The Passion Of The Servant Leader
Sermon
Sermons On The First Readings
Series II, Cycle B
The Passion Of The Servant Leader
The ancient prophet/servant of the Lord (sometimes called Second Isaiah) spoke these words in the context of his own suffering and the suffering of Israel. But like other words of prophecy in chapters 40 through 66 of Isaiah, these words especially apply to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These words speak of the Passion of our Lord and his servant leadership.
Jesus is the prime example of a leader. A leader is the one who is willing to serve others, not self. A leader says the right thing at the right time in the right way, but he1 listens more than he speaks. A leader has his eye on God, and thus rises above the circumstances which surround him. All of these leadership qualities are in our text, especially as we see the words of Isaiah 50:4-9a fulfilled in Jesus in Passion Week. Consider the tongue, the ears, and the eyes of Jesus, the servant leader. Listen to the words of this passage as if you are hearing them spoken by Jesus himself.
Tongue
"The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word" (Isaiah 50:4a).
The most important quality in a teacher who leads is a sense of servanthood. Teachers know more than their pupils, but the true teacher doesn't just impart information. He leads students or disciples by example of selfless service. "What you are speaks so loudly, I can hardly hear a word you say," someone has observed, but words are important, too. One purpose of speaking and teaching is to be able to sustain the weary with words.
Jesus spoke and taught his disciples during Passion Week by what he was and what he said. He sustained his weary followers by example and by words. Jesus continues to sustain weary disciples with words because he got his words from God. We are moved by the words of Jesus, spoken about and to the crowd, to the disciples, to the Sanhedron, Peter, Pilate, Herod, his mother, and Mary Magdalene that week we call holy. We are sustained by the silences as well as the spoken words of the man whose character shines through every encounter during his passion.
The dictionary says that the word "passion" means "the sufferings of Christ." In addition, the dictionary says "passion" means "intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction ... fervor, ardor, zeal."2 Both meanings come through as we watch the Savior walk through the intrigue and suspense of his conspiring enemies. Secrecy and plotting by shadowy people in shadowy places add to the suffering, but do not divert the Lord from his driving sense of doing God's will. Both conviction and ardor of purpose knife their way through as we behold the Lord listening to praises of one crowd on Palm Sunday and cries of another crowd, "Crucify him" less than a week later. As dastardly deeds are done against the suffering servant, he maintains his devotion to his Father.
We are sustained by the words and deeds of Jesus. We are also sustained by the words of the Palm Sunday crowd crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David." When a critic suggests that the crowd should be stilled, Jesus replies, "If they are stilled, the very stones will cry out." The praise of the crowd on Palm Sunday is a preview of Easter. Nothing can stop the paean, the joyous song of tribute and triumph to the king, who looks and acts much like a peon. A peon is "a person held in compulsory servitude to a master for the working out of indebtedness."3 Jesus, the servant king is the selfless leader working out our indebtedness of sin by suffering and dying for us. That's why his words strike us, wake us, move us, and sustain us the way they do. Jesus speaks with authority, the rights of authorship. If we have ears to hear, in Holy Week, we recognize the voice of God.
We pay attention when this teacher speaks.
Ears
Someone observed, "God gave us two ears, but only one mouth. That means that we should listen twice as much as we speak." One of the most important qualities of servant leadership is to listen. Isaiah 50:4b-5 speaks of the gift of listening to God and the people.
Morning by morning he [God] wakens -- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.
-- Isaiah 50:4b-5
Jesus fulfills this prophecy about listening and hearing. He heard what God said. He also heard what people said. In addition, he heard what people meant. He heard the inner cries of the people he met. He urges us to hear these inner cries as well.
Jesus often said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In the Hebrew tradition, hearing means more than listening. Hearing God should result in action, doing what the Lord says. Hearing people means comprehending that many are weary and crying inside. Hearing means doing something about the needs we perceive.
A boy with a record of juvenile delinquency spelled out clearly what he really needed in a letter, just before he ran away from home.
Dear Folks,
You asked me why I did those things and why I gave you so much trouble, and the answer is easy for me to give you, but I wonder if you will understand.
Remember when I was about six or seven and I used to want you to just listen to me? I remember all the nice things you gave me for Christmas and my birthday. I was really happy with the things -- for about a week -- at the time I got those things, but the rest of the time during the year I really didn't want presents. I just wanted for you to listen to me like I was a somebody who felt things, too, because even when I was young I felt things. But you said you were busy.
