With the advent of Holy Week, we enter more fully into the wonder and mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. The readings for this week focus on the servant songs of Isaiah. These songs are an orchestrated medley between the calling of an individual and a community to a new identity and mission. To the exiled Israelites, likely in a fugue state in Babylon, pondering if they have been abandoned by God, facing an uncertain and unknown future, and searching for hope, the servant(s) is given a new identity – chosen, delightful one, upheld, spirit filled, called in righteousness, protected, servant.
How sweet the sound of such amazingly gracious language! You are not abandoned – you are chosen, protected. You are one in whom God delights. Facing a fearful future, you are called in righteousness and filled with God’s spirit. Surely such words struck a resonant chord with the exiles. And then the calling to be a servant.
But not just any servant, God’s servant. To assist God in God’s work of reconciliation, healing, mercy, and compassion. To assist God in the care and restoration of the harmony of creation. To be a light to the nations. The scale of such work is unimaginable.
This new identity of servant is just a prelude for with it comes a new mission – a call to move beyond introspection, inertia, and indifference into a radical imagining of God’s possibilities and out into God’s world. God is ready to do new things.
The song begins slowly, but the refrain is one of justice. With God’s spirit, the servant brings forth justice. The servant treats the vulnerable gently as justice is brought forth and established in the earth. A new society is imagined where brokenness is healed, and injustice redressed. The song crescendos to God’s unparalleled nature and willingness to do new things, things beyond human limits and human imagination.
It is no wonder that the Gospel writers and early church saw Jesus as this servant of God. He is the light to the nations, the one who brings God’s healing and reconciliation and justice to this world. The new, imagination of God, to become incarnate, dwell among us and die for us.
At the cross of Christ, we gather with all of creation around the suffering servant who died for our forgiveness and reconciliation. And at Good Friday, all creation rests, in fear, in hope, wondering. Pondering the mystery of a crucified God, who is and works beyond human expectation and anticipation. Baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are baptized into his mission and ministry. We join the ensemble known as the body of Christ to proclaim God’s love, healing and justice. To move beyond Lenten introspection out into the world, participating in Christ’s mission, singing an ode to joy.
Rev. Ann Fritschel, PhD
Professor of Hebrew Bible
Frank and Joyce Benz Chair of Scripture
Director for the Center of Theology and Land
Wartburg Theological Seminary
