The Servant Song

"Mystery of Faith" by Tom McGee

January 15, 2017

Isaiah 42:1-9 

¹   Here is my servant, whom I uphold,

          my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

     I have put my spirit upon her;

          she will bring forth justice to the nations.

²   He will not cry or lift up his voice,

          or make it heard in the street;

³   a bruised reed he will not break,

          and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;

         he will faithfully bring forth justice.

⁴   She will not grow faint or be crushed

          until she has established justice in the earth;

          and the coastlands wait for her teaching.

⁵Thus says God, the LORD,

          who created the heavens and stretched them out,

          who spread out the earth and what comes from it,

     who gives breath to the people upon it

          and spirit to those who walk in it:

⁶   I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness,

          I have taken you by the hand and kept you;

     I have given you as a covenant to the people,

          a light to the nations,

⁷        to open the eyes that are blind,

     to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,

          from the prison those who sit in darkness.

⁸   I am the LORD, that is my name;

          my glory I give to no other,

          nor my praise to idols.

⁹   See, the former things have come to pass,

          and new things I now declare;

     before they spring forth,

          I tell you of them.

Sermon: “The Servant Song”

I reckon poets are either the most mad among us, or the only ones sane enough to say the truth as it really is. You can give a dozen poets each an apple and ask them what color it is, and you’ll get a dozen different variations: everything from crimson to cerise to scarlet; the most dramatic among them saying it’s the color of an autumn dusk, or of a child’s cheeks in the snow. Poetry can be maddening in its obscurity, but sometimes, a poem is the only thing to bring sanity.

I say this because it took a poet-prophet, whose poetry we now read in Isaiah chapter 42, to bring words of sanity to an insane time of tit-for-tat, of victory and defeat and glory and despair. Let me set the scene for the day that poet first said these words.

The place was Babylon; the time, well over 2,500 years ago. Babylon was a nice enough place to be if you followed the god Marduk, whose statue was brought down from his mountain of honor and paraded through the city with fanfare each year. But it wasn’t so nice if you were an exile from Judah, the most educated among your people, now found to be the lowest of the low, not even allowed to worship your God, living in a ghetto and raising children who’d never even been to your homeland.

The most exciting event of that time was when Cyrus, the king of Persia, marched into the city of Babylon, overthrew the tyrannical reign of Nabonidus with a single stroke, and announced that those exiles from Judah were finally allowed to return home.

Even the poet who spoke these words of Isaiah got caught up in the excitement, and praised Cyrus as a messiah figure. But then, in that way of poetry, he changed his tune. He began to wax poetic, not about Cyrus the great conquering hero, but about someone else, known only as “the servant.”

This servant song spoke of someone who could not have been more opposite of Cyrus, more different than a mighty hero. This servant of the God of Judah and Israel did not march into cities and overthrow mighty armies with a single stroke. No, this servant didn’t even break a fragile, bent reed. They did not burn the opposition with unstoppable fire. No, this servant didn’t even blow out the whisper of a single waning candle flame. This servant did not demand attention and glory, but instead refused to even raise her or his voice.

Just when those folks in Babylon were rallying around the great and victorious Cyrus, this poet, as poets often do, showed them how little of the world they actually understood. Cyruses would come and go; political coups would happen again and again; crowds would be whipped into a frenzy following whoever seemed to be the savior of the day. And the world would remain mostly unchanged in its constant cycle of power, glory and might.

This servant the poet described was not of this world, though she or he was very much a part of it. No, this servant recognized a greater reality, beyond the political power plays and the game of thrones. We call that reality God.

God was and is the main agent in this servant song of the poet. Did you notice how God’s character and actions were referred to 20 times in only 9 verses?

Reorienting the people away from a lesser worldly power and towards the power of God, the poet brought the spiritual sanity that was most needed among the madness of people thinking that one human being (Cyrus) was all-powerful. Again and again, he drummed into their unhearing ears the deeds of this God. Choosing. Upholding. Delighting. Creating. Spreading. Breathing. Giving breath. Calling. Taking people by the hand. Giving people as a covenant. Declaring new things.

This God is concerned with so much more than the particular dealings of any one city or country, and yet this God chooses to be in special covenantal relationship with an exiled, homesick people. This God is the source of salvation, not whatever political figure might be elevated to power at any given time.

But this all-powerful God, who very well could do the unimaginable work of holding the universe together alone, chooses to get help. And that help comes as one of the invisible ones, the very opposite of the proud and powerful: a servant.

Just as the poet made clear God’s work, so he then made clear the servant’s: Bringing forth justice. Not crying out. Not breaking or harming anything, not even a fragile reed, or a single candle flame.  No growing faint or being broken by the world’s brokenness. Again, establishing justice. Teaching. Being a gift to all people, a light to open blind eyes, and a liberator for prisoners.

If there is no God, there is no servant, for the two’s missions are inextricably woven together. And that is the biggest difference between this servant and any other sort of hero figure. This servant doesn’t do these things for the glory or the fame or the power, or even just because it’s the right thing to do. This servant does the good, gentle work of justice because she or he believes that’s who God is.

The essential lesson that poet was trying to get those us weary souls desperate for celebration to understand was this: it’s not about you. It’s not about me, either. Life, suffering, death, worry, victory, joy, hope and fear will consume and pull us in a million directions if we think we are the point of it all. We aren’t. God is.

What a relief this is, friends! If we really believe God is who the poet says God is: the main agent, the main actor in this experiment we call life, then everything else is put into its proper perspective. The salvation of the world is not ours to achieve or argue; it is our gracious God’s. The sorrows of the world are not ours alone to endure; God dwells in the midst of them. The successes of the world do not make one mighty in the eyes of God, but servanthood does.

I think if we could invite the mad poet prophet who spoke these words in Isaiah here today, he would have a similar word for us. I think he would ask us an essential question, one we should never answer lightly or impulsively. 

         “Do you believe there is a God?”

And then, I imagine he would say to us, with those piercing poet eyes looking into our very souls:

“If the answer is yes, then why do you live as if you don’t? Relax, friends. Relax. God is God. Still choosing. Still upholding. Still delighting. Still creating. Still spreading, and breathing, and giving breath, and calling. Still taking people by the hand. Still giving people as a covenant to each other, and still declaring new things.”

If this is who God is, then why do you, I, we feel powerless sometimes? There’s much servant work to do in partnership with this God and each other. We don’t have to shout and set the world on fire to prove it’s all up to us. We simply have to do the quiet, tireless work of justice that God has been doing since the foundations of the world, until no one is exiled or imprisoned, and power is shown in being a servant of all, modeled after our Lord Jesus Christ.

Do we believe in God? If the answer is yes, then what are we going to do about it? Amen.