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9/12 - 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Jesus the suffering servant
Many Jewish scholars struggle with this passage from Isaiah in our first reading because it clearly points to Jesus. Although they have offered other contenders such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, or even the Jewish people as the ‘suffering servant’. After all, throughout their history, Jews have been despised and rejected. However, none of the contenders appear to fit the substitutionary roles the suffering servant plays. None of those contenders can heal us by their wounds and restore us to God. Again, the reference is to a single person. This passage also leaves the Old Testament readers with no excuse. Jesus made it obvious that he was the suffering servant. Even if people never read the New Testament, they can see from the example Jesus gave that no one matches the Suffering Servant quite as well as he does.
In today’s passage, the third of the servant songs, Isaiah depicts a servant-disciple, a prophet and more. As a disciple, the servant’s every day begins with obedient listening; he is in intimate communion with God, sharing God’s own heart. Because he is a prophet, the rest of his day is spent in speaking God’s word to the weary, or as Isaiah says in another place, giving hope to those who walk in the shadow of death.
More than any other prophet, Isaiah’s servant submits to suffering, accepting it without complaint. The difference between Jeremiah, who loudly lamented his suffering, and the one who gave his back to those who beat him demonstrates the distinction between a Jeremiah who, even knowing what it costs, does what the master asks, and the suffering servant whose communion with God is so profound that he understands the rejection he suffers as a rejection of God and believes that God shares that rejection with him. There is no complaint because they are undergoing it together.
The mystery of the Suffering Servant is, indeed, a strange design. Yet, this is what led the apostle Paul to declare that he determined “to know nothing while I was with you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). It is in the presence of the Crucified One, God’s Suffering Servant, that we finally begin to see the full contours of God’s great plan. In the gift of God’s Son into the world—One born to suffer and die—we finally come to fully know and comprehend the love of God.
You may have been disappointed in the love you received from your parents, or, if you are married, from your spouse. However, in Jesus Christ the fullness of God’s love is revealed. It is love alone that transforms us. We will never hate our sin enough to leave it. It is God’s love that transforms us and empowers us to change. It is in the arms of His great embrace that we discover what it really means to be a child of God, adopted into His family. There are many wonderful things we can say about God. We can joyfully declare that our Triune God is a great King or our High Priest or the greatest Prophet, but there is no greater declaration than the profound truth that God is love, holy love. Yes, God is love—we know it because Jesus Christ came into the world as the Suffering Servant. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The moment we accept the suffering of Jesus as the expression of great love, we begin to understand in depth the cost of loving – giving without expecting a return. This in turn makes us true lovers who can actively love without counting the cost or expecting anything in return.
With God’s blessings,