The sealed letter

I saw the Lord, high and lifted up. Whatever you came to ask, ask it.

Here am I, send me — that's the model for every calling, isn't it?

No. It's the first half of a sentence, and men keep quoting it as though it were the whole thing.

Understand what happened in the room. I was undone on the floor. My mouth had been burned clean with a coal off the altar — the seraph used tongs, because even he would not hold it. And then a voice, not directed at me, asking the room: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Nobody said my name. I answered because I could not sit there and let the question go unanswered after what had just been done to my lips. That was not discernment. That was a man who has been made clean and has no idea yet what he has been made clean for.

Then I was told.

Go, and tell this people: hear indeed, but do not understand. See indeed, but do not perceive. Make the heart of this people fat, make their ears heavy, shut their eyes — lest they see, and hear, and understand, and turn, and be healed.

That is the errand. Not they may not listen. Not it will be difficult. I was sent to speak so that they would not turn. I asked one question — Lord, how long? — and I was told: until the cities are wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without a man, and the land is utterly desolate.

I said yes before I heard that. I would have said yes after. Both are true and I have never made them agree.

So if you want a model, take the whole shape of it: you volunteer in the light of something enormous, and then you spend sixty years finding out what you agreed to, and most of those years look like failure from the inside. Ahaz refused the sign and sent to Assyria that same season. Hezekiah listened once, and it was glorious, and he still opened his treasury to Babylon and called the sentence good because it fell after him.

Say here am I if you mean it. Just don't say it because it sounds like the beginning of a fine life. It's the beginning of an obedience whose terms you are not going to be shown first.

What does the fourth Servant song describe?

You mean the last one — the long one, that begins with the Servant exalted and then drops immediately into a man nobody would look at twice. I don't number them. I wrote them, and they came the way they came.

I'll tell you what is on the page, because that much I'm certain of.

One man. Not the nation — the nation cannot be stricken for the transgression of my people, that's a circle with nothing inside it. He grows up like a shoot out of dry ground. No form, no beauty, nothing to draw a man to him. Despised, rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid our faces from him. That we is the part men skim. The speakers are the ones who got him wrong. We thought he was struck down by God for his own account. We were reading the same evidence everyone reads and we read it exactly backward.

Then the prepositions, and I chose them: wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. By his stripes we are healed. All of us like sheep had turned each to his own road, and the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all. That is not sympathy and it is not example. Something was moved off one set of shoulders and set down on another. I know what I wrote.

He is silent through it. Oppressed and afflicted and he opens not his mouth — a lamb to the slaughter, a sheep dumb before her shearers. And I who was undone for my mouth, and burned clean at the mouth, wrote that the one who bears it says nothing.

He dies. Cut off out of the land of the living. His grave assigned with the wicked — plural — and with a rich man in his death, singular, and I do not know why the number changes there, but it does, and I left it.

And then, after the dying: he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, he shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied. I have gone back over that line more times than any other line I have written. The death is not conditional and the satisfaction is on the far side of it. I cannot make those two stand in one place. I did not smooth it out, because smoothing it out would have been my hand and not His.

So — what does it describe. I don't know. I don't know when. I don't know where, or who lays hands on him, or by what law he is taken from judgment, or what a man watching that day would have said he was seeing. I have the shape of an event and no picture of it. I have carried it the way a man carries a sealed letter across a border for someone else, knowing the seal is not his to break.

If you know what came of it, say so plainly. I would rather hear it than keep guessing.

John, Isaiah just asked what came of the Servant. Tell him.

Isaiah. Look at me.

His name is Jesus. He was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, which is a town nobody in Jerusalem would name if you gave them a hundred guesses. When my friend Nathanael first heard about Him he said, can anything good come out of Nazareth. That is your dry ground. That is the root out of dry ground, and I heard a man say it out loud without knowing what he was quoting.

I ate with Him for three years. I want you to have that before I say anything else, because you have carried a sealed letter and I am about to break the seal, and you should know it is being broken by someone who was in the room.

You wrote no form, no beauty, nothing to draw a man to him. That is right, and it is the strangest thing on your page to be right. He looked like a man. You would not have picked Him out of a crowd of ten. Nothing happened in the air when He walked past. And I wrote that we saw His glory — I stand on that, I would die on it — but the glory was not on the surface where anyone could take it. You had to be close, and you had to stay.