Mom, you are a wonderful cook, and you had everything so clean and you were tired so much from doing all those things that made you so busy, but, you know something, Mom? I would have liked crackers and peanut butter just as well if you had only sat down with me a while during the day and said to me: "Tell me all about it so I can maybe help you understand."
If Donna ever has children, I hope you will tell her to just pay some attention to the one who doesn't smile very much because that one will really be crying inside. And when she's about to bake six dozen cookies, tell her to make sure first that the kids don't want to tell her about a dream or a hope or something. Thoughts are important to small kids, even though they don't have so many words to use when they tell about what they have inside them.
I think that all the kids who are doing so many things that grown-ups are tearing out their hair worrying about are really looking for somebody who really and truly will treat them as they would a grown-up who might be useful to them, you know -- polite-like. If you folks had ever said to me: "Pardon me" when you interrupted me, I'd have dropped dead!
Your son
Someone with time, someone who will listen and hear -- that's what young people want today. That's what all of us want.
Jesus heard the cries of the weary. He calls us to do the same. He wants us to hear what he says and what people are really saying. That's why he died on the cross -- to open our ears and our minds to what is really happening instead of what seems to be happening.
A young woman describes the difference between what seems to be and what is:
Please Hear What I Am Not Saying
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks I'm afraid to take off, and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake, don't be fooled.
I give the impression that I'm secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
That the water's calm and I am in command and that I need no one,
But don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope, and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afaid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me ...
...
Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings....4
-- Charles C. Finn
Jesus, the servant leader, heard what people were really saying. That's why he could say, "Love your enemies." That's why he could say from the cross, "Father forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." Jesus had ears that heard. He also had eyes that saw the way things really are.
Eyes
When you look into the eyes of the Jesus, the servant leader, you see someone who knows who you are, but you see something else. You see compassion. Jesus comes with passion -- both suffering and fervor. He seeks to know what is behind the eyes of everyone he meets. Jesus was a man of vision who sees beyond what he beholds.
I gave my back to those who struck me,
The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
-- Isaiah 50:69
Jesus could see that his persecutors would stumble and not prevail. He could see that his apparent shame would be their personal shame. The most important quality of a real leader is that he is willing to suffer for those he serves. Jesus could see into the hearts of people. He was willing to die for all, even his enemies.
On Palm Sunday, we begin a week called holy. It is a week wherein we not only see who Christ is and what he does, but a time when we can catch a glimpse of what we are called to be. The Second Reading for this Sunday is Philippians 2:4-11.
Let each of you look not to your own interest, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
-- Philippians 2:4-11
It's no wonder we cry out with the Palm Sunday crowd, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" (Mark 11:9-10). When we see the servant king we see our own destiny. We see what we ought to be. We have intimations of eternity. We see our leader and our teacher.
When we see what our leader and teacher has done for us, we want to serve him. We want to be like him. We can ignore the cheers or boos of the crowd and seek only to please Jesus, the servant leader.
A teenage virtuoso pianist played his heart out to a large audience. At the end, as he walked off the stage, the audience stood and applauded. The man behind the curtain told the boy to go out and take a bow.
"No," the boy replied, "I can't."
"Why not?" asked the man. "They are all standing and applauding."
"Not all of them," the young pianist replied. "The man in the back row in the balcony is still sitting."
"That's only one," the man said. "What's so important about him?"
"He's my teacher," the boy meekly replied as he watched from behind the curtain. "I was playing for him."
Just then the man in the back row stood up and joined in the standing ovation.
Isn't that what life is all about? Not pleasing everyone, but keeping our eyes on the one we call our Lord, our leader, our teacher? Think of the end of your life and imagine the Lord giving you a standing ovation and saying, "Enter into the joy of your master."
Isn't that the most important thing of all?
____________
1.Ê"He," refers to both masculine and feminine gender here and elsewhere.
2.ÊMerriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth edition (Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 1993), p. 847.
3.ÊIbid., p. 860.
4.ÊTaken from the poem, "Please Hear What I Am Not Saying," by Charles C. Finn, September 1966. This poem is available on line at.
