We Esteemed Him Not

We esteemed Him not,

Nor sorrowed in our shame;

His suffering, our redemption wrought;

Yet we thought Him to blame.

We esteemed Him not;

Despised His bloodied face;

How foreign any notion that

In love He took our place! 

 

We regarded not

Our wickedness and guilt,

Nor recognized the Gift of God

Whose precious blood was spilt.

He regarded not,

Rejection, hate, and pride,

But offered up for sinful men

His hands, His feet, and side.

 

We esteemed Him not;

What thankless creatures, we!

Forsaking Him, our Blessed Hope,

The Christ, at Calvary!

Mocking while He bore

The stripes we should have worn,

We spurned His silent sacrifice,

And hurled on Him our scorn.

 

Lord, remember not

My spittle in Your beard;

Forgive the savage words, O God,

In hatred that I jeered.

Now, and ever more,

Your cross may I embrace;

Forever humbly honoring

The wonder of Your grace.

 

-- K. Hartnett, June 1999

 

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.  Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.  (Isaiah 53:3)

This poem grew out of my meditation on Isaiah 53- a section of scripture I was memorizing with my children.  The 'poetry' of verse three particularly struck me.  Here Isaiah who lived hundreds of years before Christ, prophesies of Him in the past tense and includes himself - as if somehow projected into the future- with the statement '...we esteemed Him not.'  The inescapable sense of the text is that we all - past, present, and future, are responsible for Christ's death.  "All we, like sheep, have gone astray, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all."