Song 2 Isaiah 49:1-7
49:1 Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
49:2 He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.
49:3 And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
49:4 But I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.”
49:5 And now the LORD says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength-
49:6 he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
49:7 Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, “Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”
Last night I tried to give an idea of the way in which the suffering Servants Songs of Isaiah., the second of which we heard this evening, tell us something about what it was to be a prophet and the ways in which Jesus perhaps saw himself and was depicted as being within the prophetic tradition, as God’s voice calling for righteousness, a righteousness, a salvation and new creation that go beyond the traditional prophetic message.
But the servant is not only a prophet.
One of the seemingly more bizarre theories about who the suffering servant is meant to be is that he represents Israel itself, the people of God. The most telling aspect of this identification is the suffering of the servant. One strand of Jewish thought (we see it particularly in the Psalms) saw Israel as the victim of malign forces around it. In the suffering servant this is perhaps clearest in the song we will hear tomorrow and even clearer in the last song which I have printed on the sheet, although it’s not one of the readings for Holy Week. Tonight we hear of the servant doubting his achievements but yet confident that all along from conception as a man and as a nation, he and Israel have been under God’s special protection.
This rather suggests an introspective and self satisfied outlook- and Israel was certainly capable of both- but that is not the point of Isaiah’s song. Instead it addressed to people far away and to the coastlands and as elsewhere it is clear that the servant’s message and the nature of God’s chosen people, is not restricted to the narrow definition of Israel alone. He will give light to the nations and his salvation will reach to the end of the earth. The servant redefines God’s people to embrace all people.
These ideas seem to echo through John’s story of the Greeks approaching Jesus; John makes it quite clear that in dying Jesus will glorify God and draw all people to him as he is lifted up on the cross. It is through suffering that this redefinition and inclusive expansion can take place.
The peculiarly Christian development of this has been to see God’s people becoming his church and thus becoming the body of Christ, a body that suffers and yet comes back bringing everlasting life. The experience of suffering and the redemptive mission of the servant continue as we see ourselves as forming part of Christ’ s body and so God’s body – all being part of his creation. Often like the servant we suffer the scorn of outsiders or indeed spite from within, but we remain capable with the servant’s quiet patience and confidence, of realising God’s love for his people and his world, through our actions, in real and meaningful imitation of Christ’s actions and experience on earth.
In this way I think it’s not so bizarre to see the servant as Israel, although an expanded Israel that has become the sum of all its constituent individuals. Those individuals are each of us. In this sense the suffering servant is perhaps each of us too and each of us, by sharing in the suffering of the world, through identifying with the despised ad persecuted, can begin to bring about the same glorification of God that Christ achieved on the cross, glorification which entails homage from Kings and Princes as his salvation reaches to the end of the earth.
Amen.