Facing the Suffering
Servant
Christ Church and St
Mary’s, 22nd October 2000
N.B. use acetates of crucifixion scenes
Isaiah 53
The man who was bishop of Notre Dame Cathedral in
Paris during the early part of the last century, was a great evangeliser. He
tried to reach out to unbelievers, scoffers, and cynics. He liked to tell the
story of a young man who would stand outside the cathedral and shout derogatory
slogans at the people entering to worship. He would call them fools and all
kinds of names. The people tried to ignore him but it was difficult.
One day the parish priest
went outside to confront the young man, much to the distress of the
parishioners. The young man ranted and raved against everything the priest told
him. Finally, he addressed the young scoffer by saving. "Look. Let’s get this over with once and for
all. I’m going
to dare you
to do something and I bet you can’t do it.” And of course the young man shot back, “I can do anything you propose, you
white-robed wimp!”
“Fine,” said the priest.
“All I ask you to do is to come into the sanctuary with me. I want you to stare
at the figure of Christ, and I want you to scream at the very top of your
lungs, as loudly as you can, ‘Christ died on the cross for me and I don’t care
one bit.”’
So the young man went into the sanctuary, and screamed as loud as he could, looking at the figure, “Christ died on the cross for me and I don’t care one bit.” The priest said, “Very good. Now do it again.” And again the young man screamed, with a little more hesitancy, “Christ died on the cross for me and I don’t care one bit.” “You’re almost done now,” said the priest. “One more time.”
The young man raised his
fist, kept looking at the statue, but the words wouldn’t come. He just could
not look at the face of Christ and say that any more.
After he had finished telling the story, the bishop
said, “I was that young man. That young man, that defiant young man was me. I
thought I didn’t need God, but found out that I did.”
He just could not look at the face of Christ and say any more. I think that sums up my experience while I've been thinking over these passages this week. In front of this picture of our Jesus I must confess to feeling a little tongue-tied, it’s like standing on the edge of a huge sea or a precipice which your eyes cannot fathom. Because if you were to try and sum up the nature of Jesus and the flavour of the love that flows from the heart of our Maker and Redeemer, you couldn't get better than this: Suffering Servant. God is the Servant who suffers. Yes, he's the king, the judge, the lover, the friend, the creator, the father, but above all he is the servant who suffers. The image of the Suffering servant is the template, the piece de resistance of who God is.
But
we need at first to see how this can be.
Because the poem we heard in
Isaiah was written 700 years before Jesus was born
and has various levels of prophetic significance. But the writers of the New Testament were in no doubt that this
passage pierced through to the heart of all that Jesus was and all that he
did. When the Ethiopian eunuch asked
Philip who this passage was about in Acts 8, he opened his mouth and started to
speak about Jesus. But more than that, even Jesus, in our gospel reading,
has the sense that his own identity is rooted in this description. When Jesus talks about Himself he says,
"The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve." As a
Suffering Servant. That’s what He’s talking about. "And to give his life
as a ransom for many." So a poem
written years before his time pierces through to the heart of Jesus’ destiny
and lays it bare before us.
To see the crucified God causes us to take a sharp
intake of breath - here is the final report on God, the epitaph, and the
essence. As we look and the cross there
can be known running away. Because for
the suffering servant there was no escape.
There was no running away for him.
We see our God oppressed; afflicted, stricken, tortured, cut off from
the land of living, wounded, struck down, crushed, in anguish, a victim of
injustice. His sorrows and pain
encapsulate all that blights our lives.
His was a death characterised by forsakenness. There is no mention of serenity, inward freedom, superiority, or
grandeur of soul. This was a death
coming all too soon, breaking off everything, totally degrading. This is not a crucifixion that took place in
a cathedral between two candles, but in front of an abusive crowd between two
thieves.
But all the while he faced his agony, the poem tells
us that he knew exactly what he was doing.
Animals may go quietly, not knowing what faces them. The suffering servant went quietly in full
knowledge. He did nothing and said
nothing but let everything happen to him.
