The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Let me begin by quoting from today's Epistle:
The Word of God is alive and active...It judges the desires and thoughts of human hearts. There is nothing that can be hid from God; everything in all creation is exposed and lies open before his eyes. And it is to him that we must all give an account of ourselves. Let us, then, hold firmly to the faith that we profess.
The first reading, from the book of the prophet Isaiah, is the familiar and much-loved description of the Suffering Servant. Hundreds of years after the time of Isaiah, when Jesus came and died on the cross to take away our sins, Christians began to associate these verses with Jesus and his work of redemption. It is, after all, through the Incarnation or becoming human of Jesus, and through his suffering, death and Resurrection, that we are saved from the powers of sin and hell, and made free to enter the Kingdom of God. It seems a natural and logical thing to connect Isaiah's words with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, especially since the details of Jesus' death were so close to the prophecy of Isaiah.
But the truth is that Isaiah spoke these words about the land of Israel. If we read them again, not thinking about Jesus, we will get an idea of how the people who heard Isaiah understood them. Listen:
Israel, the nation, endured the suffering that should have been ours, each one of us, that pain which we should each have received. All the time, we thought that the suffering and problems of our nation were a punishment sent by God. But because of the sins of each of us, the nation of Israel was wounded, badly hurt; the nation was beaten up and defeated because of the evil that each one of us has done. That punishment that the nation has suffered, has healed and done away with the sins of each of us. The defeats and troubles that the nation has endured has helped each of us to be healed from our sin, and understand what we have done. All of us were like a bunch of sheep; each of us did what we thought was right for us. But the Lord made the whole nation suffer punishment for all the sins that the members of the nation had done, the punishment each one of us individually deserved.
I will stop there, but you might want to read this lesson from your own Bible at home, substituting "the nation of Israel" for the things Isaiah said about the Suffering Servant, and substituting "each of us" for all the times Isaiah said "we" or "us". It's a very enlightening thing to do.
I suppose that all of us know that God gave his Law to the Jewish people, and that they promised to obey it. But again and again, they strayed from the Law, broke their promises to God. And when we read this part of Isaiah, and understand it the way that the people who heard Isaiah speak, understood it, we will start to understand why Israel was defeated so often, had so much trouble in its civil government, and wound up being sent into exile several times.
And then....we need to think how each one of us relates to God's Law, and how the sum of all our sins and wrongdoing have affected the society we live in. Perhaps we can then make some sort of sense of the wars, riots, economic problems, and the unsafe conditions of society here and now.
And then we turn to the letter to the Jewish Christians, and read that we are all, each one of us, accountable for the things we have done, or left undone. Yes, Jesus died on the cross and through his death, his life sacrificed and his blood poured out, gave us forgiveness. Yes, we can now go to heaven. But, still, we are responsible for the effects of what we have done. It is up to us to try to make right the wrongs we have done in the past, both the things we each have done and the things our society has done. And it is also important for us to remember and learn that accountability means responsibility.
One example is the way the government has been forcing factories to clean up toxic wastes that they have dumped into the lakes and rivers, the air and the land. All over our nation, corporations are being required to make right what they have wrongly done in the past.
Another example is the old Japanese tradition: if you kill a man, you have to support his widow and children, since your killing of the man has taken away the income and support that the husband and father would have given his family.
Jesus' disciples apparently had not completely learned the lessons of the Old Testament, because we hear in today's Gospel how two of them were trying to manipulate Jesus in order to get him to give them places of honor in the Kingdom of God. Of course, it did not work. The key point here is a double point: first, they were trying to "get ahead" of the other disciples in a dishonest way, which is wrong. And, secondly, they were already in a place of honor: they were among the small, special group Jesus had chosen to be close to him, and carry on his work. But they completely overlooked the fact that with honor and power come responsibility. And so, Jesus emphasized this by reminding them that he, himself, God the Son, had come among them not as a great ruler on a throne, but as a servant; and that if they were going to follow him, they would have to do the same.
Some years ago I attended a church convention. The presiding officer was well-respected and well-known among the group that was holding the convention. He was quite famous. He had received many honors from both the greater community and from the church. And yet...after the convention adjourned for the day, I went back to the meeting room to find my pen which I had dropped. I saw the president going up and down the rows of seats, picking up the candy wrappers and the paper cups and soda bottles and cans that the people had left behind when they adjourned for the day. I watched as he collected the trash, wiped up spilled soda, and straightened the chairs. He then went into the rest rooms, put fresh rolls of toilet paper in the booths, and cleaned the sinks and emptied the trash. It was not his church; it was not his responsibility. But he understood well that he was among God's people as a servant, not as a big-shot ruler. He understood well that he was there to serve, and that he would be accountable before God and before the group that owned the hall for keeping it in good condition. So he took the part of a servant, a servant of the Kingdom of God. Amen.
