The Suffering Servant is an enigmatic figure described in the
Book of the Prophet Isaiah. One cannot say enough about the
importance of this inspired book. Indeed, its direct and
indirect use by Our Lord Jesus Christ and its vast role in
the life of the Church had led the Fathers to refer to it as
the "Fifth Gospel." It still plays a prominent role in the
sacred liturgy, being read throughout the Sundays of Advent,
each Christmas Mass, on several Sundays during Ordinary Time,
Palm Sunday, the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, Good Friday
and the Easter Vigil. Whether by attribution or by allusion,
this book stands behind much of the New Testament. Moreover,
it is particularly the image of the Suffering Servant, as
described by the four Songs of the Suffering Servant of the
Lord, (Is. 42:1-4; 49:1-7; 50:4-11; 52:13-53) that Jesus
combines with the Son of Man prophecy from Daniel 7 to
explain the kind of Messiah He is. Who is the Suffering
Servant? This question is never directly answered in Isaiah.
However, each of the oracles contributes details by which can
be discovered. While some have claimed him to be Isaiah
himself or another Old Testament persons or even Israel
itself, only Jesus make sense since He alone fits all that is
said about the Servant of the Lord. The first oracle presents
the mission of this mysterious figure. He is the one whom the
Lord has chosen, in whom He is well pleased and upon whom His
spirit rests. This is reminiscent of the baptism of Jesus
when the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus in the form of a
dove and the Father said to Jesus "You are my beloved Son. On
you my favor rests" (Mk. 1:10-11). The mission of Suffering
Servant is to bring justice to the nations through the
instruction for which the entire world is waiting. Biblical
justice is a matter of right relationships. God chooses the
Servant to bring about the transformation of the human race
from the ways of sin to the ways of justice. He comes to make
right man's relationships to God, himself, his neighbor and
the world, all of which have been disrupted by the first sin
of Adam and Eve. The Suffering Servant establishes justice
through instruction, a word that refers, above all, to the
Ten Commandments. As the nations live in right relationships,
they will live in a world envisioned by the Ten Commandments.
The Suffering Servant speaks his response to his mission in
the Second oracle. He acknowledges the call God has given to
him from his birth and announces that the salvation of Israel
is ordered not only to their own redemption, but indeed the
deliverance of all nations. The Servant's
struggle to complete his mission first appears vain and his
striving fruitless, but he come to recognize that all depends
on God that salvation is God's work, not his alone and
that his faithfulness to his call will result in his
glorification. As the second oracles relates, the mission of
the Servant is one of suffering because the people will not
listen to what he reveals. He laments the cruelty inflicted
upon him and yet confesses his faith in God, despite the
appearance that he has been abandoned to his enemies. He
trusts in the
Lord's help, but the people neither trust in him nor in the
Lord. As a result, they walk in darkness and the ways of
death. The final oracles describes the entire purpose of the
Servant that a sinless man should die for the
redemption of sinners. Through the sacrificial offering of
his life for the ransom of the many, God exalts him and
pardons all those for whom he He has died. This oracle may
indeed be
the most important prophecy regarding Jesus in the entire
Old Testament. Turning to the Gospels, we learn of Jesus'
appreciation for His identity as the Suffering Servant. This
is seen in the way Jesus treats the question of his identity
as the Messiah. Throughout the Gospels Jesus is reluctant to
reveal Himself as the Messiah because of His credible fear
that the crowd would want to make Him their king. But their
messianic expectations for a new King David or King Solomon,
who would restore Israel to its proper place in the world,
full of power, glory and wealth, was not His mission. Rather,
Christ came to proclaim a kingdom not of this world whose
marks were not power, glory and wealth, but of God whose
marks are "justice, peace and joy that is given by the Holy
Spirit (Rm. 14:17)." Therefore, the Suffering Servant stands
in marked contrast to the human expectations of Jesus'
contemporaries, whether they be His disciples or His enemies.
