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. – Isaiah 53:3

Today's Scripture Reading (August 5, 2020): Isaiah 53

The Australian author, Markus Zusak, argues that "Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks. Not in what they say. Just in what they are." Maybe these people, whose beauty lies within, aren't just a kind of beautiful people, but in reality, the only beautiful people. Sometimes, the people that the world seems to think are beautiful, really aren't all that attractive once you get to know them. (I can't help but start to sing the "Northern Pikes" song "She ain't pretty, she just looks that way.") Beauty is more than just the way we look, and to be honest, it might have very little to do with the way things look.

And yet we tend to judge people on the way that they look. I have heard from church boards who rejected or at least had conversations around prospective pastors that were based on the way that the potential leader looked. Because, for some people, that is the starting place for everything that might follow.

Isaiah, in this prophecy of the Suffering Servant, gives us a better description of what Jesus might have looked like than the gospels do. It is not that he was ugly, but there was nothing in his appearance that would have attracted us to him. And because of this, he was "despised and rejected" by the very people that he came to save. Because of the way that he looked, we held him in low esteem. Yet, the paradox is that many were drawn toward him, drawn toward the inner beauty that shone through his being into the world in which he lived. Isaiah's message is one that I think every board should consider any time the question of what someone who is being considered for a leadership post, looks like, is considered.

Maybe we need to go a step further. It is not the outward beauty of our people, or ministries, or buildings, that is important. The beauty of the church should well-up from deep inside of us, placed there by the presence of the Suffering Servant who inhabits us so that it is evident to everyone. Because God has changed who we are.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Isaiah 54