Sunday Evening’s Sermon: The Servant’s Calling

Tomorrow morning, I take my final Covenant Service of the year. So that will be a repeat of the sermon I posted a fortnight ago. In the evening, I have to preach a fresh sermon. I’ve chosen the morning Lectionary Old Testament lesson. The words, ‘It is too light a thing … ‘ spoke powerfully to me on a personal level. You may see some missional-type thinking in the second of the two points.

Isaiah 49:1-7

Introduction
In 1988, my sister was completing her studies to become an Occupational Therapist. She had to do one final placement. Within reason, she could pick it herself. She chose to go to Rwanda, and work in a missionary hospital for three months.

The experience was a culture shock for her in several ways. She learned the sense of being on African time: that if you made an appointment with a patient at the hospital for Tuesday at 10 a. m., that meant ‘Tuesday – some time’. She discovered the – ahem – excitement of African driving styles, that would put Italians to shame, and on far poorer roads.

But the missionary culture was strange, too. The missionaries lived on a compound, separate from the people they served. Worship was strange. Although African drums called people to worship on Sunday rather than church bells, the service was Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Seventeenth century English for twentieth century Africans!

The biggest shock was something else, though. The missionaries employed servants at the compound. Although it was justified as a way of giving jobs to the locals, she was uneasy. Although she is by nature bossy, she was still uncomfortable!

I guess most of us would feel queasy about having servants, too. It is part of a past that feels a long way away now – except when you meet elderly people today whose first job was ‘in service’. And it’s a long time since ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ was on the TV to remind us of a past age.

We have a big bridge to cross, every time we hear ‘servant’ as an image of discipleship in the Bible. And it looms large in this part of Isaiah. These verses from chapter 49 are one of several so-called ‘Servant Songs’. They appear to come from the time when God’s people had been exiled in Babylon for many years, but are now only a decade or two away from liberation and return. As the prophet brings his message of hope, ‘servant’ is a regular metaphor he uses for the relationship between humans and God. To some extent, he applies it to himself, to the people of God and to the longed-for Messiah. To that list, we would add ourselves.

Being a servant of the Lord has similarities with, and differences from the general notion of servanthood or slavery. Yes, to serve God puts us ‘under orders’. We don’t have the right to negotiate our terms with God, however much we try at times. But at the same time, God treats us with dignity and love, to the point that Jesus told his disciples, ‘I no longer call you servants but friends.’ And he did this, because he invited them in on his plans, unlike a master and a servant.

And our passage is one of encouragement for God’s servant. Although the servant knows he has a gift with words (his mouth is like a sharp sword, and he is like an arrow hidden in a quiver, verse 2) and that he is called the Lord’s servant (verse 3), nevertheless we then hear:

But I said, ‘I have laboured 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.’ (Verse 4)

Sometimes in the Christian life, you can think, what’s the point? Why am I doing this? Whatever I do, it achieves nothing. I’ve wasted my time. Is that ever your experience? It is mine, from time to time. So how does God encourage discouraged servants? There are many ways, but I see two in this reading:

1. A Renewed Call
Straight after the expression of despair comes a recapitulation of the servant’s call:

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 honoured in the sight of the Lord,
   and my God has become my strength— (verse 5).

Before the new word comes, there is a reminder of the old word. God called the servant to bring Jacob (Israel) back to him. The initial call is a call to God’s people. In bringing them back to God, it is a pastoral and prophetic call. It is the call that prophets answered over centuries to speak God’s word to God’s people. That is why this prophet has ‘a mouth like a sharp sword’ and is like an arrow hidden in a quiver. There is a challenging word to be given to the people of God. In calling people back to the Lord, it is inevitably a call to repentance. It is a word that describes how far people have gone from God, how he longs for them to return, and what that will involve. It is a ministry fulfilled many times in Scripture: Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, John the Baptist and others.

Oh yes, and someone called Jesus. He lived his entire life within the boundaries of the Promised Land. The vast majority of the people to whom he ministered were Jews, not Gentiles. (There are occasional exceptions, such as the centurion who showed true faith and the Gentile leper who returned to give thanks.) He told the Syro-Phoenician woman who was desperate for healing that his focus was on the people of God.

And the content of what he said? Not all of it could fall under the heading, ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’. Alongside all the good news for the poor, the healings and other miracles, come stern words for the rich and the religious leadership. His parables of the kingdom challenge people to decision about following him. If you had Jesus in your church, then it might not all be the comfortable ride you had anticipated.