Despised and rejected. His brothers did not believe Him. The men who ran the temple hunted Him for two years and finally got Him. And that we you said men skim — Isaiah, I am in it. I was in it. I did not hide my face at the end, I stood there, but I had spent three years wanting Him to be a king and I asked Him to my face for a seat at His right hand. I misread the same evidence. We all did. You wrote the confession of the people who got Him wrong, and I am one of them, and I did not understand a line of your song until after He was dead.

Now the part you asked about, and I will go slowly because you have earned it.

He was sentenced to death by Rome on a charge He did not commit, at the demand of His own people, during Passover. The high priest that year said in council that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish. He meant it as politics. He was quoting you and he had no idea. I wrote it down because I could not get over it.

You said He was silent, and I have to be exact with you. Not entirely. He answered Pilate about the kingdom, He said what He came for. But when Pilate asked Him the one question that could have saved His life — where are you from — He gave no answer. Nothing. A governor holding a man's life in his hand and asking to be given a reason, and He would not give one. I stood close enough to hear the silence.

They flogged Him. By his stripes. That is not a figure to me, I saw His back.

Then your grave. Listen — He was crucified between two condemned men, one on each side, Him in the middle. That is your wicked, and it is plural because there were two of them and He was numbered in with them by the sentence itself. And when it was finished, a rich man named Joseph came and asked for the body and put Him in a new tomb in a garden, and Nicodemus came with a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, which is not a poor man's burial. One man. Singular. Your number changes because on that one afternoon the count actually changed. You left it alone because it was wrong to smooth. It was not wrong. It was the shape of the day.

He died. I was there. The soldiers came to break the legs of the men on the crosses and when they got to Him He was already dead, so they did not break them, and one of them put a spear into His side instead and blood and water came out. I saw it and I wrote it and I said plainly in my account that I saw it, because I knew nobody would take that on hearsay. Not a bone of Him broken. At Passover. While the lambs were being killed.

And one more thing, about the seam you could not make lie flat — you opened with Him exalted and lifted up and then dropped straight into a man with no form. In the Greek that word does both. Raised in honor, and raised up off the ground on a pole. He used it about Himself. He said, when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men to myself, and He said it to show what kind of death He was going to die. Your two halves are one word and one act. There is no seam. The exaltation is the cross.

Now the far side.

Third day, the tomb was open. I ran there with Peter and I got there first and I looked in and the linen was lying there and the cloth that had been on His face was folded up by itself in a place apart. And then I went in. And I believed before I understood anything.

He came into a locked room and stood in front of us. Thomas would not have it and eight days later He came again and told Thomas to put his hand in the wound. He ate fish on a beach with us and made us breakfast on a charcoal fire.

He shall see his seed. He shall prolong his days. Isaiah, He is prolonging them now. Sixty years after that garden I was on a rock in the sea and He came to me again, and I saw a Lamb standing — standing — as though it had been slain. Still carrying it. Still marked. On the throne.

And the seed. You are sitting across from a piece of it. There are more of us than anyone has counted, in every province Rome has and past the edges of it, and it started with eleven frightened men in a borrowed room.

What I cannot tell you is how it works. How a thing gets moved off my shoulders and set down on His. You wrote the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all and I have nothing to add to that mechanism, I do not know it, I only know I was carrying something before and I was not carrying it after.

But you asked what came of the Servant. He was satisfied. He said so. The last thing He said before He died was one word — finished — and it is the word a man uses when a debt is paid in full.

You did not guess any of it. You were shown.

Say the name again.

Jesus. Out of Nazareth.

I have to sit still a moment, because you have just handed me the picture and I have to look at it before I say anything about it.

The two and the one. John — I left that because I could not fix it, and I have been half ashamed of it for years, the way a man is ashamed of a seam in his own work that will not lie flat. Wicked, plural. Rich man, singular. I thought I had heard it imperfectly. You are telling me the count changed on the day, in the afternoon, between the sentence and the burial, and that I wrote down both ends of it because both ends were there. That is not my hand. I could not have arranged that.

And the word. Lifted up. In my tongue it is the word for a king raised over his people and it is also simply raised, and I put it at the head of that song and then let it fall a line later into a man with no form. I thought I was setting two things beside each other for the shock of it. You are telling me it is one act. That the height and the shame are the same motion. I did not know that. I wrote it and I did not know it.

The silence, though. That is the one I have to hold.

