Sunday, October 21, 2012
PREACHER: Pastor Paul Cannon
Isaiah 53:4-12; Mark 10:35-45
A fair warning to you all: This sermon is going to be as much of a lecture as it is a sermon. Now, most of my confirmation students will tell you that my lectures are really, really exciting and they like nothing better in the world to hear me talk and talk and talk (right students?). But don’t believe them for a second! I secretly suspect that maybe lectures aren’t their favorite things in the world.
And there is a good reason why I am going to do a slightly different type of sermon today, and that is because one of the readings is particularly special to the Christian tradition. And you might be surprised to hear that the reading I’m talking about isn’t our Gospel text – it’s actually the text that we read from Isaiah. That text is so important – it is so central to the Christian faith – that I’m not sure that Christianity would exist without it.
But before we jump into Isaiah, I want to read a little bit from our Gospel, because I think that the story in Mark will help set it up for us.
James and John come up to Jesus and they ask him,
“Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”… not a great start for the disciples here. But Jesus let’s them continue. “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left in glory.”
To which Jesus replies “You do not know what you are asking.” He’s saying to the disciples “When you want to be by my side, when you say that you want to serve me, when you say that you want to be glorified like I am going to be glorified…that doesn’t mean what you think it means.” So Jesus goes on to talk about one of the most common themes in Mark – servant leadership. He says, “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
And this is where the text connects with our reading from Isaiah today – because the Isaiah reading is actually a part of a series of texts that are known as “the Servant Songs.” And as I said earlier, they are among the most important texts, not only in the Old Testament, but in the entire Bible, because as Christians we believe that they foreshadow the life and death of Jesus.
Just listen to the words and tell me that you don’t see Jesus being described.
“Surely, he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken.”
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole.”
“Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
“The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
When I said earlier that Christianity might not exist without these texts from Isaiah, now you know why. Christianity finds its theology in these words – it inherits its central tenants of faith – from these words that were written over 700 years before Jesus was even born.
What’s more, we not only claim that the poetry that we find in these pages reminds us of Jesus… as Christians we claim that this poem is about Jesus. It looks ahead to his coming. It announces God’s plan to the world for salvation. And that salvation comes through God’s servant – God’s Son – Jesus Christ.
Ok. So far, there has been a lot of lecturing here and since you all have been so well behaved, I think you’ve earned a brief intermission, which has nothing to do with anything, except that it’s a nice break. So I thought, who wouldn’t want to see some pictures of my Danger – my dog.
This first one is him in his boots and Thunder Jacket.
This one is him proving to the green monster toy just how dangerous he really is. And I wanted to show you a clip of Danger wagging his tail, but I couldn’t get the technology to work.
Feel refreshed yet? Where were we?
The Servant Songs! That’s right. Now, there are a couple of different ways that we can think of these verses from Isaiah. I already mentioned that when most Christians hear the Servant Songs, they hear a prophesy about Jesus. And I think that for our faith, that is a great way to read it.
But another way that we can look at it, is to think of it as a biblical description of what it means to be a servant. It tells us what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wises to be first among you must be slave of all.”
What does it mean to be the greatest of all? In our terms it means that you are the champ. You’re the smartest, the fastest, the richest, the best dressed person with the biggest house.
But in God’s terms, to be the greatest means something quite different. It means you need to be a servant. The Servant Songs tell us that a servant is one who is willing to put the needs of others above their own needs. My mom has a servant’s heart. She used to tell us kids to think of others before you think of yourself. A servant to God spends their days with the less fortunate. A servant is a lamb – an innocent person who takes responsibility for others. A servant’s life is not an easy life to live.
Now you see why Jesus tells James and John that they just don’t get it. They still think that walking with Jesus means that there is going to be glory and riches and nice suits and big houses. That’s what they wanted when they asked “Can we sit at your right and left hand in heaven?”
Mark emphasizes just how little the disciples understand what it really means to follow Christ, because the next time that this phrase shows up in the Gospel of Mark is at the crucifixion of Jesus. Mark 15:27, “And then with him, they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.” So Jesus responds, to James and John “You do not know what you are asking. How could you possibly know what you are asking? The people on my right and left will be those who are crucified next to me.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if that were the last word that I said to you today, then nobody could blame you for getting up and walking out that door. But it’s not the end of the story anymore than the crucifixion was the end of Jesus. Amen? If you listen to words of Isaiah, if you listen to the song of the servant, then you will hear the good news embedded in and through the whole thing.
“Surely,” Isaiah writes, “He has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases.”
“But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole.”
“The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.”
Brothers and sisters, the good news is all over this text. But there is two pieces that I want to lift up. First, is that the suffering servant – Jesus Christ – has done it all. He has carried your diseases. He has made you whole. He has made you righteous. That gift belongs to you.
The second piece of good news is this: when we live our lives as God’s servant’s, when we visit the sick in hospitals, when we build bridges of relationships to Tanzania, when we serve in soup kitchens, when we join the fight against poverty and injustice, when we work to clean up a polluted world… we help bring God’s healing to the world. And in so doing, our own lives are healed as well.
So thanks be to God for our suffering servant Jesus Christ, and for all you who toil and serve alongside him.
Amen.
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