Evangelism | Discipleship | Servanthood | Diversity
Finding Christ in the Suffering Servant (sermon)
Finding Christ in All the Wrong Places:
In Isaiah’s Song
Isaiah 53
Oct. 11, 2009
In the movie First Knight, staring Richard Gere as Lancelot and Sean Connery as King Arthur, we’re introduced to Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table. Lancelot is a ‘sword for hire’ when we meet him. He rescues Guinevere from brigands and falls in love with her, but she is promised in marriage to King Arthur. In one scene, the core values of Camelot are contrasted with Lancelot’s selfish and self-serving lifestyle that sells his sword-wielding services to the highest bidder. He proudly says, “I live by my sword.”
The King takes Lancelot to the room that houses the Round Table that symbolizes the values of Camelot. “Here we believe that every life is precious, even the lives of strangers. If you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live and serve,” King Arthur says in hopes to recruit the fearless Lancelot to join his knights. Lancelot reads the inscription on the table that has no head or foot, and where all stand equal in their service: “In serving each other we become free.”
King Arthur remarks, “That is the very heart of Camelot. Not these stones, timbers, towers, or palaces. Burn them all, and Camelot lives on. Because it lives in us, it’s a belief we hold in our hearts.” But this invitation to join the Knights of the Round Table is turned down and Lancelot goes his self-center way. The King calls out, “….if you love nothing, what joy is there in your life?”
Camelot’s core value is servanthood. Those who are blessed with ability, power, and prestige saw their good fortunate as a way to be of service to others, even, as King Arthur says, if you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live and serve.
Now, let’s take Camelot and with your TI-83 calculator multiply it to the 1000th power and beyond and we might get close to our Old Testament text called the Suffering Servant’s Song.
Isaiah 53 is one of the most famous texts in the Old Testament. Most of us have heard at least a few of the phrases ascribed to Jesus. (“He was despised and rejected’, “A man of constant sorrows”, “Like a sheep to the slaughter”, “He was wounded for our transgressions”, “And by his stripes we are healed”, “He took the place of many sinners and prayed that they might be forgiven”.) I don’t think it’s too hard to see the Christ we know from the Gospels within the emotion-packed images of this 2500 year-old Hebrew prophetic poem. Some scholars even call it a sacred song and suggest that it would have been sung by the Levite singers in Temple worship. But still, isn’t it an odd place to find the Christ of the New Testament?
A quick Bible study of Isaiah 53 shows that the ancient Hebrew poem has 5 main themes concerning the Messiah who was to come into the world to save the people from their plight. Originally, they thought the prophecy was about saving the Hebrews from their Babylonian exile but then, after their return to Jerusalem, the rabbis began to look for One who would rescue them from their servitude to the Romans and their political puppet, King Herod.
1. Yet here we find in the first four verses a future Messiah who will be, not a military king, but a servant; a non-descript character, a ‘nothing-special’ kind of guy or as it says in Is. 53:2- a nobody! No crown but one of thorns. No royal robe but one mockingly draped on his shoulders. No symbolic scepter but a carpenter’s hammer. No wealth but that of three improbable gifts given to him at birth. No palace but a rented room in a fisherman’s house on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. No education but that of the Temple rabbis at age 12. No army but that of 120 disciples from all walks of life. No kingly court but a dozen calloused-handed nobodies. No queen but his faithful mother. No kingdom to survey but a kingdom not of this world. No throne but a wooden cross. This coming One was all wrong! Instead of a king, God sent a servant.
2. And this servant was a suffering servant. (vss. 5-7) A humiliated, silent, whipped, bleeding, nailed-to-a-cross kind of Savior and he wasn’t their idea of the Christ. “What’s the Christ doing on his knees before the Roman governor? What’s the Christ doing on trial for blasphemy and sedition? What’s the Christ doing being handcuffed and tortured? What’s the Christ doing bleeding? What’s the Christ doing naked on a Roman cross? What’s the Christ doing being dead?” These were all the right questions of the Hebrew Messiah (if….. the Old Testament didn’t include Isaiah 53.) Yet here it is in ink and parchment is depicted the One who would take on what we deserve and bear it himself. Like a lamb at the altar, a sheep under the knife of the priest, an innocent man on a cross; the One dying for many. Sinners saved by a Savior.
