Who Is Isaiah's Servant?
Sermon
Sermons on the First Readings
Series III, Cycle B
Object:
A man had three small children, all three old enough to enjoy the activities of Halloween. A coworker at the office of the father volunteered to visit his home on trick or treat night and bring sweets for the kids. The father's colleague appeared at the door dressed up as "the little green man," with an ugly green face and long, knotted, twisted hands protruding from a long coat that effectively disguised the identity of Daddy's friend.
At the appearance of the mysterious stranger in the entryway of the house, the kids ran for cover. The little green man grunted and moaned and held extended the bags of candy. One boy ran quickly from behind the couch to retrieve the gift. The other son bravely ran forth from behind a chair followed by his sister cowering behind mom's skirt. All three siblings retreated to the safety of their shelters to await the departure of the ghoul into the darkness of the night. The drama of the visit was repeated the following year.
A few months later, the father advised his friend at the office that the kids were already anticipating the appearance of the little green man, due to knock at the door six months hence! The conversation of the children revealed fear and anxiety about the spooky man's coming. Father and friend decided that the green creature would visit one last time and take off his mask in the presence of the children and reveal the familiar friend who often sat at the family table. The mystery was solved and fearful anticipation directed to other riddles in the lives of three imaginative children.
The Old Testament lesson for Passion/Palm Sunday embodies a mystery about the identity of the "servant of the Lord" (certainly not the little green man) proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah in four passages.
The "servant of the Lord" texts are included in the section of the book of Isaiah probably written to those in exile in Babylon after 586 BC. Who is this "servant"? Guesses about his identity range from the nation of Israel itself, to an individual with a mission to Israel, to a new Israel awaiting birth in the future, to a future figure who stands (or will stand) at the threshold of the dawn of a new day. In accordance with Israel's sense of community, the servant could be both individual and nation. The nation is made up of many individuals but the nation is also one; one nation, though comprising many people, stands as one entity in its dealings and history with God.
Whatever the identity of Isaiah's servant, the servant has marked qualities.
First of all, the servant is confident. This is the most notable trait, according to Krister Stendahl, writing while he was Dean of the Divinity School at Harvard University. The text "expresses the confidence of the servant as he faces conflict and enemies. It is a song of trust in God's help and vindication in times of ridicule and accusations."1
Stendahl points to verse 4, "The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word." The servant is not a teacher who is unsure of the material he/she presents and the servant is certainly not one who is intimidated by the students. But the servant is also not one who is arrogant and superciliously holds in contempt the ignorance of those before her. The confidence of the servant is strength: "The strength is organic, the strength of a healthy heart, not the strength of stone or steel -- or plastic."2
Martin Luther stood before the assembled powers of the emperor, princes, and cardinals to declare, "Here I stand!" His stand came from the heart; his knees quivered and his legs wobbled. He wished to be safe and sound at home, at the Black Cloister with friends and family and students in familiar Wittenberg. But his heart compelled him; his discipleship compelled him to stand before earthly powers to make his confession. He modeled the confidence of the servant of Isaiah; he stood before his adversaries on the certain and solid ground of the truth. His teacher was God's word; his confidence flowed forth from the dayspring of the almighty.
Secondly, Isaiah's servant listens. "Morning by morning [the Lord God] wakens -- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught" (v. 4). One thinks of Jesus who is reported by the gospel writer, John, to have said, "... for the words that you gave to me I have given to [my disciples] and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you ..." (John 17:8).
The student learns by listening. "Faith comes by hearing." An American studying in Germany was "adopted" by a German family who invited him to spend his weekends with them. Using a book of devotions developed by Zinzendorf and the Bohemian Brothers, "Losungen," the family, father, mother, and three children began each day at breakfast with Bible readings, commentary, and prayer. The discipline was repeated at lunch, at dinner, and again at bedtime. The American student learned a lot of German in the process but also learned about the discipline of daily devotions. He also learned some Latin because the head of the household, a religion teacher by profession, regularly injected the ancient language of Rome into his spontaneous digressions. "Faith comes by hearing."
