Lent 5: Suffering Servant Song for Sin

(Preached on March 25, 2012)

            How did Jesus come to understand the nature of God’s call upon his life?  Certainly he prayed.  Certainly he had conversations with others.  And certainly he read and knew the Bible which at that time was only the Old Testament.  And in those 40 books were the some passages that shaped Jesus more clearly than others.  I believe some of the clearest are the four servant songs in Isaiah. (Isaiah 42:1-9, 49:1-7, 50:4-11 and 52:13-53:12)

            Each Sunday in Lent we have looked at one of the Servant songs and asked, ‘How did we see this song in Jesus?’ and ‘how might this song be present in us?’

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

Image by Friedrich Peter

13 See, my servant will act wisely; he will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted. 14 Just as there were many who were appalled at him--his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any man and his form marred beyond human likeness-- 15 so will he 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.
 

53:1 Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. 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 men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten 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 upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. 10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. 11 After the suffering of his soul, 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.
 

The way in…

“Bring justice to the nations,” this was the servant’s mission in the first song.  “Bring salvation to the ends of the earth,” this was the servant’s mission in the second song.  Know ‘the word that sustains the weary,’ this is the mission of the servant in the third song.   And do you remember the focus from last week?  The servant will ‘spring (startle) many nations and kings will shut their mouths because of him.”  For kings, being politicians, we know that shutting their mouths is no small thing.  But how?  How will the servant do this?

Every week on Tuesday I start a wrestling match.  My opponent is a passage of scripture.  On Tuesday we meet and start to dance around.  I read it.  I make some notes.  On Thursday I type it up and begin to move the words around.  By Friday the passage has usually flipped me on my back a couple of times and often on Saturday it seems as if it has me pinned.  But by Sunday morning, I have always found a counter-move that puts me in a position to pin the text long enough for it to give me a message.  What I offer you on Sundays is the result of that week long wrestling match.  It’s like Jacob wrestling with the angel.  One of the moves I often use on these passages is that of repetition.  I look at the passage to see what phrases are repeated.  For some reason I failed to use that move last week, but remembered it this week.  And so what did I find repeated? 

“He was pierced for our transgressions…crushed for our iniquities…” 

“The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”

“For the transgression of my people he was stricken…”

“…he was numbered with the transgressors.  For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” 

Do you hear some repetition? What is being repeated?  Transgression, iniquity and in the last verse he gets right to it, sin.   Four times this song refers to transgressions, three times to iniquities and once it sums it up in sin.  To get at salvation, to get at justice and even to get at weariness, the servant now comes to the root infection, the cancer that is causing the distortion.  In this song the servant is tasked with dealing with SIN.  How in the world will he do that? 

To answer that, I need to reflect upon four questions.  First, what is sin?  Second, how do we usually deal with sin?  Third, how did the servant deal with sin?  Finally, what does this mean for us and the world?  Now that you know the trajectory for today’s message, I want to pause and see if anyone wants to get off the flight.  It may be a rough ride and I will even tell you that while I hope you leave today with more peace, you may leave disturbed.  If you want to get off now, I will harbor no ill will.  Anyone?  Okay, buckle up.  Here we go.   

What is sin?  Displaced-Desire

            What is sin?  amartia is the Greek word which apparently was originally an archer’s term meaning ‘to miss the mark.’  But what does this mean?  What is the mark and how do we miss it?  To answer that, let’s go back to the story of the first sin. 

            “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth…” God went on to create humans, Adam and Eve; placed them in paradise, the garden of Eden; gave them freedom, freedom to do and eat anything their hearts desired with one exception.  In the center of the garden were two trees; one of life and the other of knowledge of good and evil.  “You are free to eat from any trees,” God told Adam, ‘except these, for if you do, you will surely die.”  You know the story.

            Along comes the serpent who was very crafty.  He approaches the woman and asks about the trees.  When Eve replies with God’s boundaries the serpent counters God’s claim and tells her she will not die, rather her eyes will be opened and ‘be like God, knowing good and evil.’  And then what happens?  This is the moment, right here where it all starts.  “…the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took it and ate it.”

            Now, where is the sin?  Some would say it is in the disobedience of eating the fruit.  Some would say it is in distrusting God’s word.  Though these aren’t wrong, I think there is a better answer.  The seed of the sin sits in displaced-desire. 

            Until this point all of the desires of Adam and Eve were the same as that of God.  They were, after all, created in God’s image.  They desired what God desired and they were at perfect peace.  The moment the serpent pointed out the desirability of the fruit, things changed and the woman was no longer content with the freedom of all the other fruit.  What is sin?  Sin is the failure to desire what God desires.  Not convinced?  Let me offer some more examples.

            In Deuteronomy Moses tells the people to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ (6:5)  Love is desiring not only the other, but also desiring what they desire.  Jesus echoes this command as the most important and adds its horizontal counterpart to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18).  These commands are even echoed in the 10 commandments.  In the first commandment we are told, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  In other words, desire nothing more than me.  It is a vertical relationships.  By the tenth commandment it has become horizontal when we hear, “Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s house…wife, servants, etc.”  Do not desire that which belongs to your neighbor.  And perhaps the clearest articulation of this core calling comes in the Lord’s Prayer when Jesus says, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven…”  It is God’s will, God’s desire that is the center of the bull’s eye.  The more we share God’s desire, the closer we are to center.  The less we share God’s desire, the further from the mark we are. 

