Sermon 4/15/2022 “Suffering servant”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection, Alexandria, Virginia
Text: Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Day: Good Friday 2022
“Behold, my Servant,” says the Lord.
Yes, just look at the Lord’s Servant now. Today. This very hour, up there on that tree. Beaten. Whipped. Scorned. Pierced. DEAD. And I’m supposed to convince you that THIS day is “good?”
Yes, yes; I know. You’ll remind me that Jesus HAD to die. A few steps up the road over that-away [pointing toward a nearby seminary] they have courses that excuse us for killing the Lord’s servant. The explanations, the theories—excuses all—are called “theology.”
They’ll tell you the Servant had to die, had to suffer, even, before he died. True enough, if only because WE have to suffer and die. How could the Lord’s Servant have been one of US, have been TRULY one of us, if he didn’t suffer and die? Isn’t suffering and death the quintessential human experience?
But the Lord’s Servant, the Suffering Servant, had work to do while he was dead. He didn’t even get to lie peacefully in his borrowed tomb. His body was undoubtedly there, all wrapped in burial cloth and spices. But while the Servant’s body was dead, Christ had to redeem the whole world—had to ransom all of us creation from suffering and death.
Even in Jesus’ day, many knew him as a righteous man who didn’t deserve to suffer and be crucified. Jesus was hung on that tree because he was a convenient scapegoat, because of jealousy, because of delusions of power. Jesus didn’t deserve to be on the cross, let alone suffer and die there. And because on this day, Christ Jesus—the Lord’s righteous Servant—suffered a death he didn’t deserve, God gives us what WE don’t deserve. The apostle Paul tells us that suffering is how we become like Christ (Philippians 3:10), that if we share in Christ’s suffering and share in Christ’s death, we can live again as Christ did, rising to be with God.
Many of the epistles—which were letters from leaders in the earliest Christian Church— worked out the theology that rightly glorifies our excuses for having killed the Suffering Servant. Hebrews 7:25 and Romans 5:9, for example, posit that Christ’s undeserved suffering and death somehow atone for our deserve-ed fate. In other words, Christ’s body and blood were given, so our sins could be forgiven. Christ’s Body and Blood are forever given, so our sins can be always be forgiven. Behold, the Lamb of God, sacrificed for you and me.
That’s why WE have Holy Communion on this day. Many churches don’t, as a type of contrition, a foregoing of the fruit of Christ’s work while his body was dead. This is the biggest guilt-trip of all, and rightly so, the biggest contrition of all, and rightly so, too.
“But why,” I ask. Why, if the Suffering Servant sacrificed so much to offer us his body and blood in this way, why would we act as if we have no hope? We KNOW the outcome: Our hope is right here on this altar: given for you and me, poured out for us.
You may know the old gospel hymn: “My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” On Christ THIS solid rock I stand!
So, here’s the Good News about today: God’s Suffering Servant willingly came among us, choosing to live as one of us and to die for us. No one—none of us—deserve the Suffering Servant’s sacrifice. And this is OUR work, to share what we have been given by living in right relationship with all people in the way Christ Jesus taught.
This day is truly a Good day. This day gives us eternal hope and challenges us to pick up OUR cross and follow Jesus all the way.
