In the name of the one who loves the beloved and love itself. Amen.
Gosh, I forgot how high it was up here. I feel like I’m six feet above contradiction. How are you? Hi, I’m the very
Reverend Matthew Woodward, as you have been told, I was the curate here 20 years and 60 pounds ago, and
it’s delightful to be back. Delightful to encounter this wonderful tradition of music, delightful to encounter the
Rose responses again, they terrified me when I was a curate.
It’s also delightful to be here with Mother Carol. I’m sort of looking out on you and like seeing the faces I know,
but also the decorations of this place and the interweaving of the gold in the ceiling. It’s really making me think
about how our lives are interwoven with one another. I was formed here as curate, with you and with Father
Stephen. I went to be the priest in charge and then the vicar of St. Saviour’s in Pimlico, and Alan and Carol
were sent to me to help them with a phase of their formation. So I was formed here, I helped them with their
formation, then Carol is back here as your vicar. We’re all woven together in a great kind of tapestry of grace,
which I love.
Also in terms of formation: you formed me in many of the things that came back to me when I became the
Dean of a Cathedral in America, I kept on thinking to myself when I encountered something like, you know,
singing the responses, “Oh, I learned that at Hampstead Parish Church.” And then some of the cultural
dimensions of what it was like to be the Dean of a Cathedral. Oh, I learned that at Hampstead Parish Church. I
kind of know how to do this ‘ because I learned it all with you, and I should probably stop saying more before I
make your heads’s too big. And you probably want me to get to a sermon at some point. So I could reminisce
all evening, but I want to spend some time with the suffering servant for Isaiah, if I may.
It’s beautiful poetry.
“Surely he’s born 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.
There’s a certain version of supersessionist Christianity that believes that’s a prediction of the life of Christ, and
also that it describes exactly how atonement works, but I don’t share that view.
Mark Twain tells us that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And there’s another American thinker,
George Lucas, when he was challenged because his Star Wars movies seemed to be very similar to one
another, he said, “Yes, they do rhyme.”
I’d like to think of this as less a prophetic prediction of the life of Jesus, and more of a description of a moment
in history that we find rhymes through time. I feel somewhat uncomfortable saying that this beautiful Jewish
text is an exact prediction of the coming of Jesus. So I looked into some of the contemporary Rabbinic
interpretations of this text to ask myself, were they saying? Do they believe that in this part of Isaiah’s prophecy
he was predicting an individual who was to come as a Messiah, to save us from our sins by stepping in and
taking the punishment on our behalf.
You might be surprised to know that most rabbis don’t think that that’s what this is saying. The suffering
servant, in their mind, isn’t referring to Jesus, it’s referring to the whole people of Israel. Israel suffered. Israel
was the suffering servant. If you pay attention to the wonderful text that we just heard sung to us “From the
Wilderness”, at the end, we have this line:
“and the ransom of the Lord
shall return and come to Zion
with songs and everlasting joy
upon their heads.
They shall obtain joy and gladness.”
That’s from Isaiah 33. In its entire context, you realize that it’s about finding grace under fire. It’s about a group
of people who are subjected to terrible treatment. by leaders from other countries who took them away from
their homes and subjected them to suffering. The suffering servant was the children of Israel, the people of
Israel, who suffered at the hands of others and then at some point, the others, the ones who subjugated them,
looked them in the face, and recognized just how much suffering they had caused. And it broke them.
When they realized the kind of pain that they had inflicted on others, they were undone. And in that moment,
had the capacity to repent and be saved. The language of salvation in this prophecy talks about the people
who have recognized the suffering they’ve inflicted, and then acknowledged their part in it, and then sought to
be changed by that realization.
In the Rabbinic mind it is not a predicting of the coming of a Savior, who will through penal substitutionary
atonement, take away our sins, but rather an invitation to look in the mirror.
That’s what the ancient nations around Israel were invited to do, but I wonder if we might be willing to do that
too? In the season of Easter, in which at the heart of our story, we recognize the resurrection of Christ that we
heard about on the road to Emmaus in the other reading.
Jesus, was suffering, did suffer. The people around him, who inflicted that suffering; I wonder if they saw the
pain on his face, and I wonder if it broke them. He stands in, as a part of the rhyme of history, for anybody who
has ever experienced that kind of injustice, that kind of pain. That kind of pain has resonated throughout
history, as terrible poetry.
I wonder if, when those who have seen the pain they’ve inflicted on others have looked in the faces of the
suffering, if they at some point have been broken open and able to see their own culpability.
If Jesus stands in for everyone who has ever suffered, I wonder where we locate ourselves in relation to
suffering.
You know, the easiest thing in the world is for us to acknowledge who’s made us suffer. That’s really easy. We
can look at the people that have caused us pain and we can name them, one, two, three. We probably keep a
rollodex in our heads of the people that have caused us pain. That’s easy. You know, what else is easy? It’s
easy to identify somebody else who is making someone else suffer, but they’re far away from me. Who has
made other people suffer? Who’s making others suffer today in our world.
It’s heartbreaking to look at Israel and Gaza. Russia and Ukraine. The treatment of those in the United States
who are not getting due process. It’s easy to identify other people who are making other people suffer.
The hardest thing in the world is for us to acknowledge when we have participated in systems that have
inflicted suffering on others, and look at our own selves and our own behavior. Who have I wronged? Who’s
been wronged on my behalf? How have I benefited from the suffering of others?
In the season of Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, I hope that we might have the courage to
look at the suffering that we’ve caused. Whether it’s interpersonal or political or systemic. and to be broken
open by what we see reflected back at us. Broken open, not in order that we might beat ourselves up, but that
we might honestly receive grace. The line at the end of that reading from Isaiah 53, that touches me so much,
is one where it says, “He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.”
This is about history rhyming, it talks about the ancient Jewish people who intercessed for the people that were
subjugating them. They prayed for the forgiveness of the people that caused them pain.
The wonderful thing about Resurrection is that even after Jesus is killed, he comes back, and he brings with
him a divine capacity for forgiveness that I cannot understand. But it is forgiveness that we can receive if we
are just willing to acknowledge where we’ve caused pain. Amen.