Isaiah 53:7: Led Without a Word

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

Isaiah 53:7 (NIV)

Led Without a Word

The cemetery opens at first light. The man with the keys swings the gate back and props it, and by the time the sun clears the hedge there are two or three cars in the drive, mostly the same ones. He mows in the summer and rakes in the fall and knows which stones the mower can get close to. When a person is standing at a grave he goes and works another section. He figured out early that people would rather he were somewhere else, and he’s glad to be.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

A lamb walking to the slaughter and a sheep standing in front of the shears make the same silence, and only one of them is going to die. I think the shearing is the harder picture of the two. A sheep under the blades is quiet by nature, and from outside the pen you couldn’t tell which of the two animals you were looking at.

Oppressed and afflicted are things people did to him, on purpose, with their hands. He gave them nothing back. He was led, and whoever leads is holding the rope, and the rope was the whole of what they got from him.

It’s Tuesday in Holy Week, and there are rooms where every word you say comes back at you by evening. Nobody watching an hour like that would call it strength. He took the whole of it in that condition, and the silence held all the way through. Today you can hear what comes out of your own mouth when you’re crossed, and you’ll know afterward whether it helped.

The keeper finishes the far section a little after ten and walks back with the rake on his shoulder, past a woman who has been standing in the same place since he opened the gate.