Jesus: The Servant
The Suffering Servant
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Last week we looked at the ways in which Jesus was a quintessential Jew. This week we will see how he also seemed to positively enact Isaiah’s four beautiful “servant songs” (Isaiah 42:1-4, 49:1-6, 50:4-9, 52:13-53:12). These four passages show amazing prescient knowledge of what it would take to move history from “the myth of redemptive violence” to the truth of redemptive suffering. Even though Jesus walked and exemplified this upside-down notion of a Messiah, most Christians merely worshiped and admired it in him (“substitutionary atonement theory”) instead of imitating such a transformative pattern in their own lives. Too-easy worship is a clever disguise for actual imitation.
The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue,
for me to know how to give a word of comfort to the weary.
Jesus’ ministry was one of teaching and healing, and his healings were usually audio-visual aids for his teachings. He comforted the weary, whereas the Church largely kept “saving the saved.” Jesus seemed to be into “universal health care,” and now we make it a privilege for a few instead of a basic human need and right.
Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple.
The Lord Yahweh has opened my ear.
Jesus learned how to listen long and hard (“pray”) before every major decision and before he even began to speak publicly, around the age of thirty.
For my part, I made no resistance,
Neither did I turn away.
Jesus clearly taught and lived nonviolence his entire life, up to and including his death. We could not admit or see this once we were attached to using violence. Jesus moved into the pain of the world to reveal it, to identify with it, and thus to transform it; we largely inflicted pain on others to prove ourselves “right.”
I offered my back to those who struck me,
My cheek to those who tore at my beard;
I did not cover my face
Against insult and spittle.
Jesus’ passion and death exemplified in dramatic theater this “third way,” which is neither fight nor flight, but a little of both. It is fleeing enough to detach oneself from excessive ego and the emotions that attach to it and fighting just enough to stand up courageously against evil, paying the price for change yourself. Such a third way, I believe, is the unique pattern of the Gospel. It neither plays the victim nor creates victims of others. How rare this is, even today.
Gateway to Silence:
The way down is the way up.
References:
Adapted from The Great Themes of Scripture: Old Testament, p. 70 (published by Franciscan Media);
and The Path of Descent, disc 4, (CD, MP3 download)