Clarence Jordon, author of the Cotton Patch Gospels and founder of the interracial Christian commune, Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, was getting the red carpet tour of a church he was visiting. With pride the minister pointed out the custom made imported pews and fine artwork around the church. Outside, he called attention to the lighted cross atop the steeple. “That cross along cost us $10,000” the minister said with a satisfying smile. “You got cheated,” said Jordan. “Times were when Christians could get them for free.”
Maybe those of Jesus’ day didn’t get it either. The One who was coming wasn’t going to be a Messiah who you could shout about, but a suffering servant who was shouted down, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What’s the Christ doing up there on a cross? That’s the wrong place for a real Messiah. But it is where you’d expect to find a Suffering Servant.
3. The third theme of the Song of the Suffering Servant is injustice. In verses 8-9 one injustice follows another. Innocent yet convicted and no one cared one lick. The One who died, died on behalf of all, yet no one cared enough to stop it. To add insult to injury, they dropped him into a desecrated grave. What’s God’s Christ doing in a borrowed grave? Where’s the justice in this?
One of the great questions of the 20th Century is: How could the German Christians turn a blind eye to the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis? How was it possible for a population of god-fearing citizens to ignore the injustice? Even the German Protestant Church raised their arm in a ‘hail Hitler’ salute to the one they declared was God’s man and called him the head of the church. But not all.
Some Christians spoke up, however many of these brave believers died. Best known among them was Protestant minister, Dietrich Bonheoffer, who wrote many books including his classic, The Cost of Discipleship. Little did he realize what it would cost him when he asked himself, “Where’s the justice in this?” Aware of Hitler’s injustices to so many, he decided to take part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. In his own mind, he weighed the brutality of the act with the evil being wrought on millions and his answer was inescapable. But the plot failed, Bonheoffer as imprisoned in a concentration camp and only days before the liberation of Europe, he was executed on Hitler’s orders. His last words before the hangman’s noose took his last breath away, affirmed the gift of eternal life won for all time by the One who was wrongly nailed to a cross:
This is the end
but for me,
It is the beginning
of life.
4. An injustice cannot thwart the Lord’s will; God will find a way. Verses 10-12 tell us that even though every obstacle blocked his way, the Lord’s will prevailed. In the next 2 ½ verses, the word ‘will’ is used 10 times (GNB Bible) to emphasize the divine outcome will happen no matter what earthly circumstances are thrown down to stop it. Leslie Weatherhead, in his classic The Will of God, calls this the Ultimate Will of God. He says that we can see that in the story of Jesus. God would have loved for the world to listen and repent and respond to Jesus’ preaching and have the people of earth living out the Kingdom of God, but that didn’t happen. They listened to Jesus but instead of repenting, they turned on him and crucified him. But the world didn’t count on God finding a way to bring reconciliation through the cross. The will of God happened even though it cost the Servant his life. Isaiah 53 foretold of this, 500 years before it happened. God’s will finds a way even if it includes a sacrifice.
A story is told of coastal village in Japan that was used to earth tremors that shook their small homes from time to time like this pre-dawn tremor. Their wheat fields were on a hillside but all their homes were along the beach. One old villager was looking out his window at the sea and in the moonlight noticed how strange the sea was acting. The waves were moving against the tide and the gray surf was rolling out instead of in. He knew what was happening. He called the alarm, but no one bothered. He woke his grandson and they both ran up the hillside with flaming touches and lit the wheat field on fire. From house to house a cry went out to save the crop, save the fields. They saw the old man with a torch and raced up the hillside to stop him. He pointed to the sea and the villagers all looked in terror. A tsunami was rolling in and with a thunderous blast, swamped the tiny homes and then drew everything back out to sea.