The "school" of the American theology student served hard rolls and jam with coffee, cabbage rolls, and mid-afternoon cake. The school of Isaiah's pupil was the "school of hard knocks." Jesus, too, "gave [his] back to those who struck" him and endured the pulling out of his beard and faced insult and spitting. The servant does not justify his sufferings by thanking God that he was tested and strengthened by the affliction; the soldier survives the boot camp because he or she is convinced that the rigors of life under the drill sergeant will save his or her life in the midst of combat. But the servant endures his trials and tribulations because God is with him and sustains him. In the midst of adversity, he listens to the voice of God. God speaks to him "through" the challenges that his role calls forth.
One of the greatest compliments that a pastor or priest can receive is that he or she is a good listener. How greatly is the parishioner supported and nourished when the listener makes the troubled or grieving sheep of the flock feel that she or he is the most important person in the world when the pastor gives his or her undivided attention to the words of the one who has been hurt.
Thirdly, the servant described by Isaiah lives for others. The world listened in shock as the horrendous story of the shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007 captured a national television audience. Liviu Librescu, a 77-year-old Jewish engineering professor who survived a concentration camp in Europe, listened to the gunfire from the adjoining classroom. He ordered his students to jump for their lives out of the second-story windows of their classroom. The last student out the window saw his professor using his frail body to hold the door closed to keep out the intruder, Cho Seung-Hui. The students survived. Librescu did not. At his funeral in Israel, his son wept as he honored his father who had given his life for his students.
It would be difficult, even for a skeptic, to deny the connection between the servant of Isaiah and Jesus. The violence of Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, if anything, vividly dramatizes the assault against the pacifist, Jesus of Nazareth. If the reading of the passion accounts in the gospels do not offend the sensitivities of the reader, Gibson's movie will.
It's not just that an innocent, loving man is shredded by the torture instruments of the Romans. We, the onlookers, know that he has wound his way down the Street of Sorrows willingly, giving his life that we may enter into the happy kingdom of God, judged suitable for life with God because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Someone once said that God's prophecies are consistent. It would be hard to deny that Isaiah didn't somehow have a vision of a future servant who would die for others. His people were in servitude and exile in a foreign land. Their servitude as a people is reduced into one individual who would give a grand meaning to servanthood. That must have given them hope. Their servitude directed them to a vision of servanthood par excellence! They modeled a gracious act of divine history already on their horizon. Perhaps their ordeal in exile would lead to a better world -- a better world for them and for all nations. Perhaps those most intuitive saw in the servant of God a glimpse of something wondrous ahead.
Fourthly, Isaiah's servant knows he is vindicated! What sustains the servant? He knows that God is with him. He knows that there is some kind of meaning in his humiliation at the hands of his adversaries. He also knows that he is vindicated. He knows that he is guiltless of the charges thrown into his face. He knows that the highest supreme court in the universe, the court of the almighty, has already judged him guiltless and acquitted.
As Paul put it, "Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies" (Romans 8:33). That was Paul's number 1 message: God is the one who justifies. Human courts may be fair or unfair. A mother-in-law may choose to forgive or hold a grudge forever. International courts may prosecute a criminal dictator but the sentence may be light or execution may be carried off clumsily (Saddam Hussein). God judges perfectly, but that is no comfort to those who see the bumper sticker, "Jesus is coming back and, boy, is he ticked off!"
We humans seem programmed to expect the worse. It is only human to expect that God judges like we do: The good guys should get a fair shake and the bad guys should go to hell in a handbasket.
Now comes Paul's number 2 message: "For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law" (Romans 3:28). God finds us "not guilty" because of the vindication of the servant, Jesus. The vindication of Isaiah's servant, of God's Son, is charged to our account. In him are we all vindicated!