The ancient prophet/servant of the Lord (sometimes called Second Isaiah) spoke these words in the context of his own suffering and the suffering of Israel. But like other words of prophecy in chapters 40 through 66 of Isaiah, these words especially apply to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These words speak of the Passion of our Lord and his servant leadership.
Jesus is the prime example of a leader. A leader is the one who is willing to serve others, not self. A leader says the right thing at the right time in the right way, but he1 listens more than he speaks. A leader has his eye on God, and thus rises above the circumstances which surround him. All of these leadership qualities are in our text, especially as we see the words of Isaiah 50:4-9a fulfilled in Jesus in Passion Week. Consider the tongue, the ears, and the eyes of Jesus, the servant leader. Listen to the words of this passage as if you are hearing them spoken by Jesus himself.
Tongue
"The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word" (Isaiah 50:4a).
The most important quality in a teacher who leads is a sense of servanthood. Teachers know more than their pupils, but the true teacher doesn't just impart information. He leads students or disciples by example of selfless service. "What you are speaks so loudly, I can hardly hear a word you say," someone has observed, but words are important, too. One purpose of speaking and teaching is to be able to sustain the weary with words.
Jesus spoke and taught his disciples during Passion Week by what he was and what he said. He sustained his weary followers by example and by words. Jesus continues to sustain weary disciples with words because he got his words from God. We are moved by the words of Jesus, spoken about and to the crowd, to the disciples, to the Sanhedron, Peter, Pilate, Herod, his mother, and Mary Magdalene that week we call holy. We are sustained by the silences as well as the spoken words of the man whose character shines through every encounter during his passion.
The dictionary says that the word "passion" means "the sufferings of Christ." In addition, the dictionary says "passion" means "intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction ... fervor, ardor, zeal."2 Both meanings come through as we watch the Savior walk through the intrigue and suspense of his conspiring enemies. Secrecy and plotting by shadowy people in shadowy places add to the suffering, but do not divert the Lord from his driving sense of doing God's will. Both conviction and ardor of purpose knife their way through as we behold the Lord listening to praises of one crowd on Palm Sunday and cries of another crowd, "Crucify him" less than a week later. As dastardly deeds are done against the suffering servant, he maintains his devotion to his Father.
We are sustained by the words and deeds of Jesus. We are also sustained by the words of the Palm Sunday crowd crying, "Hosanna to the Son of David." When a critic suggests that the crowd should be stilled, Jesus replies, "If they are stilled, the very stones will cry out." The praise of the crowd on Palm Sunday is a preview of Easter. Nothing can stop the paean, the joyous song of tribute and triumph to the king, who looks and acts much like a peon. A peon is "a person held in compulsory servitude to a master for the working out of indebtedness."3 Jesus, the servant king is the selfless leader working out our indebtedness of sin by suffering and dying for us. That's why his words strike us, wake us, move us, and sustain us the way they do. Jesus speaks with authority, the rights of authorship. If we have ears to hear, in Holy Week, we recognize the voice of God.
We pay attention when this teacher speaks.
Ears
Someone observed, "God gave us two ears, but only one mouth. That means that we should listen twice as much as we speak." One of the most important qualities of servant leadership is to listen. Isaiah 50:4b-5 speaks of the gift of listening to God and the people.
Morning by morning he [God] wakens -- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.
-- Isaiah 50:4b-5
Jesus fulfills this prophecy about listening and hearing. He heard what God said. He also heard what people said. In addition, he heard what people meant. He heard the inner cries of the people he met. He urges us to hear these inner cries as well.
Jesus often said, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." In the Hebrew tradition, hearing means more than listening. Hearing God should result in action, doing what the Lord says. Hearing people means comprehending that many are weary and crying inside. Hearing means doing something about the needs we perceive.
A boy with a record of juvenile delinquency spelled out clearly what he really needed in a letter, just before he ran away from home.
Dear Folks,
You asked me why I did those things and why I gave you so much trouble, and the answer is easy for me to give you, but I wonder if you will understand.
Remember when I was about six or seven and I used to want you to just listen to me? I remember all the nice things you gave me for Christmas and my birthday. I was really happy with the things -- for about a week -- at the time I got those things, but the rest of the time during the year I really didn't want presents. I just wanted for you to listen to me like I was a somebody who felt things, too, because even when I was young I felt things. But you said you were busy.
