In our reading through the Gospel according to Mark, Sunday by Sunday, we are now reaching the story's climax. Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem with his disciples. He has repeatedly told them that ahead of him, in the holy city, lie rejection, suffering and death, but God will raise him from the dead. The disciples again and again fail to understand Jesus; they also show by arguing with each other about status that they have not begun to understand the humble self-giving at the heart of Jesus' life and mission.
At the end of today's reading, Jesus says: 'the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many' (10:45). The terrifying prospect of his death is approaching, but Jesus sees his death as bringing great benefit 'for many', like a ransom bringing freedom for prisoners. That phrase 'for many' is on Jesus' mind during these days; not longer after, at the Last Supper, the night before his death, he gives the disciples a cup of wine, saying: 'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many' (14.24).
Where has it come from, Jesus' conviction that he must lay down his life, must shed his blood, 'for many'? With these words, Jesus points to the importance to him of the passage from Isaiah that we heard earlier, which speaks of a servant of God who 'poured out himself to death... [and] bore the sin of many' (Isaiah 53:12). As so often, to understand how Jesus thinks about himself and his mission, we need to be aware of the scriptures in which is heart and mind are soaked. As he approaches death, Jesus says: 'the Son of Man goes as it is written of him' [in scripture] (Mark 14:21). His life, his ministry, and now his coming death all fulfil what has been written in scripture.
To understand Jesus, our Jewish Lord and Saviour, we must understand how he was shaped by the scriptures he read, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. I'm glad that at St Ursula's we include the Old Testament reading every Sunday. Even though sermons tend to focus on the Gospel or the New Testament reading, it's vital not to let the Old Testament readings slip out of mind. Today I'm going to look mainly at our reading from Isaiah, which seems to have been so significant to Jesus, and also to the New Testament writers as they thought about Jesus and especially about his death.
As you can see from the way it has been printed, this reading is a poem. It is one of four so called 'Servant Songs' in Isaiah about a mysterious, suffering figure called by God to serve his purposes for the people of Israel, and also more widely among the nations of the world. I should mention that Jews and Christians have always argued about the Servant Songs. Jews see the Servant of the Lord as a picture or personification of the Jewish people as a whole, called by God to a way of costly suffering to bring God's light to the wider world. You can imagine how experience of terrible suffering and persecution over the centuries has strengthened this Jewish interpretation. But Christians have always seen the Servant as a prophetic image fulfilled specifically in the one person Jesus Christ. There isn't time now to go further into that complex, sensitive matter, but it's good at least to be aware of it.
The poem begins and ends on a note of triumphant success. In the opening verses God says that his servant will prosper, be exalted and lifted up, be very high; the rulers of the nations will be startled into taking him seriously – they 'shall shut their mouths because of him' (52:13, 15). At the end, there is a sense of mission accomplished: out of the servant's anguish 'he shall see light' and 'find satisfaction'; and God will vindicate him, allotting him 'a portion with the great' (53:11, 12). So whatever dark places this poem takes us into, it is held by this framing confidence that God is at work in the story of the servant, and will take it to a good outcome.
But in the main body of the poem the themes are much darker. God's servant, though completely innocent, is treated with contempt and violence, rejected, deprived of justice, and in the end killed. We are told that there is nothing immediately attractive about him: 'he had no form or majesty that we should look at him; nothing in his appearance that we should desire him' (53:2). This is not one of the world's beautiful people; rather, the poem suggests a repulsive, 'marred' appearance (52:14), perhaps hinting at the deformed features of a leper, from which people instinctively turn away (53:3). If God is present and active in this man, it's in a strangely hidden way, easy to overlook – especially when you consider the striking appearance of some of God's faithful servants of the past, such as Moses (Exodus 2:2, Deuteronomy 34:7) and David (1 Samuel 16:12), who were noted for their attractive, robust physical presence. It was natural to believe God had blessed them and was working through them. But you wouldn't look twice at Isaiah's miserable suffering servant. In fact, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was rejected by God rather than God's right hand man.
And yet, in ways that are very hard to understand – probably beyond the full grasp of the poet writing these words centuries before Christ – God is deeply present and active in this unimpressive figure; God's 'arm' (symbolizing his power) is revealed in the weakness of the servant (53:1). The servant may not speak a word (53:7) but God is speaking eloquently through him. The suffering he endures is not a sign that God has rejected him, which was a common way of looking at suffering. In fact, the suffering of the servant seems to be part of God's plan, God's will (53:10). In some mysterious way, the servant is taking upon himself the suffering inflicted on him by a hostile, contemptuous world, not as punishment of his own sins – in fact, he is innocent (53:9) – but as the punishment of the world that is rejecting him: 'the Lord has laid on him [the suffering servant] the iniquity of us all' (53:6).
This mysterious poem portrays a person rejected and killed by a hostile world but vindicated by God beyond death. His suffering and death, far from being meaningless, are a drama in which God is acting; so this suffering and death become the place where the world that rejects God's servant is offered forgiveness and new life.
This is one of the scriptural passages that Jesus seems to be turning over in his mind as he approaches Jerusalem. Like Isaiah's suffering servant, he is called to pour himself out to death, to be numbered with the transgressors, and so to bear the sin of many (53:12). The disciples could not understand him when he spoke of this, but that was hardly surprising. Before the coming of Jesus this passage was shrouded in mystery. The Jews were expecting and longing for a Messiah-king, a mighty son of David, who would come with impressive power to liberate Israel from all its enemies. They were not expecting God to redeem them by sending a suffering servant.
But the same disciples who, when he speaks of his coming death, repeatedly fail to understand Jesus, and even push back against him, become witnesses of his death and resurrection. When they encounter the risen Jesus, who still has wounds in his hands, they begin to learn that the death that they saw as such a disastrous failure of his mission, was in fact his supreme achievement, the point where God's working in Jesus reached the summit of glory. They could now begin to see that Jesus was indeed the Son of David, the majestic Messiah-king they had longed for, but that this king was also a suffering servant. The goal of this Messiah's mission was not to see the streets of Jerusalem flowing with the blood of the Roman occupiers, but to pour out his own blood and bear the sins of many, so reconciling to God not just his people Israel but all the nations of the world.
So it is no surprise that when the disciples start to proclaim the crucified and risen Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and saviour of the world, Isaiah's strange poem about God's suffering servant was one of the go-to scriptures which now spoke most powerfully to them of the glory of their crucified Lord. (See, for example, Acts 8:26-40 and 1 Peter 2.18-25.)
Like the disciples, we too are slow to learn, slow to let go of our own ideas about God, slow to let God be to us as God is in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. God was in Christ, his glory hidden, accepting the world's rejection and violence, accepting the crucifixion the world laid upon Christ, and so showing us true beauty, true power, true wisdom. All that remains for us is to be grateful, and to express that gratitude by offering our lives to God day by day in the obedience of faith.
'All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.' (Isaiah 53:6)
Let us pray:
Thanks be to thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,
for all the benefits thou hast given me,
for all the pains and insults thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
may I know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly, day by day.
Amen.
(St Richard of Chichester)
David Marshall