The Suffering Servant

This was my sermon for Thursday night.  I originally wasn't going to preach at this service, but I felt led by the Spirit to grapple with this text.  The "suffering servant" passage from Isaiah is often used to defend and justify the "penal-substitutionary" theory of the Atonement.  In this theory, God is honor-bound to punish human sin, but instead of wiping us out he puts the sin of humanity on Jesus and annihilates it there.  This theory makes several errors, one of which is that God is somehow bound to some higher law that says the only way to deal with sin is by "punishment."  It also assumes that God's holiness requires someone's violent death in order to be appeased.  It also appears to apply a division in the Godhead between the Father who inflicts punishment and the Son who bears it.  This corrodes both  the love and unity within the Trinity.   Isaiah 53 is frequently rolled out to explain this Atonement theory.

The penal-substitutionary Atonement theory is not universal in Christianity.  The Eastern Church doesn't know it.  It wasn't finally codified until the 11th century, which means the early church didn't know it either.  Unfortunately, it is for many in the West synonymous with the Atonement itself.  The "God punished his Son in our place" theology has had a disastrous effect on Christianity.  I am trying to counteract it.  

Isaiah 52:13-53:12.

I.

            Christians have always understood these words from Isaiah to refer to Jesus.  We see Jesus as the servant of God by whose suffering and death we are healed.  What is happening in this passage could also be said about the poor. 

            Jesus comes into the world identifying with the poor and defeated of the Earth and advocating their cause.  We see this first in the very circumstances of his birth, which could not have been more humble, and in the words of his mother even before he is born, that he will turn society upside-down.  Jesus sets the tone of his whole ministry when he quotes another portion of Isaiah, about his mission to heal, liberate, and “bring good news to the poor.”  Jesus clearly teaches that the poor, the grieving, the gentle, the peacemakers, and the persecuted are blessed.  He explicitly says that to serve the poor and deprived is to serve him.  These passages and many others indicate that the Messiah came to be poor and to advocate for the poor; that was an essential element of his mission.

            Isaiah is trying to get his people, the exiles in Babylon, to see the bigger picture, which is that, as Jesus says and embodies, it is the poor, the common people, the victims of history’s machinations, who inherit the Earth.  These are God’s people.  It is not what you have, but the wealth and power you don’t have that make you a child of God.

            Isaiah’s  description talks about those who grow out of the dry ground of poverty.  They have no importance or glory; they are not particularly attractive.  They are “despised and rejected by others,” they are people “of suffering and acquainted with infirmity.”  They are held of no account by the people in charge, who even think God is cursing them.  All these things are also true of Jesus, as well as of the Jews in exile, who had lost everything.

            Isaiah notices that they do not suffer on their own account, but because of the actions of others.  The infirmities and diseases of their whole society are dumped on them. The lowly are wounded because of the transgressions of the powerful, crushed due to the iniquities of those who run things.  Jesus embodies and represents this. 

            Because those at the bottom are bearing these consequences, the people at the top reap the benefits; a fact that would have been obvious to Isaiah, whose people served the Babylonians.  In the larger scheme of things, who profits because of the low wages, the horrible working conditions, the crushing unemployment, the theft and ravaging of the land of poor people all over the world?  Jesus takes on the life of the impoverished when he allows himself to be kicked around by Roman authority, even crucified.

II.

            Isaiah then diagnoses the root of the problem that has generated all this misery: “All we like sheep have gone astray;
 we have [each] turned to our own way.”  In other words, people have rejected the good of the community and disregarded their responsibilities for each other.  He echoes the end of the book of Judges, where it is sadly stated that in those days everyone did what was right in their own eyes.  When this happens, the social order gets perverted.  It creates iniquity and lays it on the poor.  Their suffering reveals the selfishness and isolation that afflict the whole society.

            Because we have each turned to our own way, because we demand to be able to do what is right in our own eyes, we create a society in which innocent people get crucified… every day.  This philosophy guarantees that the rich will get richer and everyone else poorer.  It depends on and spawns violence; and it makes injustice and inequality inevitable.  It guarantees that Jesus would be treated the way he was.

