Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 2

Lent through Eastertide

David L. Bartlett, Barbara Brown Taylor

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781611641141
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Ministro del culto cristiano

With this new lectionary commentary series, Westminster John Knox offers the most extensive resource for preaching on the market today. When complete, the twelve volumes of the series will cover all the Sundays in the three-year lectionary cycle, along with movable occasions, such as Christmas Day, Epiphany, Holy Week, and All Saints' Day.

For each lectionary text, preachers will find four brief essays--one each on the theological, pastoral, exegetical, and homiletical challenges of the text. This gives preachers sixteen different approaches to the proclaimation of the Word on any given occasion.

The editors and contributors to this series are world-class scholars, pastors, and writers representing a variety of denominations and traditions. And while the twelve volumes of the series will follow the pattern of the Revised Common Lectionary, each volume will contain an index of biblical passages so that nonlectionary preachers, as well as teachers and students, may make use of its contents.

SIXTH SUNDAY IN LENT (LITURGY OF THE PASSION)

Isaiah so:4–9a

⁴The Lord GOD has given me
the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain
the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens—
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.
⁵The Lord GOD has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious,
I did not turn backward.
⁶I gave my back to those who struck me,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;

I did not hide my face
from insult and spitting.

⁷The Lord GOD helps me;
therefore I have not been disgraced;
therefore I have set my face like flint,
and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
⁸he who vindicates me is near.
Who will contend with me?
Let us stand up together.
Who are my adversaries?
Let them confront me.
^9aIt is the Lord GOD who helps me;
who will declare me guilty?

Theological Perspective

Faithful living in the world will always require an attentive ear to God’s questions and answers. The overall theological thrust of the passage cannot be appreciated apart from a question that the Lord God posed in verse 2b: “Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?” The culmination of the passage is a bold assertion that God’s hand is not shortened, nor has God’s power to deliver been diminished. Indeed, the message for the faithful is that God will ultimately vindicate those who have suffered abuse and humiliation.

Yet, in the interim between the divine question and the human affirmation, there is much theological wrestling to which the Servant Prophet gives testimony. A great deal is at stake theologically and, indeed, culturally, since the fortunes of the people have turned all too often on the integrity of their theological views. Within human community, dependent as it is upon communication, nothing of note is accomplished until humans speak—and are heard. Hearing confirms the reception of a word and—if one acts responsibly on that word—the intent of the one speaking is affirmed.

The uniqueness of Israel always included the mandate to hear the voice of the One who called them into covenant, rather than the deities of other nations. Moreover, the mandate to hear the voice of God’s prophets was critically important as well for the survival of the people. Surely sensing the importance of words in the building and maintenance of faithful human community, the Servant Prophet assumes the task of graphically demonstrating how God’s redemptive words of comfort are transmitted to the community of the faithful. Indeed, in this passage, the Servant Prophet will manifest a kind of embodied eloquence as the words of comfort from God ultimately come forth. After all, the Servant Prophet avers that “the Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher.” Moreover, that same God “wakens my ear” (v. 4).

The Servant Prophet offers important affirmations about the nature of God, the nature of the divine-human encounter, and the expectations that are placed on believers for faithful living. Before the celebrative culmination of the passage, three significant phases may be discerned: God’s acts of provision, the responses to such provision by the Servant Prophet, and an invitation to the faithful to “stand up together” (v. 8) in community.

The entire passage presumes that God is the source for all human capacities and capabilities for significant action. In notably visceral imagery, the Servant Prophet asserts that only because God provides the tongue is the Prophet able to function as a teacher. Similarly, the fact that God stimulates the aural capacity of the Prophet, “wakens my ear” (v. 4), creates the capacity for the Servant Prophet to listen to God and in turn to hear the cries of the people. Moreover, the provision of God becomes the foundation upon which a faithful human response is made. Such a response will eventuate in a disciplined way of being and living in the world, a response that is appropriate to the magnitude of God’s provision. This helps explain why ultimately the Servant Prophet is able to offer the “back to those who struck me” and “cheeks to those who pulled out the beard” (v. 6). Listening to God and being attentive to God’s words make this Servant Prophet different from others: the Prophet is exemplary in courage, emboldened in a defiance against detractors and those full of spite.

After hearing God and after being disciplined by God, the Prophet is then in a position to comfort the people. Faithful hearers of the words of the Servant are implicitly asked to summon the requisite courage as they face the challenges of life. The faithful are thus called to a life of embodied eloquence, just as the Servant Prophet has so manifested, culminating with a “face” set against any adversity that might come along.

