Servant Song

Pascal Moonrise March 2024

The full Pascal moon rose at dusk this weekend, the first full moon after the Spring equinox and thus the marker of the Easter season. This year it came the evening of Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. 

This year's weekly Wednesday Lenten services focused on the last Servant Song in Isaiah 52:13 through the end of the 53rd chapter. I memorized Isaiah 53 as a nine-year-old to win a prize in Sunday School. The language of the King James Bible obscured the full meaning at the time but the words stayed with me.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.    

Isaiah 53:2b-4 NIV

We still turn our heads away from human pain and suffering and look with pity, even horror on those with visible disabilities. Just as people consider the Suffering Servant "punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted", we look for reasons to blame people who have pain, weakness, deformity, mental illness, social disadvantage, and relational issues. In John 3, the story is told about the man who was born blind.  The disciples asked Jesus,

"Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, 

"but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him."

Throughout my career, I have worked with people who suffer injury and disability. Physical and Occupational therapists work together to help patients reduce their disability in a society which values beauty, strength, high functional performance, emotional stability and financial independence. Christian churches that preach a prosperity gospel, including physical healing, imply that a lack of faith or spiritual inferiority prevents a person from being fully restored. A "gospel" that offers health and wealth is more appealing than the gospel that invites us to share in the sufferings of Christ. In truth, this teaching offers an excuse to diminish the value of and discriminate against a person with a disability. Suffering eventually comes to everyone as bodies fail with age. We can become bitter, or learn compassion and generosity of spirit through our own loss and pain so that the works of God can be displayed in us. I love the verses in 2 Corinthians 1: 3-5 that read,

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 

who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble 

with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.  

For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, 

so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

I have learned much from people who have suffered physically and emotionally. They often offer authentic strength of spirit and wisdom from their experiences in a society that discriminates against imperfection. Physically intact people are not necessarily whole in mind and spirit or relationally. Pride needs pain to learn humility. I have enjoyed good health and functional ability and recognize my prideful tendency to judge others less fortunate than myself. I must be a servant rather than a judge, striving to see each person as the compassionate and merciful God sees them.

As we observe the death and resurrection of Jesus this week, I will remind myself of Paul's instructions in the ancient hymn quoted in Philippians 2:5-8.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Each year I read the devotional Seeking God's Face: Praying with the Bible through the year. This is the prayer for today, Palm Sunday.

Mighty God, we look for salvation and security in many different places. We confess we're tempted to seek out a pumped-up Saviour of power who would flex rippling muscles. Prepare our hearts to welcome our humble servant King, Jesus, finding in him all we need for our salvation. Amen     (Heidelberg Catechism 30)