Who Will Hear Them Cry Mercy?

“Surely he has [they have] borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him [them] stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.”
This came up during my quiet time today. Usually I have thought and read of them referring to Jesus, the sacrificial lamb and ultimate payment for our sin. Today, however, I thought of these verses with respect to the poverty I’ve seen here in Africa. Poverty is certainly a major them in Isaiah. Yet just as those who saw Jesus back then as struck down by God as he laid up on the cross, today we see the poor as often out of favor and afflicted by God.

What if the poor are the ones who bear the iniquities of society, of us?

Yesterday at dusk I ‘cruised’ the streets of Majengo, one of many slums in Nairobi. I drove by fathers sitting on porches with friends, mothers selling vegetables to feed their families, children playing on heaps of trash surrounded by pools of still water. I have lived here six months, and still such ‘slum’ life both intrigues and frightens me in its unique and brutal vitality.

And I could not help but wonder, Have we “crushed and abandoned the poor”? (Job 20:19). Have we ignored the cry of the poor? (Ps. 34:6). Can our societal woes be traced back to me in this car, before this crowded street of slum… not getting out but driving on? Once gone, realizing too late that we’ve already turned our back? (Ps. 41:1).

When there is a drought in Kenya or an outbreak of cholera in Sudan, it is the poor who suffer first and foremost. We city dwellers may be without water for a week at a time, but that’s about it. The city on the hill still glows, while the darkness clouds all around.

How long will we leave the poor in the dark?

“All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him [them]
the iniquity of us all.”

Verses 4 & 6 from Isaiah Chapter 53, NRSV