              Sin is the result of displaced desires.  Are you with me?  If so, let’s jump to the second question, how do we usually deal with sin? 

How do we usually deal with sin?  Triangulation and Vengeance

            Let’s return to the first couple.  You know the story.  Eve shares with Adam and all of a sudden they become discontent with their clothing.  Of course this is the birth of one of the greatest fields of desire; shopping for clothes.  Being that there were no malls, they sewed their own fig leaves and tried to do the best they could.  And then who would happen to show up but God calling.  And what did they do?  They hid.  When God finds them, Adam explains that they were hiding because they were ashamed of their nakedness.  Here we have another consequence of displaced desires; shame.  When God asks if they’d eaten from the tree he told them not to we come to the ultimate and most damaging consequence of displaced-desires.  What does Adam say?  “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.”   Adam does what we like to call ‘passing the buck’ or ‘shifting the shame.’  When confronted with sin our tendency is to attempt to shift the blame onto someone else.  If you’ve ever been a parent or worked with kids you know this to be as true as death and taxes.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Well, Janie did it first.” But what seems like not too big a deal in kids or this ancient story can quickly become really nasty.

            If you flip over one chapter to the children of Adam and Eve you read the story of Cain and Able. Again, you know the story.  Cain was a gardener.  Able was a shepherd.  Seeking to please God they each brought an offering.  For some reason, which is not entirely clear, Able’s offering of meat was favorable to God while Cain’s offering of fruits and vegetables was not.  Apparently God was not much of a vegetarian.  Who knows?  Regardless, Cain was hurt and angry.  He desired God’s favor which is a good thing, but when he didn’t get it instead of accepting his own fault, he did what his dad did, he found a scapegoat.  And thus we have the story of the first murder when Cain lures his brother out into the field and kills him.  This brothers and sisters are the ultimate consequences of displaced desires, of sin; eventually, it comes to violence. 

Triangulation

            Are you still with me?  Let me attempt to illustrate this with something called triangulation.  Triangulation is the attempt to draw closer to one person by pushing another away. 

            Adam, desiring God’s approval, seeks to draw himself closer by pushing Eve away.  Cain, seeking God’s approval, tries to draw himself closer by pushing Able away.  Does this make sense?  It happens all the time.  The first week I showed up here at the church one person approached me and said, “Watch out for so and so, they’ll take over the church if you let them.”  Now what was going on there?  Person A attempted to draw closer to the new pastor by pushing person B away. 

            The simplest form of triangulation is gossip.  When we gossip we push a third person away so that it brings the two of us closer.  You can see this in sports.  I draw close to people I don’t even know because we want to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.  This also happens in cultures.  Do you remember the part in the movie Braveheart where the Irish man shows up among the Scottish highlanders.  They treat him skeptically and want to hurt him until he says, “Do I get to kill the Anglish.”  All of a sudden they are on the same side.  On and on triangulation goes into abuse, murders, lynchings and even wars.

Ritual scapegoating

            Recognizing this tendency, religion created a system to keep us from killing each other.  How about instead of pushing a person away, we did this to an animal.  Listen to how the Israelites dealt with this conflict while in the desert.

Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. ⁸ He is to cast lots for the two goats-- one lot for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat {8 That is, the goat of removal; Hebrew azazel; also in verses 10 and 26} ⁹ Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the LORD and sacrifice it for a sin offering. ¹⁰ But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat.  (Leviticus 16:7-10)

            The people are given a system that helps them not kill each other.  Instead of heaping their sins upon one another in vengeance, they ritually heap it upon the poor goat and literally send it away.  This is the sacrificial system that existed not just in Jewish culture, but at some point in every other human culture as well.  This was the system, but there were problems with it.

            First, there is the problem of the poor goat.  Why does he get it?  Second, it only works for a little while.  The sins are like a pot that keeps boiling over.  Lifting the lid off lowers the heat, but once the lid is put back on its eventually going to boil over again.  Third, the system often doesn’t work.  Instead of forcing us to face the depth of our sin, we cast it upon a third party.  Eventually, the scapegoat will not feel like enough and we will need a scape-person again; the Jews, the blacks, the gypsies, the gays, my neighbor, my spouse, and even myself.  “What a wretched man I am,” Paul exclaims, ‘who will rescue me from this body of death?’ (Romans 7:24)  How will God rescue us?  Enter the third question. 

How does  the servant deal with sin? 

            Listen to some of the 2^nd half of the song and you tell me how the servant will deal with SIN.  “He was oppressed and afflicted…he was led like a lamb to slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers…” (v.7)  “…he was taken away…cut off from the land of the living…for the transgression of my people he was stricken…” (v.8) What do you hear?  How did the servant confront our SIN?  Yes, he becomes the scapegoat, more appropriately, the lamb.[1] 

             But how does this deal with sin?  How does this alleviate the power and consequences of sin?  There are three possible answers that I can imagine.

