Reflection -- The Servant

This passage from the prophet Isaiah, or perhaps from someone writing in Isaiah’s tradition, is one of the richest and most moving in all of Scripture -- and also one of the most enigmatic.  Who are the speakers (there are at least two here)?  Who is the servant who suffers for others and is despised, but is then vindicated?  Who are the people whom the servant will serve and save?  How is it that the servant saves the people? 

The first speaker is none other than God.  The afflicted servant is God’s servant.  Past that, there seems to be little agreement about what these words meant when they were first written.  The people of Israel, who were then in exile, were involved, but were they the people to be saved or was it the suffering community that was symbolized by the suffering servant?

But it may well be that those granted the gift of prophecy do not always understand the words God gives them when they utter them.  The important part is that they are faithful messengers of God, not that they fully comprehend the message at the time.

Isaiah was written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, but Christians struggling with the meaning of his life have, from the very first, found him here.  When the apostle Philip came upon the emissary of the Queen of Ethiopia, a eunuch, on a road and gave him the information that led the Ethiopian to become the first known black Christian, the Ethiopian was reading this passage in Isaiah.  “The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’  Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.”  (Acts 8:34-35) 

Certainly Philip was correct.  The could hardly be a more vivid picture of Jesus’ life and ministry; his humble beginnings, his life of service for others, his rejection by secular and religious leaders, his suffering that reveals the enormous reach of God’s love for us, his obedient acceptance of that suffering that we might be restored to relationship with God, and his ultimate victory over alienation and death.  They are all here.

But what of those who are called to struggle, as best they can, to live their lives in imitation of Christ.  In other words, what of us?  The implications seem clear.  There are rewards for faithfulness, yes; but in the meantime we too are called to servanthood.

The 10^th chapter of Mark tells us the story of the disciples James and John asking Jesus for the honor of sitting on either side of him when he came into his glory.  Jesus first question to them is this:  “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"  In other words, are you willing to give up everything, even life, to accomplish God’s purposes?  He then explains to the other disciples (and to us):   “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

revclay

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Isaiah 52:13-53:12

See, my servant shall prosper; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high.  Just as there were many who were astonished at him -- so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals -- so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate. 

Who has believed what we have heard?  And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?  For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 

He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.  Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. 

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.  By a perversion of justice he was taken away.  Who could have imagined his future?  For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.  They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.

When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days; through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.  Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. 

The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.  Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.      [NRSV]

Mark 10:35-45