Perhaps at some point you were told, as I was, not to begin a sentence with a conjunction. From what I gather, it’s no longer taboo, and it’s certainly not incorrect. Beginning a sentence with a conjunction can be the perfect way to change directions in a train of thought while still maintaining fluidity of style. In the last of the so-called suffering servant songs in the Book of Isaiah, one conjunction is worth gold. It is the pivot point of hope itself.
When we pick up the last of these servant songs today, we are on the downward arc of a parabola if you recall your high school mathematics classes. The story of Israel up to this point has been a difficult one. God’s people have been exiled to Babylon. The center of their liturgical life, the Temple, has been destroyed. They are lonely, bereft, and aimless in their exile. They feel convicted by their past misdeeds, and their state of distress is seen as God’s punishment for their former sins. It may be that as we continue to trudge confusedly through a lingering pandemic we, too, feel profound distress and wonder who’s to blame for this epic tragedy. Is it ourselves? Maybe the bigger question is, what is God doing?
For the people of Israel, their distress was nearly too heavy to bear. Would they ever see their true home again? How could they establish roots or sing songs in a strange land? True, there are glimpses of hope in Isaiah’s writing, hope of future restoration of a rebuilt home in Jerusalem, of a resurrected common life. The storyteller, with the benefit of hindsight, can easily drop nuggets that foreshadow future glory. But those who were in exile had no certainty of their future. They didn’t know how the story would end. In what was their hope?
Enter now, if paradoxically, the suffering servant.
Let’s be honest. We do not know who this servant is. Scholars have debated for centuries. They continue to debate. Christians have usually identified this servant with Jesus. But what we need to accept is that this servant is a mystery to us, and that is most beneficial to how we see the good news in Isaiah’s words. So, let’s accept this mystery, because if we do, it’s a gift.
The ambiguous, anonymous suffering servant does not seem promising, as we’re told right before today’s passage begins. He’s not exactly the kind of person in whom you’d naturally put your hope. His countenance is marred. He’s not lovely to gaze upon. He has been ostracized from his people. He has been wracked by suffering and disease. He has been treated horribly by others, and yet this servant opened not his mouth. Everything about this servant flies in the face of how we are taught to respond to mistreatment. There is no standing up for himself. There is no retaliation. There is not so much as a single word uttered. It is pure submission, and that, we are often told, can be problematic.
Who is this servant who enters onto the scene of Israel’s downward spiral? What can this dejected and sad servant add to a story that is already unpromising?
It’s hard, in a way, not to begin to resent this servant, for not speaking up, for letting himself be the brunt of so much cruelty. We may resent him simply because we do not know who he is and why he is in the picture.
And the downward spiral continues, circling the drain of diminishing hope, in spite of promises of a brighter future. The hole at the bottom of the drain is getting closer and closer. . .
When suddenly something happens. As we go further and further into obscure mystery, when the identity of the servant is unclear, when even the identity of the people for whom the servant suffers is unclear, something happens that is not vague at all. God creates a new future.
It all hinges on one conjunction. Though this servant had reached death’s door itself although he was blameless, yet “it was the will of the Lord to bruise him.” That’s the conjunction on which restoration and salvation hinge. Yet. But really? How is this promising? Why would God willingly inflict punishment on one of his own? Why does punishment have to happen in order for good to follow? Why is this God’s will?
And yet. . . what we see is a sudden shift in another direction. The parabola has reached its vertex. It is the nadir of the long, spiraling descent. The bottom of the parabola is the valley of death itself, and when the servant hits rock bottom, just as God’s people hit rock bottom, God does something, and then the story begins to change. It’s okay—indeed essential—to begin a sentence with a conjunction, because a new sentence is the beginning of a new future created by God.
Now, we see what God is doing. We are moving from death to life, from exile to restoration, from loneliness to community, from sin to forgiveness. But we do not understand it. How does all this goodness hinge on one person who has suffered for all? And yet. . . God is doing something very good. That is what we know.
In our own perspective, unlike the ancient people of Israel, we see the entire parabola. We know how the story ends. We know that God promises good from bad. We know that after death there is resurrection.
And yet . . . it is hard for us to move past the vertex of the parabola, that lowest point where we hit rock bottom and spring back upwards. We cannot move past the bottom of the valley because incomprehension weighs us down. We get hung up on the mystery of suffering.
It’s deep down in the valley that we are so often caught in our own traps. Don’t you know the questions? If God is so wonderful, why did he let you get sick? Why did God allow the coronavirus happen? How do you explain the co-existence of God, abject poverty, mass genocide, and natural disasters?
And yet the valley is the place where we are supposed to hang out because the valley is where God meets us. The valley is where we sit silently before the questions with which people grill us. The valley is where we have to answer with honesty, “I don’t know.” We hold the mystery of the valley with such reverence that we can’t claim to know why cancer still exists or why people still use Jesus’ name to hurt others. The valley is where we own our frailty and humility and shift the focus back to what God is doing, even and especially when it’s beyond our understanding.
The valley is where we recognize that, after all these years, we are still mystified by forgiveness, so mystified that we can’t even accept that God could forgive us. We are confused at how with a simple conjunction, God can begin a new sentence in our life. This low point is where we own our confused acceptance of everything that flies in the face of what we are so often told: that our past does not control our future, that God gives us all kinds of chances, infinite chances, to try to get it right. And none of this have we earned or deserved. It is simply given to us.
Here at the bottom of the parabola, where we stare mystery in the face, we also stare at the suffering servant, whoever it originally was. And as Christians, at the bottom of this parabola, immersed in the shadows of incomprehension, we can’t help but also look into the face of Jesus. We cannot understand why he had to suffer. We simply know that he did. We cannot know for sure why the Father had all this in his gracious providence, but we know that he did. And because it is a mystery, perhaps we should simply be grateful for God’s wondrous gift and let mystery be mystery.
As we stare at the face of Jesus, we see the One rejected by his own people, and still rejected by so many in the world. We see One who did not just passively accept death but who went boldly and lovingly into its arms to bring us safely out of the valley.
We see One for whom the world was disappointed in its expectations before they saw his glory. And we see something of ourselves, too. We hear all the cruel words of those who said that others could never expect too much of us. We feel the jabs of those who said that this small parish circling the drain could never find resurrection. We withstand the jests of those who throw us out of the comfortable circle because we dare to welcome the unloved and be generous towards those who are different.
And as we set our faces like flint to move forward, we see yet another one, so much greater than us, who set his face like flint, too. We see him at the bottom of the parabola. We weep at how he died for our salvation. We know not why it had to happen, but we know it did happen.
And yet. . . we know that the story is not ended. We know that the arc is moving up into new life. That the chastisement of the suffering servant is what can make even our bitter fragmentation whole. His stripes alone are able to heal us. His rejection means our inclusion. And his silence is the most powerful proclamation of good news we could ever know.
Make no doubt about it: it is a mystery beyond our understanding. And yet. . . if we can accept it, it is the most tremendous gift imaginable.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
October 17, 2021