The Waiting Embrace of the Suffering Servant: Sexagesima (February 12, 2023)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the story of Abraham this week. Abraham was called by God to leave his family and go to a new land. Along with that, God gave Abraham promises, promises that, even in his old age, he would have numerous descendants and that those descendants would be as numerous as the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. However, if you know the story of Abraham, you know it wasn’t all easy going from there. In fact, there were times where Abraham and his wife Sarah disobeyed God. We might think about their handling of Hagar and Ishmael or the times Abraham was dishonest about Sarah’s identity to various leaders of territories through which they traveled. Yet despite Abraham and Sarah’s shortcomings, God was faithful to his promise. He brought Abraham into the land he had for him, he gave him descendants, and ultimately, all of the promises made to Abraham were answered in the person of Jesus Christ.

The point is that as human beings, we often fluctuate in terms of our faithfulness. Hopefully, we see a consistent increase in our faith, hope, and love evidenced by our works but we all know that there are times and seasons, sometimes even years where we’re unfaithful to God. It might be that we have a besetting sin we keep giving into and stop fighting, turning whatever it is into a kind of idol. It might be a lack of faithfulness in fulfilling our Christian duties of going to the Church because we perceive ourselves to be too busy. It might be holding back part of our life from God’s design for human flourishing.

Many of you know, I was raised in Evangelical churches and, as I grew, I found the culture very off-putting, very inauthentic. Of course, there’s much to be commended but this caused me to do what has become known as deconstructing my faith. For a period of my life, I’m not sure I would have identified as a Christian, even though I was one by virtue of my baptism. But over time, I came back to faith, eventually finding my way to Anglicanism. I was baptized and even though I tried to leave God, he never left me.

Today’s Old Testament reading is about this topic, I think. In its original context, Isaiah 50 is a story of Old Testament Israel’s unfaithfulness to God and, despite that, his faithfulness to them in the form of this mysterious character called the Suffering Servant, who is the “I” in the passage. On a deeper level, however, Isaiah 50 isn’t just a story about the Israelites 3,000 years ago; it’s a story about me and you today.

The Old Testament is full of Israel’s faithlessness. In their wilderness wanderings, the people grumble and rebel against God and his appointed leader, Moses. Once they arrive in the Promise Land, they fall pray to three main sins: idolatry, empty ritualism, and social injustice. “You shall have no other gods but me,” God told the Israelites, but nevertheless, they erected altars to Baal, the Canaanite storm god, and Asherah, the Canaanite fertility goddess, and Moloch, to whom the barbaric practice of child sacrifice was offered, even by Israelites. The Old Testament prophets often characterized Israel’s idolatry in terms of spiritual adultery, they were going after other gods in the way that a lustful person runs after lovers. Further, they were committing sins of social injustice by failing to care for the widow, orphan, poor, and foreigner. The prophet Amos, for example, indicts the wealthy women of Israel by calling them the “fat cows of Bahsahn.” Finally, we see Israel fall prey to an empty ritualism, a kind of checking the liturgical boxes while not allowing the liturgy to change them. The very opening chapter of Isaiah gets at this when the prophet, speaking for God, says “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: Your hands are full of blood” (Isa 1:15).

What’s more, not only did Israel commit these three sins of idolatry, injustice, and empty ritualism serially, they totally ignored God when he tried to correct them. Ignore is too weak a word; they actively and violently lashed out against God’s prophetic spokespersons to the point of murder. Jesus summarizes this pattern of behavior succinctly in Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!”

Despite Israel’s unfaithfulness, despite their violent reactions against the prophets sent by God, Isaiah foretells of a suffering servant who would be sent by God. He would “know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” In other words, he’s offering a message of comfort to God’s people, teaching them how to follow God. But what happens to him? “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting.” The people of Israel were intent on rejecting this Servant, inflicting violence on him just like they had all the spokesmen God sent before. Yet the Servant doesn’t waiver in the face of this vicious opposition: “the Lord God will help me; Therefore shall I not be confounded: Therefore have I set my face like a flint, And I know that I shall not be ashamed.” Even though the people reject him, and therefore reject God, the Suffering Servant continues forward with his mission because he knows that if God sent him, he will be faithful to him to help him see through.

And what is the result of God’s faithfulness as demonstrated through the Suffering Servant? “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.” The Servant, as a manifestation of God’s faithfulness, enables there to be way for the people trapped in darkness to see a great light, to trust in the name of the Lord, and become steadfast in their faith in God.

Now at this point, we might ask ourselves “Who exactly is this Suffering Servant?” Some have proposed that the Suffering Servant is the nation of Israel itself, God’s royal priesthood sent to the world to draw the nations to God but who nevertheless suffered violence at the hands of the nations who rejected God. Perhaps this is true on one level. But everything about Israel—all the promises God made to them, all the vocations they were supposed to fill, all their liturgical and sacrificial ritual—all of that finds its culmination in the person of Jesus Christ. He is the Suffering Servant sent by God: He is the one who experienced savage resistance, to the point of being beaten and executed. He is the one who was scourged, beaten, mocked, and derided. He is the one who was faithful to God when the human story was one of perpetual unfaithfulness. He is the one who brings light to those trapped in darkness and who enables us to have faith in God. Go back and read that Old Testament reading and every time he says “I,” substitute the name of Jesus:

“The Lord God hath given Jesus the tongue of the learned, that Jesus should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.” We can think of the Comfortable Words here: “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.”

Again, we can go back to Isaiah: “Jesus gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off his hair: he hid not his face from shame and spitting.” We can think of I St. Peter 2:21-23: “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously.”

Again we can go back to Isaiah: “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, Jesus, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.” We can think of St. John: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

If Jesus is the Suffering Servant, then that means that we stand in the place of Israel. Jesus has been faithful to us even when we have mocked him and beaten him through our manifold sins and wickedness. But he doesn’t turn away; he doesn’t put us at arms length; he doesn’t give up on us. His love is as constant as it always has been. But the beautiful thing about the Suffering Servant is that he provides us a way to break that cycle of faithlessness. If we’re walking in darkness, we can trust in the name of the Lord, we can stay upon his God. This is what Paul talks about in Galatians 2:20: “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” God’s faithfulness is the foundation for any and all progress we make in the Christian life and it teaches us how to become faithful in response.

And what does a life of faith look like? According to Isaiah 50, there are three things we can point to: fear of the Lord, obedience to his servant, and trust in his name. When we talk about fearing God, we don’t mean being so scared that we can’t approach him; quite the opposite. Psalm 31:19 tells us, “Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; Which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee Before the sons of men!” Fearing God involves trusting in him, drawing near to him, taking refuge in him.

And as we do that, we take on a posture of obedience to the Servant, Jesus: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

And finally, we trust in God as a child trusts their parents. Psalm 116:6 says, “The Lord preserveth the simple (or childlike): I was brought low, and he helped me.” Jesus confirms this in Matthew 18:2-4 when he “called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

And so today’s Collect really gets at the truth: without God and his faithfulness, we are unable to climb out of the hole we’ve dug. “O Lord God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do; Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity.” We have a propensity towards faithlessness, but God is faithful. He always has been and he always will be. And if you ever doubt it, look no further than the crucifix with the Suffering Servant affixed to it, constantly calling you into the spread out arms waiting to embrace you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.