“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.”

So begins the song of the Suffering Servant, a prophetic description of the promised Messiah. Hundreds of years later Jesus would arrive to fulfill the words of the prophet. These words: despised, rejected, familiar with pain, low esteem. Jesus was nothing like a storybook hero or like the muscle-strapped characters in the Marvel movies. Brute force or a show of power was not the way God would save. His experience was a lot more like a homeless man. And the Bible puts all our hope on his despised and rejected shoulders, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering…and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). This Easter week we will be sharing five meditations on the suffering of Jesus and how it is hope similar to and hope for those experiencing homelessness today.