On the hillside the villagers stood frozen in relief. “That’s why I set fire to the crop,” the old man said in a gentle voice. The old man’s will to save the village was accomplished even though it cost them dearly. In much the same way, God’s will always finds a way, even though it may seem like it costs him dearly. And in this case, it did.
5. The Suffering Servant’s Song ends with the awesome promise that through the Servant, God will make things right. In church language, we call that restoration. Verse 12 says that the Servant willingly gave his life in place of our lives. The Apostle Paul put it this way in a letter to the Corinth congregation: “All this was done (through the Suffering Servant) to make those estranged from God into God’s friends and gave us the responsibility now to make other’s Gods friends, too.” (2 Cor. 5:18)
One of the things we used to throw away at the Shredded Wheat Plant where I worked during college were wood pallets. We’d load up the dump truck to overflowing and head off to the city dump and throw them over the side. I always thought it was such a waste of wood. At least the workers taken them home for firewood, but that was against company policy. I wish I’d been smart enough to figure out how to reuse the like a company in the Bronx did a few years later.
Millions of wood pallets were thrown away until Big City Forest found ways to recycle the wood that most companies consider garbage. They collected pallets, broke them down, sorted the wood, (some of it valuable hard wood like cherry, oak and maple) and made wood flooring and furniture from it. Discarded pallets that sold for $30 a ton were now restored to flooring worth $1200 a ton and furniture worth $6000 a ton. If that can be done with lifeless, discarded slabs of wood, how much more can people be restored to lives of value? Like Big City Forest, God is in the restoration business. He takes our broken, splintered, used up lives marred by years of bearing the heavy weight of sin and consequence, and restores us into works of beauty and usefulness.
Isaiah 53, a very strange place to find the Christ of the Gospels, yet here he is. The Suffering Servant, unjustly punished yet still able to accomplish the will of God; reconciling us with the Creator and giving us the responsibility to make others God’s friends as well. And to those who are blessed with ability, power, and prestige in Christ, the good fortunate we enjoy can be a way to be of service to others, even, as King Arthur says, if you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live and serve. Let us live and serve the Lord. Amen.
In Isaiah’s Song
Isaiah 53
Oct. 11, 2009
In the movie First Knight, staring Richard Gere as Lancelot and Sean Connery as King Arthur, we’re introduced to Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table. Lancelot is a ‘sword for hire’ when we meet him. He rescues Guinevere from brigands and falls in love with her, but she is promised in marriage to King Arthur. In one scene, the core values of Camelot are contrasted with Lancelot’s selfish and self-serving lifestyle that sells his sword-wielding services to the highest bidder. He proudly says, “I live by my sword.”
The King takes Lancelot to the room that houses the Round Table that symbolizes the values of Camelot. “Here we believe that every life is precious, even the lives of strangers. If you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live and serve,” King Arthur says in hopes to recruit the fearless Lancelot to join his knights. Lancelot reads the inscription on the table that has no head or foot, and where all stand equal in their service: “In serving each other we become free.”
King Arthur remarks, “That is the very heart of Camelot. Not these stones, timbers, towers, or palaces. Burn them all, and Camelot lives on. Because it lives in us, it’s a belief we hold in our hearts.” But this invitation to join the Knights of the Round Table is turned down and Lancelot goes his self-center way. The King calls out, “….if you love nothing, what joy is there in your life?”
Camelot’s core value is servanthood. Those who are blessed with ability, power, and prestige saw their good fortunate as a way to be of service to others, even, as King Arthur says, if you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live and serve.
Now, let’s take Camelot and with your TI-83 calculator multiply it to the 1000th power and beyond and we might get close to our Old Testament text called the Suffering Servant’s Song.
Isaiah 53 is one of the most famous texts in the Old Testament. Most of us have heard at least a few of the phrases ascribed to Jesus. (“He was despised and rejected’, “A man of constant sorrows”, “Like a sheep to the slaughter”, “He was wounded for our transgressions”, “And by his stripes we are healed”, “He took the place of many sinners and prayed that they might be forgiven”.) I don’t think it’s too hard to see the Christ we know from the Gospels within the emotion-packed images of this 2500 year-old Hebrew prophetic poem. Some scholars even call it a sacred song and suggest that it would have been sung by the Levite singers in Temple worship. But still, isn’t it an odd place to find the Christ of the New Testament?
