at him wonderingly. “How…what…?”
“Must not have been that bad, after all,” the man said, eyes twinkling.
“Thank you” she murmured, then yanked on the goat rope with a grimace and hurried to catch up to the other two women. The man chuckled and patted the goat playfully as it trotted past.
My friend shook his head as he turned back and we started slowly on our way again. “It is strange,” he remarked, “how life has gone back to being so mundane. After the past few days…” His voice trailed off.
“Yes, very strange” I agreed. We walked in silence for some time.
“I really thought,” he said finally, “that he was the one – the promised one.” He walked slower, his feet scuffing the ground. “Do you remember the wedding?”
“I wasn’t there, but I remember hearing about it.”
“I wasn’t there either, but the story got around about the water and that amazing wine. Was that real? And the stories he told about the kingdom of heaven? And all those times he healed the sick, restored sight to the blind? Even lepers…” he shuddered and was quiet for a moment. “You know my sister thought she had leprosy.” His voice caught, and he stopped and looked away at the city, just visible over the distant fields. “She was seeing white spots on her feet and they were starting to feel numb. She cried and told me she couldn’t bear the thought of living as an outcast. Then…” He cleared his throat and looked back at me. “Then she heard about this man. A man who could take away the hurt and the pain and the disease and the death. He gave her hope!”
He sighed and looked down. “But now that hope has come to nothing. He’s gone. I don’t know what to believe in anymore.”
“Excuse me,“ a man’s voice behind us interrupted. “I don’t mean to intrude, but I couldn’t help but overhear some of your conversation. May I ask who you are talking about?”
We turned and saw the man who had helped the woman with the goat. He had a hint of a smile and looked genuinely curious. I glanced down at his feet and noticed unusual marks on the arches that reminded me of something – I couldn’t think what.
My friend kept his head down as he answered, “You must be the only one who hasn’t heard of the events of the past few days. Everyone is talking about it! Have you been hiding under a rock?”
I cringed at my friend’s rude words, but the stranger merely chuckled and said, “Yes, I guess you could say I have been hiding under a rock. But let us continue on our way, and while we walk, please tell me about these events – I’m interested in hearing your story!”
We continued walking down the road, the stranger between us. Since my friend seemed overwhelmed and tongue-tied, I began to explain, “Well, see, there was this man. He came out of nowhere – no money or family to speak of. Just a simple man – an ordinary carpenter. But he had this amazing ability to see into your soul. And he spoke words that were like poetry – no, more like music. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. He was a prophet, or at least we thought so. He could heal people – people that had been sick or blind or lame their entire lives – with a single touch or a word. He even raised the dead! Or so the story goes. When he spoke, he brought words of comfort and life. We believed he might be the promised one, the Messiah!”
I could see the man was listening intently, and I continued, “But three days ago, the Jewish authorities arrested him in Jerusalem. They handed him over to the Romans, and he was…” my throat felt dry as I continued, “He was crucified. They lashed him, shoved a crown of thorns on his head, nailed his hands and feet up to a cross. We saw him die.” I looked the stranger in the eye and said bitterly, “How could that be the chosen one? He was accursed!”
We walked in complete silence for some distance before the stranger answered. His voice was quiet, and his face sober as he spoke. “When I was younger, I read in the ancient scrolls about the deliverer.” My friend and I nodded – we had both read many times the stories of Moses. “In that story, God sent his prophet to lead his people out of captivity and into a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’. Moses was a great hero to our people.” We murmured agreement. This was a story we had heard all our lives, told and retold to us by our parents, our teachers, and the leaders of the community.
“But,” the man continued, “the story doesn’t end there. The people were physically free, but they continued to make terrible choices. They worshiped idols, they lied, stole, cheated, and murdered. In their hearts, nothing had changed. In the end, they were no better off than they were in captivity. And every single one of them was destined to die and be lost forever in degeneracy and hatred.” Whoa! My friend and I shared a look of confusion. This was off-script. The chosen people were supposed to be perfect and holy, not lost and forsaken. Where was he going with this?
“The nation needed something to wake them up to their desperate need for change – internal change. And the saving they needed was not from the Egyptians. Or the Romans. It was from themselves and the ultimate consequences of their own sinful decisions. And God had a plan! Right from the beginning, he asked them to sacrifice an innocent lamb so they would understand the plan when it came time to fulfill it.”
“What do you mean?” my friend asked. “Wasn’t the plan to send a mighty king to come with power and kill our enemies and establish his people once again? Isn’t that what the Messiah will do? What does a sacrificial lamb have to do with anything?”
The stranger’s eyes grew bright as he answered, “Have you read the writings of the Prophet?” We nodded more slowly this time. Those sacred writings were taught as well, but some of the passages in those scrolls were baffling and irrelevant, so we had simply passed them by. He stopped, and we stopped with him. He started to speak, and we grew more and more amazed as he recited from memory:
“’Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.’”
He paused and then said, “Doesn’t sound much like a conquering king, does it?” We shook our heads mutely. He continued:
“’Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.’”
He paused once again, and I found myself wiping a tear from my eye as I thought about the unfairness and humiliation and nobility of the suffering servant in the passage. I had read this passage before, but had never heard someone capture its meaning with such familiarity and such tenderness.
“’He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.’”1
As he finished reciting, the stranger’s eyes were alight with passion. It was as if he were living the passage, immersed in it. “Do you see?” he said after a pause. “The Messiah was meant to be much more than a powerful king, more than a conquering hero. He was to be the ultimate servant, the sacrificial lamb offered by a loving God to bring his people back to Him!”
As we neared our destination, the sun was setting, and my friend and I asked the man where he was going. “Oh, I have a place waiting for me down the road,” he replied vaguely.
“Please, come inside and rest. We have food and drink,” my friend urged. The man hesitated for only a moment, then agreed.
Inside the house, I quickly swept the dust away and pulled a loaf of bread from the shelf, while my friend filled a pitcher with water from the well outside. The stranger found a towel, poured some of the water from the pitcher into a basin and knelt in front of us as we sat down in some rough-hewn chairs. We started to protest, but he waved aside our objections and carefully washed the dust off our feet and dried them. My mind strayed to a story I had heard from one of the eleven men who had been closest to the man we had been talking about all afternoon – about how he had washed his disciples’ feet before eating the Passover meal with them. They had been as confused as I had been earlier, but in light of what the stranger had been saying about the Messiah, I now had a different understanding.
As the man rose and emptied the basin, he was repeating something I had heard long ago:
“’Therefore, My people will know My name; therefore they will know on that day that I am He who speaks. Here I am! How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, “Your God reigns!”!’”2
As he was speaking, something struck me about his feet. I had noticed earlier the unusual marks, and it suddenly dawned on me where I had seen those marks before. The crucifixion! When the Romans had nailed the prisoners up on those crosses, they had cruelly driven the nails through those precious feet in the exact spot where the dark marks now stained the light brown skin on the arches of his feet.
My friend and I looked at each other as understanding flooded us. The stranger picked up the loaf of bread and blessed it. He broke off a piece and handed it to each of us. And then, in an instant he was gone. We were stunned by the revelation that had struck us just before he broke the bread. We did know his name!
Both of us had the same idea. We immediately strapped our dirty sandals on our newly washed feet and headed out the door back onto the dusty road. We had to go back to Jerusalem to share the news that Jesus was alive. Alive! He had risen from the dead!
We walked along the road, my friend and I. But it was no longer an ordinary road. And our feet felt light and clean. And beautiful.
1 Isaiah 53 NIV
2 Isaiah 52:6,7 BSB