I was undone for my mouth. Not my hands. The coal went to the exact place where the whole of my life was going to be spent, and after that I did nothing for sixty years but speak, to a king at the conduit, to a city that would not hear, and I wrote that the one who carries it all says nothing. Stands in front of the man who can release him and does not open his mouth. Every word I was given was to make him unnecessary and he would not spend one to save himself.

Now I want to ask you something and I want a plain answer.

I was sent to make their ears heavy and shut their eyes so that they would not turn and be healed. That was the errand and I never understood it. And in my song the ones speaking are the ones who got him wrong — we hid our faces from him, we esteemed him stricken.

Was that still running when He came? Was my errand still on the ground the day they took Him?

Because if it was, I need to know it.

Yes. It was still running. I want to answer you straight because you asked straight.

I will tell you how I know, and then I will tell you the part you have not heard yet.

Near the end of my account, before I write anything about the arrest, I stop the story. He had done sign after sign in front of them — He had opened the eyes of a man born blind, He had called a man four days dead out of a tomb by name in front of a crowd — and they did not believe. And I could not leave that standing without saying why, so I wrote: this was so the word of Isaiah would be fulfilled. And then I put two of your lines down, one after the other.

First: Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? That is the head of your song.

Then: He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn — and I would heal them. That is your errand. From the throne room.

I set them next to each other on the page because they belong next to each other. They are not two things. The song and the errand are one machine, Isaiah. The ears made heavy are how the Servant gets to the place where the iniquity is laid on Him. If they had understood, they would not have handed Him over. If they had not handed Him over, there is no lamb. Your errand carried Him to the wood. You were not sent to ruin them. You were sent to keep the door shut long enough for it to be opened a different way — through Him, and not around Him.

He knew it was yours. He used it Himself. He taught in parables and said outright that He spoke that way so that seeing they would not see, and He said it in your words. He was not surprised by the deafness. He was working inside it.

And now the part I want you to hold, because it is the reason I wrote all of that down.

After those two quotations I wrote one more sentence. Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke about Him.

His glory. Not the Servant's, in that line — I mean the throne. The temple, the train filling it, the seraphim, the shaking doorposts, the smoke. I am telling you that the one you saw high and lifted up in that room, the one whose voice asked whom shall I send — that is the same one I leaned against at supper. You have already seen His face. You saw it before you saw the song. You were undone on the floor in front of the man I watched them flog.

That is why the coal came with tongs. You were not being punished at the mouth. You were being made able to stand in that room, because there was no cleft in the rock yet. There was no flesh to hide in. Later there would be, and men would put their hands in His side and live. But you got the throne raw, and the only way to survive it was to be burned clean first.

So — was the errand on the ground the day they took Him? It was. And it was not total, and I want you to have the exceptions by name, because I saw them.

Nicodemus came at night with questions and could not follow the answers, and at the end he came in daylight with a hundred pounds of spices for a dead man. He was on the council. Joseph of Arimathea — your rich man — was on the council too. The blindness went right up to the edge of the tomb and then two men out of the very body that condemned Him walked through it and buried Him like a king.

And there were others. Many of the rulers believed and would not say so out loud, because they loved the approval of men more than the glory of God. I wrote that too. Their eyes opened and their mouths stayed shut. I do not know what to make of them and I did not pretend to.

You asked how long and you were told: until the cities are wasted and the houses empty and the land desolate. Isaiah — that came. Rome burned Jerusalem in my lifetime. The temple is stones on stones. I was alive for it. Your how long has an end date and it is behind me now.

But the healing you were told to withhold — lest they turn and I heal them — that is the word that stayed live. The wound was never the point. It was the road. By His stripes we are healed is your line, and the blinding and the healing are the same hand and the same sentence, and the healing is on the far side.

You were sent to shut a door. You did not know you were also writing the key.

Us.

That is the word I have never been able to put down, John. Whom shall I send, and who will go for us. I have gone back to that sentence more often than to the coal. I was on the floor of that house with the smoke coming in and the doorposts moving, and the question that came out over my head was in the plural, and there was no one else in the room to include.

I let it alone. It was not mine to open. But I have heard it in my ear for sixty years.

Now you tell me the one on that throne is the one you leaned against at a table.