A quick Bible study of Isaiah 53 shows that the ancient Hebrew poem has 5 main themes concerning the Messiah who was to come into the world to save the people from their plight. Originally, they thought the prophecy was about saving the Hebrews from their Babylonian exile but then, after their return to Jerusalem, the rabbis began to look for One who would rescue them from their servitude to the Romans and their political puppet, King Herod.
1. Yet here we find in the first four verses a future Messiah who will be, not a military king, but a servant; a non-descript character, a ‘nothing-special’ kind of guy or as it says in Is. 53:2- a nobody! No crown but one of thorns. No royal robe but one mockingly draped on his shoulders. No symbolic scepter but a carpenter’s hammer. No wealth but that of three improbable gifts given to him at birth. No palace but a rented room in a fisherman’s house on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. No education but that of the Temple rabbis at age 12. No army but that of 120 disciples from all walks of life. No kingly court but a dozen calloused-handed nobodies. No queen but his faithful mother. No kingdom to survey but a kingdom not of this world. No throne but a wooden cross. This coming One was all wrong! Instead of a king, God sent a servant.
2. And this servant was a suffering servant. (vss. 5-7) A humiliated, silent, whipped, bleeding, nailed-to-a-cross kind of Savior and he wasn’t their idea of the Christ. “What’s the Christ doing on his knees before the Roman governor? What’s the Christ doing on trial for blasphemy and sedition? What’s the Christ doing being handcuffed and tortured? What’s the Christ doing bleeding? What’s the Christ doing naked on a Roman cross? What’s the Christ doing being dead?” These were all the right questions of the Hebrew Messiah (if….. the Old Testament didn’t include Isaiah 53.) Yet here it is in ink and parchment is depicted the One who would take on what we deserve and bear it himself. Like a lamb at the altar, a sheep under the knife of the priest, an innocent man on a cross; the One dying for many. Sinners saved by a Savior.
Clarence Jordon, author of the Cotton Patch Gospels and founder of the interracial Christian commune, Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia, was getting the red carpet tour of a church he was visiting. With pride the minister pointed out the custom made imported pews and fine artwork around the church. Outside, he called attention to the lighted cross atop the steeple. “That cross along cost us $10,000” the minister said with a satisfying smile. “You got cheated,” said Jordan. “Times were when Christians could get them for free.”
Maybe those of Jesus’ day didn’t get it either. The One who was coming wasn’t going to be a Messiah who you could shout about, but a suffering servant who was shouted down, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” What’s the Christ doing up there on a cross? That’s the wrong place for a real Messiah. But it is where you’d expect to find a Suffering Servant.
3. The third theme of the Song of the Suffering Servant is injustice. In verses 8-9 one injustice follows another. Innocent yet convicted and no one cared one lick. The One who died, died on behalf of all, yet no one cared enough to stop it. To add insult to injury, they dropped him into a desecrated grave. What’s God’s Christ doing in a borrowed grave? Where’s the justice in this?
One of the great questions of the 20th Century is: How could the German Christians turn a blind eye to the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis? How was it possible for a population of god-fearing citizens to ignore the injustice? Even the German Protestant Church raised their arm in a ‘hail Hitler’ salute to the one they declared was God’s man and called him the head of the church. But not all.
Some Christians spoke up, however many of these brave believers died. Best known among them was Protestant minister, Dietrich Bonheoffer, who wrote many books including his classic, The Cost of Discipleship. Little did he realize what it would cost him when he asked himself, “Where’s the justice in this?” Aware of Hitler’s injustices to so many, he decided to take part in a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. In his own mind, he weighed the brutality of the act with the evil being wrought on millions and his answer was inescapable. But the plot failed, Bonheoffer as imprisoned in a concentration camp and only days before the liberation of Europe, he was executed on Hitler’s orders. His last words before the hangman’s noose took his last breath away, affirmed the gift of eternal life won for all time by the One who was wrongly nailed to a cross:
This is the end
but for me,
It is the beginning
of life.
