Dear Friends,
Today, we’re reading the second of the four scriptural texts for Palm Sunday. This one, from the Hebrew Bible, is Isaiah 50:4-9a. Please take a moment and read this Servant Song.
This is the third of four Suffering Servant Poems or Songs that appear in Isaiah 40-55. Though the word servant doesn’t appear in this reading, the concept is implicit in every verse, and it appears explicitly in the verse that follows this passage, which reads, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant.” What an astonishing concept: to obey the voice of a servant!
The notion of servanthood, and especially the Suffering Servant, is essential to understanding Jesus and his message. It may help us unpack this important concept if we briefly examine the structure of this quite remarkable book from the Hebrew Bible. After decades of communal work, Biblical scholars have divided the book into three parts. The first part, chapters 1-39, are the prophecies of Isaiah, including those of some of his followers, which were written in the years before the exile to Babylon. Chapters 40-55, the middle part, was written during the exile in Babylon by students who followed Isaiah’s prophetic school of thought. The final ten chapters are a collection of the works of various prophets who were writing after the return to Jerusalem. It’s no surprise that all of the Suffering Servant Poems are found in the middle part of Isaiah, when the people of Israel are homeless refugees, wandering without hope in exile. Their exile lasted for generations, and like many refugee populations in today’s world, they probably could not imagine an end to their poverty and displacement.
We Christians understand that the story of our faith is grounded in the Old Testament and continues into the New, and we recognize the suffering experienced by people of faith in both. In the gospels, Jesus is often called teacher, rabbi. We and his earliest followers know him to be a miracle worker, prophet, and healer, and we rejoice in the sustaining affirmation this brings us. Jesus’s teaching by both word and example becomes the heart of our faith. We are his students, his disciples.
The concept of Jesus as God’s suffering servant, especially as we experience his journey during Holy Week, is, in its way, the antithesis of all those miracles, but it is also the culmination of humankind’s suffering and pain recounted throughout our scriptures. A careful reading of today’s passage in Isaiah reveals that the part of the human condition that is suffering is actually part of the victory of our faith. Beneath the miracle stories and all the events of Jesus’s ministry is the Easter journey. It is the foundation of our faith, the radical vision that a suffering servant is elevated to become the salvation of all humanity.
Holy Week brings us our own visceral experience of Jesus’s suffering. Like the servant in Isaiah, he suffered lashings on his back as he was whipped. “I give my back to those who struck me.” (Isaiah 50: 6) His trials in Roman-occupied Jerusalem were shams; their outcome had been decided before a single word was spoken as accusation or in his defense. He suffered insult upon insult. And yet, we shall see that, with God’s help, he set his “face like flint” (Isaiah 50:7) and was not put to shame.
It’s tempting to idealize or underestimate the patient forbearance of Jesus because there’s a part of us that wants to assume that Jesus always knew God’s ultimate plan. But to think that is to deny the reality that Jesus is fully human. Those who suffer feel genuine pain that is amplified by their powerlessness; in Jesus’s humanity, he surely felt the same. For countless martyrs and unnamed, unnameable victims of torture and slavery, their suffering is the moral mark that they leave. Certainly, no less is true of Jesus, the Suffering Servant of all humanity, and of God.
To be a Christian is to have a faith, to take on certain beliefs, to develop an understanding of God; that’s what theology is. To be a Christian is to live by a moral code, an ethic, that emerges from our faith. Jesus did not have the power to respond to the horrors he suffered; he had an entirely different kind of power: he had the power to witness. His witness is the foundation of our theology and our moral code.
Even as he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he knew he was entering the city where he would face his worldly suffering, agony, and death. And yet, he continued on; he did not resist the pain that was to come. The words of Isaiah were surely in his heart as he rode into Jerusalem to the Hosannas of his followers. “I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near.” (Isaiah 50: 7b-8a) None of those who were shouting Hosanna knew what was to come. That Jesus likely did, and that he chose to move forward into what was to come, makes his suffering even more painful, and more powerful, to his disciples, and to all of us who love him. It makes all that we learn from him more potent and intense.
Today, all of humankind is suffering in the face of a global pandemic. Many will be infected by the virus; an almost unbelievable number will die; and every person on earth will have been and will continue to be affected by Covid 19. Though our lives in these times are marked by the intensity of the suffering we see wherever we turn, and though we may be isolated from one another, we are not apart or separate from the global misery that we cannot avoid. Nor is the Suffering Servant Jesus far from our side.
Our moral response, honed by our faith, is not to be passive and patient in our suffering, but to do all that is in our power to alleviate the pain and suffering we see in our world, including, at this remarkable moment in time, to do something as simple yet effective as self-isolation. We may not be Jeff Bezos; we can’t contribute a hundred million dollars to care for the poor and helpless or discover a vaccine, but we are not powerless. We can keep safe physical distance, share what we can to help others, look after our neighbors, voice our urgent concerns to our leaders, and care for one another via text, email, telephone, and digital media. And we can take one of the most powerful actions possible: we can pray.
As we enter into Holy Week, we shout Hosanna, even though we know how Jesus is to suffer, and that we suffer with him. As we enter this most unusual Holy Week of 2020, we suffer with all our sisters and brothers across the globe. May we respond in faithfulness and love.
Let us pray together.
All caring God, awaken us to an understanding of your wisdom and will. Empower us to be faithful followers of Jesus. Enable us to truly know the depth of the world’s ills so that we may serve humbly to relieve suffering all around us. Inspire us to action that will bring peace and healing to all who bear the burdens of these times and the virus that rages among us. Rouse us to value even the simplest of actions, like self-isolation, in order that we may help restore our world. Energize us to examine the depth of faithfulness that Jesus shows us, and help us to follow his example. We know we cannot possibly meet the standards he sets for us, but we thank you for the trust you endow us with as we strive to follow the Suffering Servant, your son, Jesus. Amen.