            First, it doesn’t do anything.  It’s possible all of this sin and sacrifice stuff is simply products of human creation that ultimately change nothing.

            Second, and most commonly, the servant, like the lamb takes upon himself the iniquities, the transgressions, the sins of the people.  The servant becomes like a Super-scapegoat.  In this theory, the problem was not with the system, but with the sacrifice.  ‘If we just had a bigger sacrifice,’ this system says.  So, Jesus becomes the sacrifice big enough to hold all the sins of the world thus allowing the people to enter back into relationship with God. 

In this scenario, God is like a worker at the Intel plant.  No people can enter the plant until all of their contaminants have been removed.   Thus each person passes through a carbon filter that assumes all of those contaminants and is thrown away allowing the people to enter the Intel plant where the perfect and Holy God is.  Whereas all the other filters were too small, in Jesus, the filter is made large enough to capture all the sins.  Super-scapegoat.  This is option 2. 

            But there is a third option.  What if the size of the scapegoat wasn’t the issue but the system itself?  Instead of God being hidden away in an Intel plant where no impurities can enter, what if God all along has been trying to say “I am with you.”  In the garden, I am with you.  In the city, I am with you.  In slavery in Egypt, I am with you.  In the wilderness, I am with you.  In exile, I am with you.  All of these sacrifices intended to clean you for my presence are futile, do you think I can’t enter dirty places?  I’m God.  In fact, I’ll show you.  I’ll come and dwell among you.  Not as a super-hero, but as one who gets dirty like you.  I will bring the perceived Intel plant, otherwise known as the kingdom of heaven, to you.  But because you still have this scapegoating system, I will need to put an end to that.  But how?  Perhaps if I, God, were the victim, then you would finally see how ludicrous is the cycle of violence.  Here is what may cause the kings to shut their mouths.

Forgiveness

            In the gospel of Luke we read, “They crucified him with criminals, one on his right the other on his left.”   At this point, the world has done its worst to Jesus.  It appears to have totally rejected him, his way and even the world he was offering.  If ever there was a person justified in anger and in vengeance then this was it.  Heck, when someone cuts me off in traffic, I feel justified in a little retribution.  But what does Jesus do?  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (23:34)   There is only one way to stop the cycle of violence; forgiveness. 

            Not five verses later we read, “…for the sun stopped shinning.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two.” (v.45)  Do you know about the curtain?  This was what separated the presence of God from the people.  One could only enter into the holy of holies if they were without sin, lest they die.  To prepare for entry the priest would offer sacrifices for his sins to be taken away.  It was the core of the sacrificial system.  But what happens to this system in the cross?  The curtain is torn, the system is destroyed.

Here’s what Mark Heim writes about the purpose of Jesus death.  

Jesus’ willingness to face death, specifically death on a cross, suddenly looks anything but arbitrary, and much more like the "wisdom of God" that the New Testament so surprisingly discovers in the crucifixion. God is willing to die for us, to bear our sin in this particular way, because we desperately need deliverance from the sin of scapegoating. God breaks the grip of scapegoating by stepping into the place of a victim, and by being a victim who cannot be hidden or mythologized. God acts not to affirm the suffering of the innocent victim as the price of peace, but to reverse it.[2]

Peace

            It is in this sense that we can return to the song of the suffering servant and read, “the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed.”  The punishment that brought us peace was scape-goating.  But the peace it brought was always shallow and ultimately false.  It was the peace created between two enemies who find a new common enemy.  It lasts only as long as the common enemy lasts.  When it is gone, they will continue the cycle of violence.  No, the peace that Jesus brings is no pseudo-peace.  It is the real thing.

            What is it Jesus says in the gospel of John?  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give it as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” (14:27)  What is it the risen Lord says almost every time he encounters some one?  “Peace be with you.” (John 20:19,20,21; Luke 24:36) This is good news. 

The way out – what does this mean for us and the world

            I now turn to my final question, ‘what does this mean for us and the world?’ 

            What does this mean?  It means that we are free to seek to desire what God desires not because he will punish us if we don’t, rather because it is the way of justice, salvation and peace. 

            What does this mean?  It means we are free to put our body in the turnstile of vengeance and violence by offering to others what Jesus offered on the cross; forgiveness. 

            What does this mean?  Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Romans, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8:31)  The cross eliminates the need to see anyone as against us.  The cross moves all of ‘they’ to ‘we’ with God standing beside and not in some distant, spotless lab. 

            What does this mean? 

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[1] The most common animal of sacrifice was the one the Jewish people had the most familiarity with; sheep.  In Genesis 22 when Abraham and Isaac go up to Mt. Moriah to make a sacrifice, it is a lamb that Isaac asks about.  In Egypt, it is the blood of a lamb that was to be spread upon the door to turn the angel of death away.(Exodus 12) Thus the lamb becomes the symbol of sacrifice for the Passover meal that continues to this day.  And what we read here, in this song, is that the servant was to become like the lamb.

[2] “Christ’s Death to End Sacrifice”, S. Mark Heim, professor at Andover Newton Theological School