            So what Jesus suffers is not punishment from God.  When we read that “it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain,” and “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,” it means that God, of course, knew what the consequences would be of entering this human life with good news.  He would be punished by powerful human forces.  He would be a victim of human iniquity.  He would intentionally absorb the evil that the poor deal with all the time.  God is not the source of this punishment; people are. 

            In Jesus, God is taking on the consequences of the violence we have embraced, taking on our poverty and powerlessness, even taking on our death.  It is the final movement in God’s self-emptying in becoming one of us.  God takes all this on in Jesus, and transforms them, transfigures them, transmutes them in himself into a blessing.  Jesus reveals and establishes that these things can kill us, but they can’t hurt us.  And in the end they don’t even kill us….    

            Isaiah writes about the servant: “When you make his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.”  In other words, when people finally realize what Jesus is showing us, that his blood, the blood of the poor, has been shed for all of us, then Jesus shall see us, his offspring, the ones whom he empowers and feeds to be his people, the ones who continue his ministry on the Earth, energized by his Body and Blood.

            We are his offspring when we follow him.  And we follow him by identifying with and advocating for the poor people of the Earth.  Through us the will of the Lord, which is always for justice and love, prospers.

III.

            So, if Isaiah 53 is about Jesus, it is also about the poor… but at the same time, it is also about his “offspring,” the church, the gathering of his followers, whom he sends into the world on a mission: us.  What Jesus does he does as a “pioneer.”  He goes ahead of us so we may follow.  We are not spectators, or the audience, or the inert beneficiaries.  He demonstrates what to do, then he tells us to do it as well.  Jesus shows the apostles that such suffering leads to life, giving them the strength to suffer as well, and even die, as a witness to God’s love for the world.  Which they did.

            In the next little while [the Tenebrae service in which we read the Passion narrative] we will be following him in spirit through his last hours.  We will be doing so already infused with his life, shared in the Sacrament.  God’s Body and Blood are already infusing and becoming every cell of our bodies, as we sit here.

            As we listen to this story, let’s reflect on what it is going to mean to follow him, to take up our own cross, to embrace his life of giving, healing, losing, sharing, and teaching, as he represents us up there, on the cross.  And let us also hear ways in which we can be made open to his new life of liberation and power, which we receive in his resurrection.

+++++++

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one's own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That's made America the land it has become. O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home-- For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa's strand I came To build a "homeland of the free." The free? Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me? The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we've dreamed And all the songs we've sung And all the hopes we've held And all the flags we've hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay-- Except the dream that's almost dead today. O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again! Langston Hughes

"Time For Something New"?

            A group of male and almost all white pastors of large conservative Presbyterian churches has recently issued a letter and manifesto to the denomination.  It has been called the “deathly ill letter” because that is their diagnosis of the church.  Their title for this initiative is “Time For Something New” (TFSN). 

            TFSN lists the familiar statistics documenting the decline of the Presbyterian Church in terms of loss of membership and influence over the last 40 years.  Hence the diagnosis that the denomination is “deathly ill.”  The cause of this illness, they say, is conflict, mainly the protracted war over ordination standards – that is, the ordination of GLBT Christians.  They also identify a church divided along ideological and theological lines.

            I suggest that it is not “conflict” that has debilitated the PCUSA.  We have had conflicts throughout our history.  Many past conflicts were arguably far more traumatic than our present ones.  (We’re not shooting at each other like in 1861.)  Yet the church often grew and matured through them.  If the framers of TFSN are seeking a denomination without conflict, I wish them well.  If they think that being conflict-free will automatically cause the kind of quantitative growth they seek, I respectfully suggest that there is little evidence of this from our history. 

            Our loss of membership and influence is not due to conflict.  It is because many in the church are trying to live in a world that no longer exists.  Our problem is that we are a church well-equipped to succeed in the 16^th through the early 20^th centuries… but we find ourselves deep into the 21^st century.  Few of our usual tools are working.  So the long list of quantitative declines that the authors of TFSN offer as evidence of the “trouble” we are in as a denomination is beside the point. 