A young mother called her pastor to make an appointment. In the privacy of his study she explained that she was plagued by anxiety. She feared that she was unacceptable to God. She felt unworthy, useless, an absolute failure in the eyes of God. Her fear was an obsession and it had a negative impact upon her marriage, upon her daily life, and upon her performance at the office where she worked.
She sought psychiatric treatment. After a number of sessions with her psychiatrist, he suggested that she consult her pastor. The pastor phoned the therapist who stressed the importance of the pastor's involvement in order to help her to realize that God accepted her and loved her. The psychiatrist asked the pastor to work with him on a team basis.
The weekly sessions with the pastor soon revealed that she was oppressed with guilt. She was a bad daughter, a bad mother, a bad wife. Furthermore, she was not worthy of God's love. She was a faithful worshiper but church services only served to remind her of her guilt and deepen her despair. The sermons, the liturgy, the hymns, and the prayers all reminded her of her unworthiness and her sin.
Each session became devoted to a revisit of the worship on the previous Sunday. The sermon, the lessons, and the hymns were re-examined. When she sang the hymn, "Amazing Grace," she heard no grace. She heard the words, "wretch," "lost," and "blind."
The pastor discovered that she had been raised in a church served by her childhood pastor who engaged in pulpit slamming and condemnation. As a child, week after week, she was reminded that she was a worm, a wretched excuse for humanity marked by festering sin wounds. Surely she was fit only for the eternal fire. It took almost a year of weekly meetings, but she finally was able to integrate the gospel good news into the fabric of her soul, heart, and mind. She slowly climbed upward from hatred of herself to acceptance. She learned that she was vindicated. She was pronounced "not guilty" by God because of her newly found trust in a loving God and his servant who transferred his vindication to those in exile, those in bondage to the law, those, like her, lost in low esteem.
So who is Isaiah's "servant"? Like the little green man, he is the one who unmasked himself, who shoved the dark curtain aside to show God's unfathomable, unconditional love, the love of perfect justice, the love that finds the lost, gives sight to the blind, and opens the gate for those in self-imposed exile. Amen.
____________
1. Krister Stendahl, Proclamation: Series A (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 9.
2. Ibid, p. 21.
At the appearance of the mysterious stranger in the entryway of the house, the kids ran for cover. The little green man grunted and moaned and held extended the bags of candy. One boy ran quickly from behind the couch to retrieve the gift. The other son bravely ran forth from behind a chair followed by his sister cowering behind mom's skirt. All three siblings retreated to the safety of their shelters to await the departure of the ghoul into the darkness of the night. The drama of the visit was repeated the following year.
A few months later, the father advised his friend at the office that the kids were already anticipating the appearance of the little green man, due to knock at the door six months hence! The conversation of the children revealed fear and anxiety about the spooky man's coming. Father and friend decided that the green creature would visit one last time and take off his mask in the presence of the children and reveal the familiar friend who often sat at the family table. The mystery was solved and fearful anticipation directed to other riddles in the lives of three imaginative children.
The Old Testament lesson for Passion/Palm Sunday embodies a mystery about the identity of the "servant of the Lord" (certainly not the little green man) proclaimed by the prophet Isaiah in four passages.
The "servant of the Lord" texts are included in the section of the book of Isaiah probably written to those in exile in Babylon after 586 BC. Who is this "servant"? Guesses about his identity range from the nation of Israel itself, to an individual with a mission to Israel, to a new Israel awaiting birth in the future, to a future figure who stands (or will stand) at the threshold of the dawn of a new day. In accordance with Israel's sense of community, the servant could be both individual and nation. The nation is made up of many individuals but the nation is also one; one nation, though comprising many people, stands as one entity in its dealings and history with God.
Whatever the identity of Isaiah's servant, the servant has marked qualities.