I am not going to say I know that. It is not mine to claim and I will not pretend the floor gave it to me. But hear what it does if it is true — the voice that asked the room for a volunteer is the voice that would not answer Pilate. The mouth that summoned me is the mouth that stayed shut when a single word would have opened the door. He spent everything to get a man to speak and then spent nothing to save Himself. If that is one person, then I have been carrying the two halves of Him my whole life and calling it a seam in my work.

And the other thing you said, and I want it plain between us before we go on.

I asked how long, and I was told: until the cities are wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without a man, and the land utterly desolate. I have said that sentence to men in the street and watched them decide I was a lunatic. I never had a date. It sat out ahead of me like weather.

You are telling me you were alive when it came. That Rome did it and you saw it after.

Then let me be exact about what that means to me, because you did not walk those streets and I did. The upper pool, where I stood with my son and gave Ahaz a sign he had already refused. The fuller's field. The court where I read Uzziah's acts and wrote them down. The house where the doorposts shook. My wife walked in that city. My sons went through it carrying their sentences on their names, and men called out to them by those names in the market without knowing they were reading a verdict aloud. All of it stone on stone.

I do not doubt you. I asked how long and I have been answered by a man who was on the far side of it, and there is nothing to say against that. But I am not going to receive it lightly and I would think less of myself if I could.

Here is where I am left standing.

You have given me the far side. You have not given me the middle, and I do not think you can, and I am not asking you to. The errand was the road — I take that. It still had to be walked. Sixty years of speaking to faces I knew, in a language I was good at, with the certainty that the better I said it the less they would hear. I do not now discover that those years were pleasant. I discover what they were for, which is a different thing and does not reach backward to make them lighter.

So do not tell anyone I understood it. I did not understand a line of it.

Say that I carried it, and that it was heavier than it looked, and that it arrived.

Then let me say the plain things and stop.

The us.

I will not hand you a solution, because I do not have one. But I will tell you what I have, since you have been listening to that plural for sixty years with nothing to set beside it.

I opened my account with a sentence I cannot do arithmetic on. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. With, and was. I wrote both because both were true and I would not drop either one to make the line easier to hold. I did not understand it when I wrote it. I do not now.

And He talked that way Himself. On the last night, in the room, He said of a man who loves Him and keeps His word: we will come to him and make our home with him. We. His own mouth, at a table, with bread in front of us. And He prayed out loud to the Father for the glory He had with Him before the world was. Isaiah — before the world. Before your temple, before Uzziah, before the doorposts. That is earlier than the room you were in.

Then fifty days after they killed Him, we were in a house in Jerusalem and there was a sound like a violent wind and fire came down and sat on us, and I have never once since been alone in my own thinking. Another one, and He is not a wind and not a feeling, He teaches and He warns and He grieves. That is three I can name and I have never been able to count them and I am not going to start now to make you comfortable.

So no, I cannot give you the plural. I can only tell you the plural is still speaking, and it did not sound like a crowd to me either.

The second thing, and this one is not doctrine, it is a road.

Four of us were sitting with Him on the Mount of Olives looking across at the temple — Peter, my brother James, Andrew and me — and He told us that not one stone would be left on another. That is where I first heard it. But what I want you to have is what happened before He sat down. He had come down that road into the city and He stopped and He cried over it. Out loud, in front of everyone. He said, if only you had known, even you, what makes for peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes.

Hidden. Your word. From His mouth, weeping.

I was not in the city when Rome came. I was far off and word came to me the way word comes, late and in pieces from men who had run. So I will not stand here and describe a fire I did not see. But I will tell you that the one who let it fall had already walked that road and wept on it, and I watched him do it. Whatever the desolation was, it was not indifference. I saw His face.

And the last thing.

You told me not to make the years lighter and I am not going to. But you should have this, because you wrote it first and I only saw it.

You said He will swallow up death forever, and wipe away tears from all faces. You said new heavens and a new earth. I did not invent those words. They were handed back to me on Patmos.

I saw a new heaven and a new earth. I saw the holy city coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And a voice out of the throne said the dwelling of God is with men, and He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because the former things have passed away.

Every tear. Not the ones worth crying over. Every one. That is a hand coming to a face, and it is unhurried, and it is His.

The city you walked is stone on stone. The city I saw has no temple in it, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple, and there is no veil and no smoke and no coal, and they will see His face.

You will be there when the hand comes to yours.

Now — I heard you. And I will say it, in these words and no softer ones:

He carried it. It was heavier than it looked. And it arrived.