The suffering servant shows us that at the core of
the universe God's heart pulses with a love which bears pain and thrives on
humble service. The Son of Man who
rides on the clouds and holds the keys of death and hell came not to be served
but to serve. With his hands he could
have crushed his enemies, but he chose to let them be mastered by a strong
sharp nail. He could have run faster
than the wind, but he chose to have his feet forced into an unnatural angle and
pinioned to wood. There is much evil in
this world but the God we worship chooses not to defeat it by force but by the
power of suffering love.
As
I look at the suffering servant I have two confessions to make. Sometimes I think I am too good for the
cross. I don't really need it. I'm okay.
I'm a nice guy. When things go
wrong and I am apt to act like Adam-blame the wife, or anyone else for that
matter. The other week I arrived at
church and 10:45 on a Wednesday to see lots of people leaving the church. Somebody had forgotten to take the 10:30
communion service. As I walked up the
path I thought to myself rather smugly, "Well someone’s made a real mess
here." I thought I had better
check to see who it was. As I looked at
the rota in the vestry I thought I saw the initials G. D. C. “This can't be!” I thought. But even without a magnifying glass to
examine it, it was clear that it was me.
My relief that someone else was to blame was short-lived.
I
am also prone to making excuses. Maybe
I am like the Anglican vicar who was stopped in his car by a policeman. The policeman smelt alcohol on
his breath and then he saw an empty wine bottle on the floor. "Sir, he
said, “have you been drinking?" And the vicar said, "Just
water."
The policeman said, "Then why do I smell wine?" And the vicar looks down at the bottle and
says, "Good Lord, He's done
it again!" My other technique for
being too good for the cross is by carefully calling my faults by another
name. Perhaps we all do it. So we are not thoughtlessly late for a
meeting, we just have a "rescheduled arrival time." We don't gossip, we just participate in
"the speedy transmission of near-factual information." We don't get unjustly angry with someone; we
just give him or her what he or she needs to hear.
But the truth is that maybe if any
of us think that we are too good for the cross it is because we haven't looked
at the suffering servant and knelt before his love. Just as we feel stupid when we meet someone more clever than
ourselves, or we might feel less attractive when we stand beside beauty, or
when we are standing next to someone with a full head of hair we might feel
more bald, so when we are truly led to look at the face of the suffering
servant we know in our hearts that we are never too good for the cross. We know that we all, each of us, have
wandered like sheep from his love.
Whether it was in one great leap, or in the subtle selfishnesses of each
day. If we think we are too good for
the cross then maybe we have failed to see its truth. We are like those who hid their faces from him and held him of no
account.
But my second confession is this:
sometimes I think I am too bad for the cross.
Jesus was wounded for other people’s sins; other people
are made whole by the stripes of blood running down his back, his blood is shed
for others. For me often there is a
struggle to know that my iniquity has been laid on him. That he was wounded for my transgressions,
that his punishment was to make me whole. That it was the will of the Lord, we can translate that the pleasure
of the Lord, to crush his own son, so that
I might be won.
Sometimes
we think we have not done enough to be worthy of this great love. But how can we assume that we can ever do
enough? Can we ever do more than what
we see here? There is no ambiguity
here. There is no pain, no anguish, no
sin, no disappointment, and no death that has not been nailed to this
cross. We do not make ourselves worthy
of it. We cannot. It is the cross that makes us worthy, and
that asks us to become suffering servants ourselves.
Are you too good for the cross? Or perhaps you feel you are too bad for
God’s love? We are going to listen to a
song now. As we do so, take the
opportunity to meet our God at the cross.
Maybe you need the suffering servant to draw you to the fact that this
is for you – whether you are too good or too bad. If you are looking for God, this is where you will find him.
Oh lead me to the place where I can find you
Oh lead me to the place where you’ll be
Lead me to the cross where we first met
Draw me to my knees so we can talk
Let me feel your breath
Let me know you’re here with me