First of all, the servant is confident. This is the most notable trait, according to Krister Stendahl, writing while he was Dean of the Divinity School at Harvard University. The text "expresses the confidence of the servant as he faces conflict and enemies. It is a song of trust in God's help and vindication in times of ridicule and accusations."1
Stendahl points to verse 4, "The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word." The servant is not a teacher who is unsure of the material he/she presents and the servant is certainly not one who is intimidated by the students. But the servant is also not one who is arrogant and superciliously holds in contempt the ignorance of those before her. The confidence of the servant is strength: "The strength is organic, the strength of a healthy heart, not the strength of stone or steel -- or plastic."2
Martin Luther stood before the assembled powers of the emperor, princes, and cardinals to declare, "Here I stand!" His stand came from the heart; his knees quivered and his legs wobbled. He wished to be safe and sound at home, at the Black Cloister with friends and family and students in familiar Wittenberg. But his heart compelled him; his discipleship compelled him to stand before earthly powers to make his confession. He modeled the confidence of the servant of Isaiah; he stood before his adversaries on the certain and solid ground of the truth. His teacher was God's word; his confidence flowed forth from the dayspring of the almighty.
Secondly, Isaiah's servant listens. "Morning by morning [the Lord God] wakens -- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught" (v. 4). One thinks of Jesus who is reported by the gospel writer, John, to have said, "... for the words that you gave to me I have given to [my disciples] and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you ..." (John 17:8).
The student learns by listening. "Faith comes by hearing." An American studying in Germany was "adopted" by a German family who invited him to spend his weekends with them. Using a book of devotions developed by Zinzendorf and the Bohemian Brothers, "Losungen," the family, father, mother, and three children began each day at breakfast with Bible readings, commentary, and prayer. The discipline was repeated at lunch, at dinner, and again at bedtime. The American student learned a lot of German in the process but also learned about the discipline of daily devotions. He also learned some Latin because the head of the household, a religion teacher by profession, regularly injected the ancient language of Rome into his spontaneous digressions. "Faith comes by hearing."
The "school" of the American theology student served hard rolls and jam with coffee, cabbage rolls, and mid-afternoon cake. The school of Isaiah's pupil was the "school of hard knocks." Jesus, too, "gave [his] back to those who struck" him and endured the pulling out of his beard and faced insult and spitting. The servant does not justify his sufferings by thanking God that he was tested and strengthened by the affliction; the soldier survives the boot camp because he or she is convinced that the rigors of life under the drill sergeant will save his or her life in the midst of combat. But the servant endures his trials and tribulations because God is with him and sustains him. In the midst of adversity, he listens to the voice of God. God speaks to him "through" the challenges that his role calls forth.
One of the greatest compliments that a pastor or priest can receive is that he or she is a good listener. How greatly is the parishioner supported and nourished when the listener makes the troubled or grieving sheep of the flock feel that she or he is the most important person in the world when the pastor gives his or her undivided attention to the words of the one who has been hurt.
Thirdly, the servant described by Isaiah lives for others. The world listened in shock as the horrendous story of the shootings at Virginia Tech in April 2007 captured a national television audience. Liviu Librescu, a 77-year-old Jewish engineering professor who survived a concentration camp in Europe, listened to the gunfire from the adjoining classroom. He ordered his students to jump for their lives out of the second-story windows of their classroom. The last student out the window saw his professor using his frail body to hold the door closed to keep out the intruder, Cho Seung-Hui. The students survived. Librescu did not. At his funeral in Israel, his son wept as he honored his father who had given his life for his students.
It would be difficult, even for a skeptic, to deny the connection between the servant of Isaiah and Jesus. The violence of Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, if anything, vividly dramatizes the assault against the pacifist, Jesus of Nazareth. If the reading of the passion accounts in the gospels do not offend the sensitivities of the reader, Gibson's movie will.