            We are failing at almost every level to understand and adapt to the comprehensive changes that are rolling across the church, our culture, and our whole planet.  We have fond memories of the church of our parents and grandparents, and we still think this can and should be maintained.  I illustrate this by pointing to our glorious, large, beautiful, stately, centrally located, and historic buildings, fully fitted with classrooms, large kitchens, pipe organs, and stained-glass windows… that now often house dwindling, aging, depressed, and ineffective congregations.  We spend our energy trying to keep up these facilities, maintaining a grand heritage, and have little left to actually accomplish the mission Jesus Christ gives to the church today. 

            I suggest several circumstances that illustrate this.  Here are some characteristics of the institutional edifice that burdens us today:

            1.              The legacy of Christendom, an obsolete cultural arrangement in which the church stood at the center of society, wedded to other national institutions as part of a common “establishment.”  These other institutions include government and the courts, business, industry, the military, education, media, entertainment, etc.  Many of these institutions have been losing legitimacy over the past few decades; all are in significant upheaval.  They have never followed Jesus Christ.  As long as the church is identified with them it will share their fate.

            2.              Our persistent ethnic identity as white and largely Anglo-Saxon, a demographic that is in decline.  We thrived for at least a century on immigration from Western Europe.  That has all but dried up.  We have tried to attract and reach out to other ethnic groups, with mixed success, probably because of an at least tacit assumption that they need to become like us.  While assuming everyone should want to join us, we have mostly failed in even keeping our own children in the church. 

            3.              Our theology remains a relic of the Reformation/“Enlightenment” period.  Many of the issues and conflicts of that era no longer matter much to people today.  As long as we keep seeing the world through that individualistic, propositional, objectively verifiable lens, and speaking the gospel in that increasingly arcane language, our message will be less and less intelligible.  Who outside the church today knows or cares about the solas or TULIP?

            4.              Our sense that we have to advocate and enforce a certain type of morality which may have made sense in terms of maintaining social control a century ago, but now appears to be at best quaint and at worst oppressive.  We still want and expect everyone to be like the Cleavers.

            6.              A Gnostic rejection of the value of creation and the material world, including our own bodies, which has left Western culture to fall into the most godless and destructive atrocities against nature and people.  The church frequently defended, rationalized, and participated in practices like slavery, the assault on indigenous peoples, economic injustice, war, the subjugation of women, environmental degradation, etc., and has therefore lost its moral authority and its connection to the God of creation.

            7.              Comprehensive ignorance of the spiritual, mystical core of the faith.  Protestant denominations are confused, tongue-tied, and lost when it comes to the Holy Spirit.  The spiritual connection to God and each other which people most seek from us, and for which they turn to other sources, is something we have forgotten we ever even had.  Yet the Spirit of Jesus is the spring from which everything else flows. 

            8.              Most importantly an almost complete disregard for the life and teachings of Jesus.  We long-ago replaced trust in him and obedience to his way of living with an institutional religion more concerned with providing cover for the powers-that-be in Western society.  We still care more about maintaining economic growth and enforcing narrowly moralistic societal norms than following Jesus.

            I suggest that these are the main reasons the old main-line churches, including the Presbyterian Church, continue to lose members and influence.  None of these are addressed by TFSN. 

            Those who put together the TFSN document do propose some interesting new approaches.  Many of their proposals present a new and creative way forward.  They deliberately move away from the top-heavy, centralized, hierarchical, institutional model that characterized the Christendom church.  When they talk about “a commitment to nurture leadership in local congregations,” “a passion to share in the larger Mission of the people of God around the world, especially among the least, the lost, and the left behind,” “a dream of multiplying healthy communities of faith throughout North America,” “a pattern of fellowship reflecting the realities of our scattered life and joint mission,” I hear new things that really are promising to respond effectively to the 21^st century and its challenges.  When they propose things like “a minimalist governmental structure,” and even “clarity on property issues” in which congregational assets are more locally controlled, I hear something worth engaging with.  Getting away from “large institutional structures,” supporting more “joint ventures with specialized ministries as congregations deem helpful” are good ideas.