4. An injustice cannot thwart the Lord’s will; God will find a way. Verses 10-12 tell us that even though every obstacle blocked his way, the Lord’s will prevailed. In the next 2 ½ verses, the word ‘will’ is used 10 times (GNB Bible) to emphasize the divine outcome will happen no matter what earthly circumstances are thrown down to stop it. Leslie Weatherhead, in his classic The Will of God, calls this the Ultimate Will of God. He says that we can see that in the story of Jesus. God would have loved for the world to listen and repent and respond to Jesus’ preaching and have the people of earth living out the Kingdom of God, but that didn’t happen. They listened to Jesus but instead of repenting, they turned on him and crucified him. But the world didn’t count on God finding a way to bring reconciliation through the cross. The will of God happened even though it cost the Servant his life. Isaiah 53 foretold of this, 500 years before it happened. God’s will finds a way even if it includes a sacrifice.
A story is told of coastal village in Japan that was used to earth tremors that shook their small homes from time to time like this pre-dawn tremor. Their wheat fields were on a hillside but all their homes were along the beach. One old villager was looking out his window at the sea and in the moonlight noticed how strange the sea was acting. The waves were moving against the tide and the gray surf was rolling out instead of in. He knew what was happening. He called the alarm, but no one bothered. He woke his grandson and they both ran up the hillside with flaming touches and lit the wheat field on fire. From house to house a cry went out to save the crop, save the fields. They saw the old man with a torch and raced up the hillside to stop him. He pointed to the sea and the villagers all looked in terror. A tsunami was rolling in and with a thunderous blast, swamped the tiny homes and then drew everything back out to sea.
On the hillside the villagers stood frozen in relief. “That’s why I set fire to the crop,” the old man said in a gentle voice. The old man’s will to save the village was accomplished even though it cost them dearly. In much the same way, God’s will always finds a way, even though it may seem like it costs him dearly. And in this case, it did.
5. The Suffering Servant’s Song ends with the awesome promise that through the Servant, God will make things right. In church language, we call that restoration. Verse 12 says that the Servant willingly gave his life in place of our lives. The Apostle Paul put it this way in a letter to the Corinth congregation: “All this was done (through the Suffering Servant) to make those estranged from God into God’s friends and gave us the responsibility now to make other’s Gods friends, too.” (2 Cor. 5:18)
One of the things we used to throw away at the Shredded Wheat Plant where I worked during college were wood pallets. We’d load up the dump truck to overflowing and head off to the city dump and throw them over the side. I always thought it was such a waste of wood. At least the workers taken them home for firewood, but that was against company policy. I wish I’d been smart enough to figure out how to reuse the like a company in the Bronx did a few years later.
Millions of wood pallets were thrown away until Big City Forest found ways to recycle the wood that most companies consider garbage. They collected pallets, broke them down, sorted the wood, (some of it valuable hard wood like cherry, oak and maple) and made wood flooring and furniture from it. Discarded pallets that sold for $30 a ton were now restored to flooring worth $1200 a ton and furniture worth $6000 a ton. If that can be done with lifeless, discarded slabs of wood, how much more can people be restored to lives of value? Like Big City Forest, God is in the restoration business. He takes our broken, splintered, used up lives marred by years of bearing the heavy weight of sin and consequence, and restores us into works of beauty and usefulness.
Isaiah 53, a very strange place to find the Christ of the Gospels, yet here he is. The Suffering Servant, unjustly punished yet still able to accomplish the will of God; reconciling us with the Creator and giving us the responsibility to make others God’s friends as well. And to those who are blessed with ability, power, and prestige in Christ, the good fortunate we enjoy can be a way to be of service to others, even, as King Arthur says, if you must die, die serving something greater than yourself. Better still, live and serve. Let us live and serve the Lord. Amen.
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