For instance, when Jesus reveals that the Son of Man will
suffer much, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and
scribes, be put to death and rise on the third day, it is
Peter who remonstrates with Him, presumably expressing not
only his wishes, but that of the entire group. This was not
the kind of Messiah they were expecting. Jesus rebukes him
"Get behind me Satan, for you are not judging as God, but as
men do" (Mk. 8:31-33)." A little later, Jesus will repeat the
same prophecy to them, but they will
still refuse to hear what He is saying because they are too
busy deciding who will be most important in the Kingdom (Mk.
9:30-37). Only in the light of the Resurrection and after the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit, whom during the Last Supper
Jesus promised would instruct them in everything and remind
them of all He had told them (Jn. 14:26), did the Apostles
clearly understand what Jesus was trying to say about being
both the Suffering Servant and the Son of Man. This
understanding of Jesus Christ is found in one of the oldest
writings contained in the New Testament, St. Paul's First
Letter to the Corinthians, where in 15:3 he quotes a creedal
formula which he himself had already received: For I deliver
to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures. As Professor
William Farmer notes in his book The Gospel of Jesus, "this
little passage is of the greatest importance because it
defines the essence of the gospel in terms of salvation
through forgiveness of sins according to the scripture." It
is to Isaiah specifically the this phrase "according to the
scriptures" refers; after all the gospels were not yet
written. Jesus Himself identifies His mission with Suffering
Servant by conforming Himself to what is described in the
fourth oracle, Is. 53:5-12, : He was wounded for our
transgressions
tortured for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement
that made us whole and by his blood drawn by the we whip we
are healed... He poured out his soul to death and he was
counted among the transgressors; yet he bore the sins of
many, and made intercession for the transgressors. Is. 53
sounds like an eyewitness account of Jesus' passion, but it
was written hundreds of years before He was born. Since the
creedal statement of 1 Cor. 15:3 highlights the shedding of
blood for the forgiveness of sins and Is. 53 speaks of the
Servant's death for the sins of others, it is all the more
vital to remember what Jesus did at the Last Supper. In the
Mass we hear the priest quoting Jesus directly, when taking
the cup filled with wine, He instituted the sacrament of the
Holy Eucharist in anticipation of His sacrifice on Calvary:
This is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting
covenant, it will be shed for you and for all
so that sins may be forgiven; Do this in memory of me. These
words from the institution narrative in the Eucharistic
Prayer go back to the most ancient account, the Gospel
according to Matthew (Mt. 26:26-29), whose subtext is none
other than Is. 53. Regarding the importance of a subtext,
Farmer writes in literary criticism, a subtext is one so well
known that it is banal to cite it explicitly. In a world of
discourse where the subtext is taken for granted, it can be
presupposed and is most powerfully present when it is only
alluded to, providing the allusions are appropriate. Such is
the case here. Christ did not need to say that He was the
Suffering Servant because what He did and said made that
clear. He was the Servant who was prophesied to come who
would bear the sins of others for their redemption. Indeed,
from the beginning of His public ministry, when He proclaimed
a reading from Isaiah ("The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,...
Is. 61:1ff.) at the Synagogue in Nazareth (Lk. 4), it is
clear that Jesus understood Himself and His mission in the
light of the prophecies in Isaiah and in particular the
Suffering Servant. At the conclusion of his public ministry,
He gathers the disciples in the upper room for the Last
Supper at which point He established the Holy Eucharist
whereby His disciples would henceforth be able to understand
the meaning of His entire life: that is on Good Friday, when
He was to be crucified, God would speak his final and
complete word about the meaning of love and the mystery of
God to the human race. Jesus love incarnate did
what love does: suffers for others and pours out His entire
life sacrifices all without reservation or condition
for the good of another, indeed for the good
every other, so that they might have life.
But the story does not end there, as if Christ's sacrifice,
was the end of the story for Good Friday makes no sense
unless it is considered in the resplendent light of Easter.
The glorification in the first oracle and the exaltation in
the fourth oracle find their fulfillment in Christ's
resurrection. The Suffering Servant sheds his blood for the
forgiveness of sin so that we might live with Him in glory.
Copyright ?2001 Arlington Catholic Herald. All rights
reserved.