            (In fact, much of this is in the same decentralized, flexible spirit as the proposed new Form of Government (nFOG), currently being voted on by the presbyteries.  It makes me wonder why so many people who would approve of TFSN are also opposed to the nFOG.)  

            Unfortunately, these proposals are placed under their primary agenda upon which they seem to think everything else depends, which they state as:

              “A united theological core to which we subscribe, aligned with classic biblical, Reformed/ Evangelical tradition, and a pledge to live according to those beliefs, regardless of cultural pressures to conform.”

            So much for “something new.” 

            In other words, TFSN wants a church that relates theologically to the issues and questions of the 16^th and 17^th century Reformation, as seen through the lens of 18^th and 19^th century Evangelicalism.  Everyone is expected to “subscribe” to this set of theological propositions, presumably on pain of exclusion.  (Think that’s not going to create conflict?)  Subscriptionism is a pretty old practice in Christendom.  Nothing new here.  Subscriptionism ultimately fails because humans discover different circumstances of life in each generation.  A narrowly defined, one-size-fits-all religion has never worked well, serving more to divide than unite.  I also do not understand how their enthusiasm for something as centralized and top-down as subscriptionism meshes with their advocacy of a decentralized, bottom-up ecclesiology.           

            The writers of TFSN talk about how they follow the Bible, while others are caving in to “cultural pressures to conform.”  Clearly they don’t like many trends in today’s culture.  Are they really about listening to the Bible?  Or do they merely conform to the “pressures” of an earlier culture’s way of doing things?  In other words, they want us to reject conformity to contemporary social norms, but subscribe instead to social norms of the past, and call it faithfulness to Scripture.  Yet the Bible is positively packed with messages about justice (economic, social, and ecological), inclusion, healing, and forgiveness that the advocates of TFSN routinely choose to downplay or disregard.  In other words, they have chosen to follow a particular slant on Scripture, one that fits well with their nostalgic view of culture.  Indeed, a less charitable observer might wonder if their entrenched cultural biases aren’t governing their interpretation of the Bible.             

            Nothing new here either.  Historically, every fading paradigm has used the same strategy in the face of an emerging new paradigm.  One thing they seem to forget is that there was a time (500 years ago) when their theology was the new, emerging, radical thing that conservatives were dismissing as caving in to a decadent culture.   

            So it seems like the TFSN framers want to maintain an old, inflexible, centralized,

top-down, Christendom theology, but they want to express it through a new, flexible, decentralized, bottom-up, post-Christendom ecclesiology.  Old product; glitzy, streamlined new packaging!  As if the medium and the message have nothing to do with each other.  As if we could still sell Studebakers if all we did was change the marketing and distribution strategy, but not the car.  Some cars would sell.  There might even be a few successful dealerships.  But if these folks think that changing the presentation and organizational structure is going to make their understanding of the “classic biblical, Reformed/ Evangelical tradition” wildly successful again… well, we’ll see.

            At the same time, I would say, “Go for it, guys!”  There is room in Christianity for many different voices, new and old.  Certainly the Reformation theologies have a lot to teach us, even today.  I would not want to shut out the voices of these great saints of the church.  But now they have to be seen as a part of a broader mosaic, particular threads woven into a greater tapestry.  Our time is one in which we have the benefit of drawing from all traditions as never before.  Communities need the flexibility and encouragement to engage with many voices as they seek to follow Jesus Christ.

            TFSN is desperately trying to hold together something they love and cherish in a blizzard of cultural changes.  They are trying to stay recognizably “historically Reformed” in a time when that way of being Christian is becoming less and less relevant.  I agree with the need for new and less centralized structures; but I doubt if this can be done while retaining the identity they want to retain. (I hope they are not suggesting that those who agree with them get to be flexible and decentralized, while the rest of us are subject to supervision under a rigid subscriptionism….)  

            I predict that they will end up with a loose, idiosyncratic network of like-minded people; but I doubt it will be the revitalized mass-movement for renewal they are hoping for.