Mom, you are a wonderful cook, and you had everything so clean and you were tired so much from doing all those things that made you so busy, but, you know something, Mom? I would have liked crackers and peanut butter just as well if you had only sat down with me a while during the day and said to me: "Tell me all about it so I can maybe help you understand."
If Donna ever has children, I hope you will tell her to just pay some attention to the one who doesn't smile very much because that one will really be crying inside. And when she's about to bake six dozen cookies, tell her to make sure first that the kids don't want to tell her about a dream or a hope or something. Thoughts are important to small kids, even though they don't have so many words to use when they tell about what they have inside them.
I think that all the kids who are doing so many things that grown-ups are tearing out their hair worrying about are really looking for somebody who really and truly will treat them as they would a grown-up who might be useful to them, you know -- polite-like. If you folks had ever said to me: "Pardon me" when you interrupted me, I'd have dropped dead!
Your son
Someone with time, someone who will listen and hear -- that's what young people want today. That's what all of us want.
Jesus heard the cries of the weary. He calls us to do the same. He wants us to hear what he says and what people are really saying. That's why he died on the cross -- to open our ears and our minds to what is really happening instead of what seems to be happening.
A young woman describes the difference between what seems to be and what is:
Please Hear What I Am Not Saying
Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks I'm afraid to take off, and none of them is me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake, don't be fooled.
I give the impression that I'm secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
That the water's calm and I am in command and that I need no one,
But don't believe me.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, ever-varying and ever-concealing.
Beneath lies no complacence.
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope, and I know it.
That is, if it's followed by acceptance,
if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,
from my own self-built prison walls,
from the barriers I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me
of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be followed by love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me,
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.
I'm afaid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me ...
...
Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind and gentle and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings....4
-- Charles C. Finn
Jesus, the servant leader, heard what people were really saying. That's why he could say, "Love your enemies." That's why he could say from the cross, "Father forgive them. They don't know what they are doing." Jesus had ears that heard. He also had eyes that saw the way things really are.
Eyes
When you look into the eyes of the Jesus, the servant leader, you see someone who knows who you are, but you see something else. You see compassion. Jesus comes with passion -- both suffering and fervor. He seeks to know what is behind the eyes of everyone he meets. Jesus was a man of vision who sees beyond what he beholds.
I gave my back to those who struck me,
The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me? Let them confront me. It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
-- Isaiah 50:69
Jesus could see that his persecutors would stumble and not prevail. He could see that his apparent shame would be their personal shame. The most important quality of a real leader is that he is willing to suffer for those he serves. Jesus could see into the hearts of people. He was willing to die for all, even his enemies.
On Palm Sunday, we begin a week called holy. It is a week wherein we not only see who Christ is and what he does, but a time when we can catch a glimpse of what we are called to be. The Second Reading for this Sunday is Philippians 2:4-11.
Let each of you look not to your own interest, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
-- Philippians 2:4-11
It's no wonder we cry out with the Palm Sunday crowd, "Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!" (Mark 11:9-10). When we see the servant king we see our own destiny. We see what we ought to be. We have intimations of eternity. We see our leader and our teacher.
When we see what our leader and teacher has done for us, we want to serve him. We want to be like him. We can ignore the cheers or boos of the crowd and seek only to please Jesus, the servant leader.
A teenage virtuoso pianist played his heart out to a large audience. At the end, as he walked off the stage, the audience stood and applauded. The man behind the curtain told the boy to go out and take a bow.
"No," the boy replied, "I can't."
"Why not?" asked the man. "They are all standing and applauding."
"Not all of them," the young pianist replied. "The man in the back row in the balcony is still sitting."
"That's only one," the man said. "What's so important about him?"
"He's my teacher," the boy meekly replied as he watched from behind the curtain. "I was playing for him."
Just then the man in the back row stood up and joined in the standing ovation.
Isn't that what life is all about? Not pleasing everyone, but keeping our eyes on the one we call our Lord, our leader, our teacher? Think of the end of your life and imagine the Lord giving you a standing ovation and saying, "Enter into the joy of your master."
Isn't that the most important thing of all?
____________
1.Ê"He," refers to both masculine and feminine gender here and elsewhere.
2.ÊMerriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth edition (Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 1993), p. 847.
3.ÊIbid., p. 860.
4.ÊTaken from the poem, "Please Hear What I Am Not Saying," by Charles C. Finn, September 1966. This poem is available on line at