Faithful living is essentially responsive living—a way of being in the world that involves one’s entire corporeal existence. Speaking, hearing, and ultimately the posture one assumes with respect to the world around—all play a role in living faithfully before God. The faithful are ever alert to what God is attempting to say to humanity. The faithful, as it were, enact the very mode of existence that the Servant portrayed in the text. The faithful cannot be rebellious to the will of God, but rather strive to maintain composure, a sense of perfect peace and sure identity even when confronted with the vilest of insults.

An implicit ecclesiology is at work within this text as well. Believers who gather within the church do so because they resonate to the narrative of God’s wondrous acts toward God’s people. Christians are, in the vision of Stanley Hauerwas, a “story-formed community.”¹ The dynamics of church life will inevitably demonstrate the power of God’s Word to form the unique community that is the church. The church is called to embody faithful response to that Word, even as ancient Israel was called to hear the voice of God.

There is another aspect of ecclesiology here. It was pointed out earlier how the various bodily organs of the Servant Prophet embody a faithful human response to divine provision. Such a response becomes the basis for disciplining all the various aspects of one’s existence in the world. So it is with the body of believers assembled in the church. It is within the body of believers—indeed the body of Christ—that the regimen of disciplined and faithful living is practiced. Such disciplined living is obviously good in and of itself, but as the disciplined Servant Prophet was in a position to speak words of encouragement to the faint-hearted, so will members of the body of Christ mutually encourage one another, for “if one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor. 12:26).

SAMUEL K. ROBERTS

Pastoral Perspective

Passion Sunday invites us to reflect on the passion of Jesus in two dimensions: his passion as suffering, and his passion as fervor for God and God’s reign. The second dimension of his passion leads to the first, and the lectionary text from Isaiah casts light on both.

The reading begins with verse 4 of chapter 50, but verses 1–3 provide an illuminating context for what follows. In verse 1 we are reminded that the judgment that has befallen the people is the result of their sins. The people have suffered, perhaps overmuch, but their suffering was brought about by God’s righteous judgment. And lest someone suggest that their suffering was due, not to God’s judgment but to God’s impotence, verses 2b and 3 put God’s awesome and terrible power on display: “Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?”

But it is verse 2a that is haunting. The Lord says, “Why was no one there when I came? Why did no one answer when I called?” In this astonishing moment of divine melancholy and bewilderment, do we have the dawning recognition that the use of power in righteous judgment has not worked? Yes, the people have sinned, and God has employed righteous power to judge them, but this has not led to redemption. In response to a violent world, God has chosen violence—and the result is the heavens clothed with blackness and sackcloth covering everything (v. 3). If the power of God’s judgment has led to destruction rather than redemption, is there another way? Perhaps verses 4–9a attempt to answer that question. Through the Servant, God evokes a different kind of power: the power to teach, the power to sustain the weary, the power to listen, the power to endure.

In international relations theory, a distinction is made between hard power, which is coercive (e.g., military action or economic sanctions), and soft power, which attempts to influence and persuade through noncoercive means. Perhaps this distinction casts light on our text. In contrast to the vision of hard power we find in verses 2b and 3, the Servant practices soft power. He (presumably the Servant is male in this text; he has a beard, after all) teaches instead of commands. He sustains the weary instead of crushing the wicked. He listens instead of pontificates. Instead of hiding from suffering borne of obedience, and instead of striking back, he offers his back and his cheek. He hopes, he trusts, he waits.

Christians have seen Jesus in this portrait—perhaps Jesus likewise saw himself. Jesus surely walked this alternative way, the way of soft power. And before that, the people of Israel walked the razor’s edge between these two kinds of power as they struggled between stiff-necked self-reliance, monarchial dreams, and the daily reliance on God they had learned in their wilderness wanderings.

As we engage this text in our context, we must recognize that the Servant’s mission has not been exhausted by the people of Israel or by Jesus. There have been other servants, people who have allowed themselves to be emptied, people who have sustained the weary and endured the persecutions of the powerful in obedience to God. And wherever you find one of these servants, the world changes.

A soft-spoken man named Mohandas Gandhi overthrows the British Empire in India without firing a shot. A prisoner named Nelson Mandela is set free and overturns the powers of apartheid in South Africa. An unassuming woman named Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus, and a system of segregation begins to collapse. A black Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King Jr. dreams of a day when his children will have the freedoms and opportunities promised to every child, and his inspiration and courage change hearts and laws in the United States.

These and countless other servants of God, in large and small ways, relied on soft power—not the power of coercion, but the power of suffering love. They saw a world no one else could see; they saw the world God intended to be. That hopeful vision empowered them to endure struggles and failures, to be emptied and poured out, so that they might be a light to the nations, so that God’s salvation might reach the end of the earth.

Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela, Parks, King—these faithful ones can be as intimidating as they are inspiring. But we too have been called to be servants. We too are invited to make ourselves available, to allow ourselves to be used, to be God’s response to a broken and suffering world, a response not of destructive power but of suffering love.

It is important to recognize that the path of suffering love is chosen by the Servant, or at least willingly endured. This text is not a call to remain in situations of suffering or abuse because one thinks abuse is somehow part of God’s “purpose.” God’s way leads always toward healing and wholeness. We tread a dangerous road when we acknowledge that— sometimes—vicarious suffering willingly endured can be redemptive, while simultaneously fighting to liberate people from unwilling suffering. We must proceed cautiously.

Notice the personal feel of this Servant Song. The name of God is used four times in six verses, suggesting a deep intimacy. It is an invitation to each of us to open ourselves to divine intimacy, to make ourselves available to be God’s response to a broken world—and to choose as that response, not the path of hard power, violence, or destruction, but the path of soft power, nonviolence, listening, teaching—suffering love. As God muses in verses 1–3, this may be the only kind of power that can truly redeem.

In the end, this Scripture is also an invitation to keep heart, to hold close to God. It is a song of assurance, a word for the weary: your suffering is not outside of divine redemption; you will be vindicated; you are not alone. Here, on Passion Sunday, there may be no more important word than that.

RICHARD FLOYD

Exegetical Perspective

The songs of a Suffering Servant? Isaiah 40–55 is often called Second Isaiah, reflecting an understanding that these are prophetic words uttered by a prophet in Babylon around 550–530 BCE, about two centuries after the prophet Isaiah spoke the words recorded in the earlier chapters of the book. Second Isaiah contains several passages that some scholars have called Suffering Servant Songs. These poems develop the image of a “Servant” of God (used variously in 42:1, 19; 43:10; 44:1–2, 21, 26; 45:4; 49:3, 5, 6; 50:10; 52:13; 53:11), who will bring justice to the nations (esp. in 42:1; 44:1–5) but who will experience pain, disease, oppression, and alienation (esp. in 52:13–53:12). Jewish tradition has often associated this Servant with the people of Israel; Christian theology has often identified the Servant with Jesus Christ. The text itself points to Cyrus, the Persian emperor (44:28; 45:1, 13).

How do we as interpreters deal with the fact that the text of Isaiah 40–55 does not itself give a clear answer to the identity of the Servant? Interpreters have often treated the text as a mystery, trying to piece together the clues into a complete picture of the Servant. However, the text works against that strategy, as does the lectionary (which offers just this one piece for this week’s reflection). Perhaps these many images of God’s Servant push the reader to ask a different question: not “who is the servant?” but “should I be the servant?” or even “how can I be God’s servant?” From that perspective, this passage in Isaiah provides clear answers about the nature of those who serve God.

Becoming teachers for God. Those who would serve God must be teachers, committed to the helpful instruction of others in the ways of God (50:4). Such teaching is more than the sharing of information; it requires knowing how to “sustain the weary with a word.” The teaching that servants offer is not just education, but demonstrates a path of action that gives life and energy. Such words bring hope and healing, focused specifically on the parts of life that are most tiresome, exhausting, discouraging, and disheartening. Good teaching allows others to persist in the face of life’s struggles, finding new energy to continue on the path that God would have people follow. A servant’s teaching is an empowering act.

Before a servant can teach, a servant must learn (50:4–5). This means listening. First, a servant listens to God and pays attention with the expectation of learning. But perhaps the listening is even more than this. God opens the ear of the servant, which creates the possibility that the servant can hear many voices. Good teaching certainly requires listening to the learners as well. Isaiah implies that this servant should not only be a teacher but must be a learner first (“to listen as those who are taught,” 50:4). A servant-teacher identifies with the learners, becoming sensitive to the concerns and worldviews of the learners, and entering into the learners’ own struggles.

The servant is a kind of teacher who is not immune from the criticism and rejection of others. Invested with God’s instruction and engaged in learners’ lives, the teacher experiences rejection and abuse: punches, beard-plucking, insults, and spitting (50:6). Teaching leads to vulnerability in this world. Isaiah has made clear throughout the book that the world does not want to hear the words of God; in fact, prophetic ministry often leads one to people who do not want to hear anything at all from God, choosing their own destruction rather than accepting divine instruction (6:9–13).

As God’s servants, teachers must be ready to face rejection and mistreatment. One might rightly think of Jesus’ claim that the world will hate those who speak in his name, because the world has first rejected Je...