Song 1 Isaiah 42:1-9
42:1 Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
42:2 He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;
42:3 a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.
42:4 He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching.
42:5 Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it:
42:6 I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations,
42:7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
42:8 I am the LORD, that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.
42:9 See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.
Our reading this evening from Isaiah was the first of a series of four songs known as the Suffering Servant Songs. We shall hear the next two tomorrow and on Wednesday. They describe and address a servant (or disciple in the third) and there has been much scholarly controversy about just who the servant is or represents. It could be Isaiah himself or another ideal prophet; or the Messiah; or the people of Israel; or the servant may be a sort of scapegoat. I think it is likely that Isaiah was deliberately elusive; the servant combines these characteristics and that is his fascination.
For Christians and especially in Holy Week there are noticeable parallels between the songs and Jesus’ life and passion. One reason for this may be a special relationship which Jesus clearly felt for Isaiah whom he quotes at the start of his ministry in Capernaum; those words resonate in verse 7 of our reading where the servant is sent to “open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners from the dungeon, from prison those who sit in darkness”. You will recall that Jesus reads a similar prophecy in the synagogue at Capernaum and then says “This is what is happening now”.
I don’t mean that Isaiah was specifically predicting Jesus’ life and passion, or that Jesus was consciously living out those songs, nor, quite, that the Gospel writers were deliberately constructing their story to fit the songs. But I do think those songs or their themes were in Jesus’ mind and the Gospel writers’ and exploring them for a while can help us to understand the nature of Jesus mission and death.
Tonight I want to look at the servant as prophet and to look at Jesus in the prophetic tradition. It’s clear that others saw him as such; when he works miracles at first they think he must be Elijah or one of the prophets; Peter at Caesarea Philippi recognises him as the Messiah while others think he must be one of the prophets. Tomorrow we shall hear how the servant was conceived as the word of God in his mother’s womb. So Jesus is conceived as the word comes to Mary; and John’s famous preface sees him as the word made flesh as in a similar way the prophets were before him.
But the servant’s word is not shouted aloud- in contrast to some prophets. He is mild, not concerned to break further the bruised people or snuff out the feeble flame of belief for something grander and bigger. He has concern on a human scale, as we see in Jesus. Yet both, like the other prophets, are concerned to bring confidence and re-establish justice because their authority comes from the creator of the universe.
The same word for servant is usually reserved for “servants” such as Abraham, Moses and David- those who serve God as leaders and kings and bring about his justice through righteousness. Jesus too is seen in similar, although equivocal, terms as a king; anointed as we heard in our Gospel, but as for a corpse; crowned but with thorns and on a cross. The king is a servant and life and salvation come through suffering and death.
The word translated as “Justice” has a wide range of meanings from legal fair play, to judgement and salvation- meanings which are of course echoed in the Gospel with its news of the Kingdom and eternal life; salvation on a national and international but also an individual and personal scale. This is the restoration of universal righteousness, when all shall stand again in the right relation to their maker; but it will be more than that as creation becomes fully meaningful, moving outside its physical boundaries. This is something new. The servant like Jesus promises that “the former things have come to pass; he declares new things and he announces them before they spring forth”. As they shall again in a few days as the Passion turns into the Resurrection and brings about a new creation; but we are not there yet and the servant has more to say before we shall arrive. Amen.