It's not just that an innocent, loving man is shredded by the torture instruments of the Romans. We, the onlookers, know that he has wound his way down the Street of Sorrows willingly, giving his life that we may enter into the happy kingdom of God, judged suitable for life with God because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Someone once said that God's prophecies are consistent. It would be hard to deny that Isaiah didn't somehow have a vision of a future servant who would die for others. His people were in servitude and exile in a foreign land. Their servitude as a people is reduced into one individual who would give a grand meaning to servanthood. That must have given them hope. Their servitude directed them to a vision of servanthood par excellence! They modeled a gracious act of divine history already on their horizon. Perhaps their ordeal in exile would lead to a better world -- a better world for them and for all nations. Perhaps those most intuitive saw in the servant of God a glimpse of something wondrous ahead.
Fourthly, Isaiah's servant knows he is vindicated! What sustains the servant? He knows that God is with him. He knows that there is some kind of meaning in his humiliation at the hands of his adversaries. He also knows that he is vindicated. He knows that he is guiltless of the charges thrown into his face. He knows that the highest supreme court in the universe, the court of the almighty, has already judged him guiltless and acquitted.
As Paul put it, "Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies" (Romans 8:33). That was Paul's number 1 message: God is the one who justifies. Human courts may be fair or unfair. A mother-in-law may choose to forgive or hold a grudge forever. International courts may prosecute a criminal dictator but the sentence may be light or execution may be carried off clumsily (Saddam Hussein). God judges perfectly, but that is no comfort to those who see the bumper sticker, "Jesus is coming back and, boy, is he ticked off!"
We humans seem programmed to expect the worse. It is only human to expect that God judges like we do: The good guys should get a fair shake and the bad guys should go to hell in a handbasket.
Now comes Paul's number 2 message: "For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law" (Romans 3:28). God finds us "not guilty" because of the vindication of the servant, Jesus. The vindication of Isaiah's servant, of God's Son, is charged to our account. In him are we all vindicated!
A young mother called her pastor to make an appointment. In the privacy of his study she explained that she was plagued by anxiety. She feared that she was unacceptable to God. She felt unworthy, useless, an absolute failure in the eyes of God. Her fear was an obsession and it had a negative impact upon her marriage, upon her daily life, and upon her performance at the office where she worked.
She sought psychiatric treatment. After a number of sessions with her psychiatrist, he suggested that she consult her pastor. The pastor phoned the therapist who stressed the importance of the pastor's involvement in order to help her to realize that God accepted her and loved her. The psychiatrist asked the pastor to work with him on a team basis.
The weekly sessions with the pastor soon revealed that she was oppressed with guilt. She was a bad daughter, a bad mother, a bad wife. Furthermore, she was not worthy of God's love. She was a faithful worshiper but church services only served to remind her of her guilt and deepen her despair. The sermons, the liturgy, the hymns, and the prayers all reminded her of her unworthiness and her sin.
Each session became devoted to a revisit of the worship on the previous Sunday. The sermon, the lessons, and the hymns were re-examined. When she sang the hymn, "Amazing Grace," she heard no grace. She heard the words, "wretch," "lost," and "blind."
The pastor discovered that she had been raised in a church served by her childhood pastor who engaged in pulpit slamming and condemnation. As a child, week after week, she was reminded that she was a worm, a wretched excuse for humanity marked by festering sin wounds. Surely she was fit only for the eternal fire. It took almost a year of weekly meetings, but she finally was able to integrate the gospel good news into the fabric of her soul, heart, and mind. She slowly climbed upward from hatred of herself to acceptance. She learned that she was vindicated. She was pronounced "not guilty" by God because of her newly found trust in a loving God and his servant who transferred his vindication to those in exile, those in bondage to the law, those, like her, lost in low esteem.
So who is Isaiah's "servant"? Like the little green man, he is the one who unmasked himself, who shoved the dark curtain aside to show God's unfathomable, unconditional love, the love of perfect justice, the love that finds the lost, gives sight to the blind, and opens the gate for those in self-imposed exile. Amen.
____________
1. Krister Stendahl, Proclamation: Series A (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 9.
2. Ibid, p. 21.