And down the centuries since then, God has called people in his church to bring them back to himself. The apostle Peter said that judgment begins with the house of God. Our witness is at stake, and so messengers are sent to us with a burden for the repentance of the Church.

Certainly, the most vigorous Local Preacher in my home circuit was an elderly Welshman, John Evill. I remember what today we would call his catchphrases – not that he would have stooped to something so trivial: ‘Do you believe it?’ He didn’t mean, do you assent to this in your mind? He meant, do you show you believe this by the way you live? He also used to say, ‘I only challenge you after first challenging myself.’ As a young church steward, I recall once in the vestry before a service asking him to ‘give it to us with both barrels’.

Perhaps that isn’t the best metaphor, and yes as a young Christian, I could say all sorts of reckless things, but I think John’s ministry had modelled something for me: responsible Gospel preaching doesn’t simply give people strokes. So much is at stake. How easily we drift in our commitment, we preachers included. John Evill knew that. As the old hymn puts it, ‘Prone to wander, Lord I feel it.’ But the call to repentance from the God of grace needs to be issued continually. And it can sap one’s hope to show people the ways in which they may be raised up, only for them not to do what is healthy for them. It can indeed be discouraging to keep preaching that way, when there isn’t always a positive response. But God renews the call, because it is vital.

2. An Extended Call
Now here’s the strange twist in the tail: the servant is discouraged, and God renews the call to restore the people of God. Surely, that’s enough? It sounds like a hard task. But that isn’t how God describes it:

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.’ (Verse 6)

The heavy and sometimes discouraging responsibility of restoring God’s people is said to be ‘too light a thing’! But here we have it: God’s call to his servant is not merely to work within the church, it is to serve him in the world. ‘I will give you as a light to the nations,’ God says. You will be my witnesses not merely among my people, but to others.

Again, the Old Testament prophets often reflected this. Much of their message was directed to Israel, but there were also oracles to or about the nations. The bigger problem was whether the nation of Israel fulfilled her call to be a light to the nations. Many think the story of Jonah, with his reluctance to go where God sent him, and his grumpiness when he got there, even when Nineveh repented, is a message aimed at Israel’s reluctance.

And while Jesus’ ministry was geographically confined within national borders, he knew the outcome would be a movement that began at Pentecost in Jerusalem and swept through Judea, to the ends of the earth. The book of Acts gives us some early highlights of that process.

It means there is a twin call for the Church today. The call to build up the people of God through calls to repentance and the exercise of pastoral care remains, and is renewed for us. But it is too light a call on its own. We too hear the call to be ‘a light to the nations’. It is equally important. The faithful church of Jesus Christ is committed both to inward renewal and to outward witness.

During a sabbatical five years ago, Debbie and I worshipped at the local Baptist church. When the pastor (who was a friend of ours) preached, the sermons were worthwhile. When others preached, you could not be so sure. On one occasion, a deacon preached. He clearly fancied himself as an evangelical superstar, prancing and prowling from one side of the platform to the other as he dispensed his wisdom on the grateful congregation. His priceless pearl was when he told us that Christians would always care about how you really are, whereas non-Christians will ask how you are but never mean it. Debbie and I looked at each other in disbelief, knowing very well some good friendships with non-Christians.

It has been our joy, too, here, to build friendships with non-Christians. It is our privilege to pray for them when they are in need. Indeed, there have been times when – contrary to the Baptist deacon – it has been more refreshing to spend time with non-Christians than church people! Then it seems ‘too light a thing to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel’. It is an honour to invite the widow for a coffee, and support the worried mother whose son is under Great Ormond Street. We do this because of our faith, and our friends are under no illusions about that. And we pray that the opportunity will come to be more explicit about what Jesus can do for them.

Yesterday afternoon, Mark and I killed some time in the children’s department of Waterstone’s while Debbie took Rebekah for a treat at Claire’s Accessories. As we wandered around, there was a couple with their primary-age son. He was choosing a book. He picked up a children’s Bible. ‘What do you want a Bible for, weird boy?’ said his mother. ‘Why don’t you get something on dragonology?’

So there you go – ‘dragonology’ – or whatever the proper name is – is less weird than the Bible. Being a light to the nations will risk the accusation of being weird. But it is our high and holy calling to take that risk, alongside what we might feel more comfortable doing, restoring ‘the survivors of Israel’.

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