Session 4
Introduction to reading in service
This week at Midhurst I have been offering some Holy Week meditations on the so-called ‘Servant Songs’ in Isaiah. Although their immediate application was to the prophet himself and to the People of God in exile in Babylon at the time, they also helped form Jesus’ understanding of his ministry and mission, and the Gospel writers’ understanding of Jesus. Not only that, through Jesus they have application to our lives.
There are four ‘Servant Songs.’ The first three were the Old Testament readings for Monday to Wednesday in Holy Week, the fourth comes today, Good Friday. It does so, because it is the one most associated with the death of Jesus. We will hear it in a moment, before we hear from the Gospel according to Mark.
If the first Servant Song was about God’s People, Israel, in exile, and the second and third were about this prophet ministering to them, who is this fourth Song about? It’s hard to say exactly who at the time would have fulfilled this description, but we do know it found greater fulfilment in Jesus and his suffering. So it will be the framework for my reflections
Most of us know what it’s like to be misunderstood. It can be quite innocent, when someone mishears what we have said. Or maybe they just don’t get on our wavelength. These experiences can be frustrating, but we can come through them with a smile.
It’s worse when someone wilfully misunderstands us. Perhaps they are too lazy to make the effort to listen. Worse, it may suit their purposes to misunderstand our words, our actions, or our values. Then it is a malicious misunderstanding, which can be both painful and worrying.
The fourth Servant Song and the life and death of Jesus show us One who was regularly misunderstood. Never was that more apparent than at the Cross. If he was truly the Messiah, then in the eyes of most people, he shouldn’t be suffering the fate of execution.
So we’re going to think about some of the ways the suffering Jesus on the Cross is misunderstood, to find how we might apprehend him more truly, and worship and serve him more faithfully.
The first misunderstanding is about image:
Just as there were many who were appalled at him –
his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and his form marred beyond human likeness – (52:14)
If you’ve ever watched Mel Gibson’s movie ‘The Passion of the Christ’, you will know that it depicts the suffering and disfigurement of Jesus graphically. From being flogged and having the crown of thorns pushed into his head, through carrying the crossbeam, to having the nails hammered in, and the agonising death by suffocation. The Gospel writers don’t go into that detail, and I’m sure that was because people in their day knew only too well what death by crucifixion entailed. It was specifically meant to be an horrendous form of death, as a sadistic deterrent. That’s why Rome left crosses up around the countryside – to remind people.
This was not the fate of a victor. This was defeat and shame. The Apostle Paul said that it was a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks for the Messiah’s death to be central to faith.
You may know that in Islam the Qu’ran denies that Jesus died on the Cross at all. Muslims cannot accept that this should be the fate of a divine prophet.
Nothing about the Cross fits any image of a glorious, triumphant leader.
No wonder we also read that
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. (53:2b-3)
He just doesn’t fit our glossy image of a true leader.
Yet our passage began with the words
See, my servant will act wisely;
he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. (52:13)
For what is foolishness to the Greeks and to millions of others is the wisdom of God. On Good Friday, we learn that God has an upside-down, counter-cultural way of transforming lives and changing our world. It isn’t about a gleaming image and power that rolls over others like a tank. Transformation comes as the Son of God, the True Servant, absorbs the darkness and evil of the world for us.
That’s why we also read that
so he will sprinkle many nations,
and kings will shut their mouths because of him.
For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand. (52:15)
May God give us understanding of his ways which are not our ways. May we cast aside our shallow devotion to someone’s image and accept instead the substance of what Jesus accomplishes at the Cross.
The second misunderstanding is about character:
Bluntly, people think that the Servant – or Jesus – is suffering because he deserves to do so. That’s why you end up on a Cross. You have committed a crime. You are sentenced.
Think of the dialogue with the two other men who were executed with Jesus. The one who appeals to him, saying ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,’ tells the other prisoner off for scorning Jesus. And he does so by reminding him that the two of them are getting their just desserts. However, he says, Jesus has done no wrong.
Thus, we come to these verses in Isaiah:
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (53:4-6)
‘Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.’ There is the misunderstanding that Jesus had the character of a sinner, that he had done something worthy of the death penalty. The religious leaders thought that was true, because they considered Jesus had committed the sin of blasphemy. Pilate never understood the nature of Jesus’ claim to kingship, only grasping that if he were a king then he was a usurper and a political threat.
But instead of suffering because he was a sinner, Jesus suffered because we are sinners. And he suffered for our sins. He bore our suffering. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. He was punished and wounded for us.
Some people reject the idea that Jesus could have suffered in our place. But there have been examples occasionally in courts of law where a judge has paid the fine he had imposed on someone who was found guilty. Before God, we are guilty. But in Christ he pays the penalty. The punishment that brought us peace was on him.
We need to reject the misunderstanding that Jesus was a sinner. He was not. He was instead our sin-bearer. And in that we find God’s offer to us of forgiveness, freedom, and healing, even of being in the right with him.
The third and final misunderstanding is about martyrdom:
In other words, did God kill Jesus for a good cause?
And if that language shocks you – God killing Jesus – I can assure you there are people who interpret the Cross that way. Some do so in order to make it sound repulsive and have all the more reason to reject Christianity. There are also a few Christians who even say that is what happened.
And it appears to be a misunderstanding that is present in the prophet’s day. Listen again to the closing verses of this Servant Song. You will hear both the misunderstanding and the correction:
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors. (53:10-12)
There it was at the beginning: it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. But what the prophet goes on to show is that this was a partnership between the Servant (Jesus) and God. For God rewards his Servant after his suffering.
And that’s exactly what salvation is at the Cross. We don’t simply speak of Jesus being our substitute, we say more than that. We say that the ‘atonement’ (i.e., what Jesus achieved at the Cross) is God’s self-substitution. God and Jesus are not opposed. They are working together.
It is as the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
God allows the Cross. God gives up his Son to the Cross. (Parents, think about giving up your children in some way.) But God does not kill Jesus, even if for a few hours Jesus feels forsaken by his Father. God and Jesus are in partnership here, bringing reconciliation to the world, to us, to you, to me.
And that is why we are here today. Not to cower before a cruel God, nor conversely to mourn a terrible mistake. But to worship the One Who loved the world so much that he gave up his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Big Circumstance 